Before Gig.
Tonight I am performing in a Casino is Essex. I am part of their “Vegas” style entertainment. The gig takes place in a small side room off the main gaming floor. The room is roughly the size of a classroom. There are 12 CCTV cameras located throughout this small rectangular room and mounted discretely in the ceiling. It is the most filmed performance of my entire career. All I need to do is edit the security footage and I have a ready made DVD. The cameras are those of the curved variety that can see around corners, totally redundant in a room without corners to have to see around. I imagine my face looks bloated and distorted on the cameras as though it is being reflected in a spoon. I think this “hall of mirrors” effect would look good on a DVD and contrast with the current tsunami of live comedy DVD's rather predictably showing people in their proper dimensions.
Access to the gig is exclusively for those patrons using the casino and entry is free. Actually I don’t think the gig is free at all, I think the cost of entry is factored into the huge sums of money punters are chucking away at the tables. But perhaps that is my cynicism?
It does mean that punters can wander in and out of the comedy, sample the comedy, leave, gamble, come back in again, leave, go gamble again. At one point I actually hear a man say “lets get more chips”. I didn’t think people actually said that in casino's any more than real life Eastenders actually say “you and who’s army?” or police officers actually say “You’re nicked mate”
The audience can be roughly divided into two camps. There is a loyal hardcore of audience who are there for the gig and sit throughout the show. They comprise mostly of couples and sit down the front. Then there is the more hobo element that wonder in and out drips and drabs. They sit at the back and are all male. Their dress, haircuts and struts announce that they are Essex boys. As the wandering minstrels join the gig half-way through proceedings, they are inevitably on a different page to rest of the audience, having missed the ground rules and set up etc. This can cause problems. I am sitting in the audience watching the show and masquerading as a public when a fresh wave of transients come and sit in the row immediately in front of me. I eavesdrop on their conversation and this is always a bad idea. I prefer to think of my audience as a blank canvass rather than individuals with actual personalities. These guys are talking about getting pissed and pissing on people during sex - - the usual nonsense.
The microphone is kaput and while the microphone isn’t necessary in a room this size I really feel i may need it tonight, especially if the piss monsters pipe up.
During Gig
I have been working on a more naturalistic style of delivery and this seems at odds with speaking without a microphone, I feel like I am addressing a trade union meeting. I have no microphone and I don’t know quite what to do with my hands.
The opening material goes OK but I have a feeling that the Essex boys at the back are not quite going for it. Sure enough there are outbreaks of sporadic heckling and chatting amongst themselves. Almost immediately I have to abandon the material and just banter. I do wonder whether it will be possible to do material at all? It may just be bantering for 20 minutes, so be it, but I will feel I am short changing them a bit (at a free gig). I banter with the front row. There is a woman called Gaynor originally from Lancashire. She seems to be related to most of the front row in some way or another. After a few minutes of bantering I feel I have connect with the front half of the audience at any rate. I go back into material but there is disquiet at the back.
There are two young guys (19/20 ish) who are chipping in and doing a very bad double act. But it is the man seated a row behind them that I am worried about. He has a face full of burst blood vessels, an angina face. I can tell he is not enjoying it. Having bonded with the front of the audience, the material is now getting more traction. But his displeasure is in direct proportion to other peoples pleasure. The more other people enjoy the material the more he hates it. Faced with confronting the idea that he may in fact have abysmal taste in comedy, something gives. He manages to heckle, exit and explain the background to his grievance all in one go. It is a neat efficient maneuver and other hecklers should take note. I have never before witnessed a man spasm himself out of room from pure unadulterated anger. He looks like he may be having a stroke on both sides of his face simultaneously, but two different kinds of strokes, that will leave his face both paralysed and asymmetrical. As he goes he mutters to no one in particular “Supposed-to-be-comedy-not even-jokes-fucking-ridiculous”
Another of the Essex boys shouts “Twat” but it is unclear whether he means me or the stroke victim. I try to clarify this situation, I cannot let a heckle like that against me ride, but I have no desire to crush an ally with friendly fire and risks alienating the audience. He doesn’t seem sure himself. He won’t answer but I keep pursuing the point and the situation develops into an unnecessary high-noon situation. Things are tense now. I may have fucked this. I don’t know why I do this? There must be a better way of handling this. Maybe I should have assumed he meant me and bludgeoned him anyway? But in small rooms, injustices like that can rebound badly, whereas an injustice doled out in front of a large audience is invariably treated with immunity (or welcomed by the blood thirsty masses). Essex boy eventually concedes that he did mean me but he then issues a retraction and apologizes in such an obsequious manner that I feel nauseous. He has made a heckle put down almost redundant but I feel duty bound to deliver one anyway and sure enough it falls flat. This may be the moment when this gig slips away for good, but no, paradoxically, this is the moment where it picks up. I’m not sure whether the audience have rated my handling of the heckler better than I have? I’m not sure if the stroke victim guy’s exit has purged the room of bad vibes? I’m not sure if the challenged has galvanized my spirit? But either way the gig now enters it’s halcyon days. The whole dentist - relationship break up - gambling section, including new material I am developing about choosing a partner based on their particular type of teeth, really hits it stride. I find a new found sense of purpose and I bang it out for the next ten minutes. One gag rolling off the back of the momentum of the last. Perhaps that’s what they wanted instead of tender loving care, me banging it out. Or maybe I had to deal with the renegades first? There are too many variables. After ten minutes, when I look, the other Essex Boys have gone, quietly, without a fuss and without a spasm.
After Gig
I have always had a good time gigging in Southend-on-Sea and I include tonight’s gig in the Pantheon of having a good time.
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