Double Heart: Akron Public Library - Nordonia Hills Branch

James is about to vomit. No, really.

Two outstanding audiences at Summit County public libraries the past two days. I was disappointed to learn that Akron city schools were closed on Wednesday -- traditionally we would get maybe a dozen seniors to join us for the afternoon performance at the Shatto Avenue library, and about 100 students who walk over from nearby Firestone High. We decided only to put out about 64 seats (8 rows of eight) so the expected audience would look too thin.

However, almost every seat was taken! We had a very strong turnout, not just from seniors, but also high school students who obviously could think of nothing better to do on a day-off than see a play, and also some families with younger children who happened to choose the library as the thing to do that day and heard there was a show going on.

James thinks he had food poisoning, and was on the verge of exonerating during the entire program. His performance was outstanding, and the fastest I have ever heard him go. He even sat through the talkback before excusing himself to meet his little porcelain helper.

I am ... butt hurt.

The Nordonia library in Northfield is one of our smaller venues -- you can't get more than sixty chairs into that room. It remains, however, my favorite stop on the tour. It's not just the cookies (thank you, Friends of the Nordonia Public Library) it is also the fact that we can back the truck right up to the performance space and load-in takes about five minutes. Finally, the audience is always very responsive, they laughed at the low humor, and got all the more sophisticated references.

There was a great mix of young and old -- one family had several small children who must be quite experienced at witnessing live theater and were engrossed in our show from beginning to end. Teenagers brought their parents to see this play, not the other way around. For the post-show discussion Daniel, who normally needs to warm everyone up, just got out of the way as hands shot into the air to ask about every aspect of performance, the writing, the acting, the costumes, the music, everything.

Then we had cookies.