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seemed so abstract and weird to them.
    â€œSteve, this is Guy Moran from Qwest. Guy, this is Steve Cuddy,” Ana said. “He handles all the bookings and all that kind of stuff. We can do sketch comedy, improv, a mix of the two, whatever you want. The show will be starting in just a few minutes, but maybe you can join us afterwards for a couple of drinks. Enjoy the show, and thanks again for coming!”
    Chelsey was the emcee for the night, the one who explained how the skits worked and took suggestions from the audience. She peered out from backstage. No, there was no gorgeous Native American named Rob in the audience. Damn!
    The five performers got on stage and waited for the lights to go on and for Tom to introduce them. Tom Taylor was the muscular sound-and-light guy who kept the lights shining and enhanced the humor with perfectly timed strange noises using just his voice (when one of the actors would open a door, for example, he would make the sound of a door creaking open). Tom had a bright smile that contrasted impressively against his black skin. He’d had a promising career in football until a knee injury on the field in his senior year at the University of Northern Colorado cut his aspirations short. Now he worked as a radio DJ during the day and the Spur of the Moment sound-and-light guy on weekends.
    The five players stood with their backs to the audience. Tom turned on Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” and as the performers danced around the stage, Tom boomed in his best mock white-guy announcer voice, “Gooooooood evening ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to Spur of the Moment. I’d like to introduce the actors for the evening.” At this point, four of the actors would stand still and then Tom would put the spotlight on just one of them, and he or she would dance around goofily for about fifteen seconds while Tom introduced him or her, then Tom would shine the spotlight on the next person until they’d all been introduced. When he got to Chelsey, she did her Irish jig moves, wearing a mock-serious expression on her face, all big eyes and pursed lips. Chelsey loved that the years she’d spent as a kid learning Irish dancing had an applicable skill now that she was an adult. That was the thing about improv—absolutely anything you’d ever done, read, or heard could become fodder for material on stage. When you had to act on the very first thought that popped into your head, reacting to whatever the other actors said, things from the darkest recesses of memory had a way of jumping out. Being a successful improv comedian required an extensive ability to remember pop culture trivia, geography, film, and history. If the emcee asked the audience to yell out a person or a place or an event and they yelled out “Justin Timberlake” or “Bora Bora” or “WorldCom’s troubles” and you didn’t know what they were talking about, you were quite screwed on stage. This had happened to Ana once when she’d asked the audience for a movie genre, and the first thing someone yelled out was “film noir.” Ana had heard of film noir, but she wasn’t sure what it was or how to go about acting in the film noir genre. She thought maybe film noir was something that had taken place in the 1940s involving men in trench coats and bowler hats. But she also thought film noir might still exist today. So she just went through her scene acting moody and dark and hoping to hell she wasn’t making a total ass of herself.
    Chelsey took the microphone. “Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Spur of the Moment. Thanks for coming down tonight. By a show of hands, how many of you have never been to Spur of the Moment before?” About half the audience raised their hands. “Well, we are thrilled to have you—maybe almost as thrilled as you are to be here for the funniest show in town. For those of you who are new, this