There's some extra seating downstairs in the cabaret at iO, tucked away in a weird side corner near the back. Some people call it the Hamlet Lounge. Unless a show is packed, the Hamlet Lounge is usually half filled with a smattering of late-comers and students. It's the worst place to see the show from. Improv is very immediate and intimate. You can feel the show getting less funny the farther away you are.

Still, I have some fondness for the Hamlet Lounge. When I first came to Chicago and first started taking classes at iO, I saw a lot of shows sitting back there. Students get to see shows for free but have to give up their seats to paying customers. If I got there early enough and the show wasn't too packed, I could usually sit in that front row on the Lounge, right at the shelf table.

And I usually did get there early enough. I knew almost no one in town at the time, and not that many people at the theater. What else did I have to do? A few times a week I would take two long bus rides to the theater, and sit there with my nose in a book, shyly waiting for the show to begin. And I ate it all up, loved every minute of it. Some of what I saw was bad, but I didn't care, and some of it... well, some it still seems like it must have been the most amazing stuff I've ever seen, like a first rush of a drug or a first flush of love.

This blog would be very different if I were writing it then.

I still love improv, but we are an old married couple now. We have a more hard-eyed view of each other, and we're lucky to do it once or twice a week.