Hello, I'm an audience fringe critic. I may not know much about theater or humor or drama or anything like that, but I can sure as heck tell whether there's an audience or not. For one, they make noise. Even when they're not laughing you can hear them quietly breathing or shifting in their seats. Sure, if it's a serious drama it can take a trained audience critic's ear to detect such sounds, but that's what we audience fringe critics are good at. So, boy, if there isn't any audience there, we can be pretty sure what they thought of your show, given they didn't even bother to come see it. If there's only like 7 people there, it must be a bad show. We don't even need to stay for the whole thing to review it. There's nothing like running with the mob. The mob's pretty smart you know, how else do you think they survive? And those rumors of first-show hazing rituals, well, what can we say, most first shows suck! That's why no one comes to them, silly. And believe me, if we can tell that an audience is present, we can be even more certain when they're laughing. People don't laugh quietly to themselves anymore. That's so passe. And that undertone sniggering? They're not laughing. They're just snorting at your ridiculous attempts at humor. I'm sorry, but it's just not funny if you can't get them to guffaw. I don't care if there are only 3 other people at the show. My policy is: no guffaw, no positive review. It makes my job so much easier! I don't even have to know good humor from bad, all I have to do is follow the crowd. If they guffaw, even just once, that's at least 4 stars for you. But if they don't, well you won't see me bucking the trend, that's for sure. Herd mentality all the way, that's the motto of us audience fringe critics! After all, that's what being an audience is all about. That's why you won't see us up on stage, nosiree. And I'm sorry, but risque humor has no place in theater, not even in parody. Sure, back in the 60s you might have seen Dan Ackroyd getting away with it, or maybe Chris Rock in the 80s, but that was then, and this is now. Get with the PC bandwagon. If you're going to call someone for being a racist, just do it. It's not necessary to put us through the agonising demonstration, however funny you may think it is. The accusation is enough for me and it should be enough for anyone. Heck, if I'm not paying attention, I might conclude YOU were the racicst. You wouldn't want to run that risk, so better not to touch that kind of material with a 10 foot Pole...sorry pole. Just stick to good family fare like "Please don't blow up Mr. Boban" did. Now, where did I put that dead cat?