Hiya Heidi: My Live Studio Audience Experience

Ok, so this is a week and a half late. But in my defense and as I stated in my last post, it was Watchathon week, and I was very occupied. Then once that was over, I had to catch up on some sleep due to the previous tv show watching marathon.

But, back to the point of this post.

If you ever have the chance to be part of a live studio audience, do it. I'm sure they're not all the same, but the rush you get during and after I'm assuming is similar. The BF and I had the chance to be part of Stephen Colbert's audience during his taping of "The Colbert Report" on Comedy Central. I follow the show on Facebook, so every now and again, they'll post when tickets are available. The tickets are completely free, you just have to pick a date of what's available and go from there. The both of us are fans of Stephen and are only a couple of hours from NYC where it's filmed. So when I saw that tickets were available, I snatched them up.

The Audience Department at the Colbert Report overbooks ticket confirmations to ensure a full audience. Because of that, you have to make sure you get in line early enough to get a number. That number is the order you'll get seated. We got in line about an hour and a half before the time we were told and we were in the first twenty. The waiting was outside and it was raining, but thankfully we were under an awning. In that time, security gave us their spiel (no weapons or drugs, no food/drinks, no cameras, no phones). We started getting led inside and had to go through metal detectors. We then had to wait some more in a holding room. I think we waited another hour. This is the chance to use the restroom, play on your phone and take pictures. There are tvs that play some of Colbert's best segments and kept us occupied. Right before being led into the studio, we were told that we are the laugh track and that there are microphones everywhere. They said, "Be exaggerated, be loud. When Stephen gets on stage, go crazy. He eats that shit up." "Volume over authenticity" was a favorite quote from that night.

When the seating began, those with the coveted VIP passes got sat first. But strangely they weren't sat in the front row like you'd think. Then, four sets of numbers were called out and those with that number and their party were led into the audience. They were the lucky ones that were sat right up front. Anyway, we were all finally led to our seats. What was so suprising was the size of the whole studio. The stage itself is alot smaller than what appears on camera. And there was maybe 50 seats in the audience. Which was great, because there's honestly no bad seat that way. Before the show, music is playing to keep everyone pumped up. And security is watching everyone to make sure cameras and phones aren't being used, so no pictures from inside the studio!

Before the main show, a warmup comedian comes out. He was pretty funny, a little raunchy, but still funny and interacted with the audience. His main job is to make sure the audience will be loud enough and to loosen us up. The stage manager then comes out and tells us how everything will work and what cues he'll give us when we have to stand up and cheer.

Then Stephen finally came out. He actually does a Q&A with the audience out of character. Random questions were asked. What kind of BBQ, wet or dry? Thoughts on the new Pope? Do you find yourself slipping into character often? Did you know today is National Tolkien Reading Day (which he is a huge Tolkien fan and started to speak in Elvish and was completely awesome). Seeing him out of character was so neat. He's still funny, but you could tell he was more serious in real life.

When taping finally started, the audience went crazy. Stephen sat down at the desk and told us to sit down and we didn't, which you can see on the show. Stephen ate it up and loved it. The show was coming back from a two week break, so the show's crew was refreshed and the energy was just excited, which was so cool to see.

Stephen made a couple of mistakes and had to do reshoots. Which, you can't even tell when watching the taped show that there was even an edit. During the "commercial breaks", the stage crew would come out and do their thing. Makeup retouches, stage retoughes, script retouches. And Stephen would loosen himself up by dancing, singing and making faces.

And then, the taping ended and we go home. While Stephen leaves, the rest of the crew hangs around to thank the audience as we leave.

Overall, we waited twice as long as the taping actually lasted. But it was worth it and an awesome experience. We even made it on camera a couple of times. I'm already looking forward to the next live taping I can get the opportunity to go to.