Joshua Kronengold

I'll try to send you a file with the complete shtick. What formats can you read?

I can't see getting it down to three minutes. Cutting a couple more stanzas out of "The Raven" in Volume I, yes, but I felt "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" worked okay in its entirety because it went so fast and I had lots of shtick between each bit.

Likewise, in the first one I kept the entirety of the song "The Rose," but I heavily abridged "Casey At The Bat" to what I thought were the three crucial stanzas.

In the second one, I can't cut "The Cremation of Sam McGee" any tighter; that's the first AND last stanza rolled into one. The scansion may seem off, but Willie Nelson really does futz around with "Always On My Mind" that much.

One thing I kept in because I found it hysterically funny but I notice the audiences don't seem to find funny is that the entire "How Do I Love Thee" sonnet scans soooo perfectly to "I Can See Clearly Now" in its entirety. I'm toying with cutting parts of that out to shorten it, although I want to keep the bridge because the fact that the thing scans there does seem to garner laughs.

As far as the "Achey Breaky" part, I think I can cut that down a bit more. I rushed that part in and it shows. I really have problems timing it when the background music drops out, and I've practiced that part a lot; I attribute it to "stage jitters."

I also think I need to transpose the "Peg of My Heart" MIDI. That one is forced after the first two lines, but I thought those lines were worth it, which is why I tried to get in and out of that one fast.

Re: limits, I've been keeping each segment to five poems. I figure after that it's a bit much. I ended the first with the Edgar Allen Poe because IMHO it was the most outrageous of the bunch. The rest of the order was put together by what I thought was most outrageous.

In the second one I opened with the Robert Service snippet because it seemed to ease in the best. I have been trying to redo the MIDI to "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" but the system keeps crashing. I'll keep trying. I'm wondering whether I need to cut a stanza or two more out (I've cut it down to three of the five in the original poem).

The next one is the Browning to "I Can See Clearly." Again, cut point suggestions gleefully accepted. I like the way the next one, the Frost to "Limbo Rock" is because it goes fast and I have the limbo gags built in, including the patter.

The final part was of course the "Achey Breaky Gunga Din." Should I perhaps just cut out all but the end of the second stanza I use (the one that ends with "You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din") and most of the repeats?