Don’t fall out with the audience before the show even starts: if you want my advice, thanks for asking. Over the years I have worked really hard on not judging audiences in advance.
I just try to think of them as a huge sea of neutrality. Not that it is always easy. It can be very difficult to withhold judgement from a group of people you have never met. Sometimes I have witnessed an audience being malicious to a previous act. Other times I recognise a familiar pattern of behaviour and, like a benign god or parent, I know where their behaviour is headed before they do. Sometimes my “gut instinct” tells me in advance that there is something up with them - this is the same gut instinct that led police to beating confessions out of innocent suspects in the 1970s.
But whatever the reason, no good can come of falling out with the audience in advance.
Tonight I am in a small village outside Nuneaton. It has one shop and I wish to buy some food from it for my pre show diner. The shop keeper refuses my transaction because I haven’t reached the £5 minimum for a card transaction. I explain the law has changed and that there is now no legal minimum so he can damn well serve me. He refuses. I quote the law back to him. I don’t know much about the law but I do know that legally speaking I am as entitled as anyone to bandy it about. I don’t know for sure that the law has changed but the general consensus among people who I know in London is that it has. And also places in London would frankly let you debit card 2 pence and not even blink. So he better get with the project.
The stand off continues. One great advantage of doing stand up comedy is that you loose any sense of embarrassment whatsoever. You are prepared to push things to the absolute brink of social awkwardness and still not care.
Another customer enters the shop - of course he gets involved because this isn’t London and people don’t mind their own business. This local, of course, backs up the shop keeper, Insisting the law hasn’t changed. But who would know better? Me a man who lives in London where laws are actually made and has occasionally lunched in the Houses of Parliament or a man in a shop?
This customer assures me that he knows what he is talking about because, and I quote “I am a business man”. This argument has been obviously designed to massively get my goat. Trust me I am a shark, let me look after your swimming pool.
He then makes a good point that the shopkeeper isn’t obliged to serve me and can decline my business. This is an excellent point and I don’t have a counter argument to it. And so I am forced to borrow cash off a fellow comedian to complete the transaction. I am not happy about this and everyone knows it.
Later on at the gig the customer in the shop “the business man” is seated in the front row of the audience. Small world. Well it is when you live in a small world.
He is surprised to see me.
Half an hour ago I was just a man in shop arguing about his inalienable rights and now I am a comedian. It is not often that audiences get to witness the off stage me ratcheting up tension in an everyday situation with a shop keeper. So I think this guy feels privileged to have seen the on and off stage Stephen Carlin.
So there is now a little conspiracy between the two of us because we both know but I never ever mention it. Perhaps I should do? There is a lot of comedy potential to this situation. But I decide to keep it secret because there is something very satisfying about this conspiracy of silence going on with one guy in the front row. It gives the whole performance an edge and he enjoys it all the more. If only I could just recreate that little individual conspiracy with each audience member individually it would really heighten the whole thing. Perhaps I need to have runs in with all of the audience individually prior to any show but this would be very time consuming.
Anyway I think the upshot of today is that there were no negative consequences to my actions and therefore I have not learned anything. I have neither evolved as an artist nor as a human being. In the future I have resolved to have more run ins with my shopkeepers or carry cash on me at all times. It is importantly to harness everything you have towards your stage act.
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