23RD AUGUST 2015
AUDIENCE: 60
WALKOUTS: 0
RUNNING TIME: 1 HOUR
BEFORE
The BBC are coming to record this show for a feature on four extra. The feature is about this blog. Is this getting meta enough for you?
My cold is receding now and I am feeling better than yesterday but still not convinced that my energy levels have returned or that they will return until the end of the Fringe. Not feeling very silly today. Cant get into my persona easily.
I’m concerned that I wont get a big enough crowd for the recording. The BBC have said that
they will record it tomorrow again if “the audience aren’t very good” i.e “if you aren’t very good Stephen”
Despite my fears of no audience, the room is filling up. I recognise some audience members from early in the run so some people are coming back. One man of around sixty comes in dressed as what I can only describe a country yokel. He looks interesting but interesting in good way or a bad way?
I am not sure whether to mention that this being recorded for BBC? It may be better to play it as a regular gig on the other hand if I mention it is being recorded, the audience may raise their game. Could also do a double start? I.e I could mention that this is a recording and then reintroduce myself. I decide against this.
As yesterday I am medicated up. Not sure if this is good idea. Sometimes the benefits of medication are cancelled out by it making me disconnected and spaced out.
DURING
Sometimes I introduce myself from the back of the room. Today I sit next to the stage facing the audience and introduce myself from there. I am preferring this opening now as it is cleaner and creates a sense of expectation and in the audience.
I banter quickly with the audience to find out where they are from. They are mainly an English audience although some man seems to think main land Europe is England.
I decide to explain the recording. I intend to say “this show is being recorded”. But I actually say “this recording is being recorded” which makes no sense as is an early indicator that my concentration isn’t tip top. I explain if they heckle it will go out. This may be a hostage to fortune.
Halfway through the Pint of Milk routine and the man who had come in looking like a country yokel heckles. He is sitting on the front row, he heckles in a lovely west country burr. Often I find that the best way to deal with a heckler is just to say exactly what you are thinking until you find an angle on them. I immediately admit that I had him pegged as a weirdo before the show even started. Here I am just literally speaking my actual mind to comic effect. I also state that he can’t really win because it is a recording and it will be edited to make me look good no matter what happens. This is all true. Sometimes the truth can be funny.
But I now decide to engage with him - from here on weirdo 1 (another weirdo is coming along later) to find out a bit about him for potential future use but also to give him some attention in the hope it will shut him up.
It does strike me that this interruption has gone too well and that with the inclusion of the BBC recording may make it seem contrived or even scripted to members of the audience. I seek to dispel that notion but I don’t know if that just plants the germ of the idea further in their minds?
I make some reference to him drinking milk that has gone off or something. My rounding off the heckle put down by referring to the original subject is an elegant technique for getting back into the material.
I have been endeavouring to make my delivery more naturalistic and when unplanned events like this happen, it does produce a more natural tone of voice. The momentum has gone out of the material at this point but re-checking the tape the delivery is flat so it is no wonder it doesn’t fly. Things pick up with the Kitten Up The Tree.
I have not been happy about how I have been getting into the God being autistic part. Sometimes I have been coming the conclusion that God is autistic through the routine other times I have been stating it up front and justifying. I think the second way works better. And this what I do tonight. Towards the end of the routine the American woman explains to her husband in a stage whisper that Aspergers is a form of autism. I should let this go but I am now hyper alert for any interruptions and I draw attention to it and now have to ad-lib around it. Explaining that she has been sent sent along by the National Autism Council. But I tag this with “To say this bit is OK” I am overly pleased with this ad-lib. Partially I am telling the audience that it is OK to laugh at this bit but mainly I am loving it because of the utterly cynical nature of the claim. I am hoping the the sheer self serving nature of it will come across. That I know that it is a totally spurious claim. I flag this up to the audience by pretending to stifle a smile and raising my had to my mouth but even now I am not sure how deliberate this smile actually was and whether I did partially break character at this point? I may have been too pleased by half? This self satisfaction/ faux self satisfaction for the benefit of the show triggers Weirdo 2.
“You can’t laugh” he shouts.
But unlike Weirdo 1, I am genuinely annoyed by Weirdo 2. Who the fuck does he think he is? The director. There is a smugness, a self satisfied air that weirdo 1 never had. Weirdo 1 never told me how to do my act. perhaps because he has hit a home truth? And I somewhat mishandle this. I should have gone down the route of “it is radio no one can see my face.” but instead I go down a defiant route that feels better in the moment but doesn’t serve the show as well. The tone is all wrong. I should taken a more lofty detached tone with him. I think the audience sense my anger and back away a bit. I have to get them back on side by improvising around the idea that the show has been advertised for a weirdo audience and then back to the material again. It takes a bit to get the momentum going again but just as I get to the build of God being Homophobic. I hear panpipe music which i surmise is somebody’s mobile phone going off. I am able to get a laugh off this but for the first time I am worried that the momentum of the show may be shot to pieces and time wise I will not be able to complete all the material.
The start of homophobia goes uninterrupted but the interruptions are now coming thick and fast and when I do the routine about the friend who is a Heroin addict, Weirdo 1 pipes up again. At this moment I can see the show drifting away on a sea of disruption. I decide to go in a bit heavier on Weirdo 1 now. To try and close him down. This is also annoying because I wanted to try out some new material about marijuana and now I can’t. The moment has past. Weirdo 2 now cuts in. This is a pincer movement. I have to close him down too, but this is the nearest things get to fire fighting. I think I have given the audience enough slack by this time.
During Jacket I am supposed to say “My mother lives in Glasgow and I live in London” the whole joke hinging on the fact that we live a good distance apart. But I say “My mother lives in London”, since I have already stated that I am in London when this story is happening the whole premise is now a nonsense. For nano seconds I try various configurations in my head of how I can make this joke worked based on the new realities. But I can’t see a way out of it and decide to own up to the mistake and try it a second time. Often a risky strategy because it highlights the sheer contrivance of the whole material but today this is the least bad option. Nonetheless I can’t just admit I made a mistake and move on, this is not real life. I now have to make an event out of my mistakes by somewhat labouring the point that I made a mistake and this appears to work. The climax of the routine where I basically list all the stupid things people say to comedians but as through a drug dealer works very well. I then do a cheat and add on a line about heroin that should have come earlier in the Heroin Friend bit but had to be dropped due to heckling. But the audience think it fits there. The fools!!!
Already my internal clock is telling me we are seriously behind schedule. The ongoing interruptions and my responses are eating up much needed time. I am aware I may have to make cuts. I start to identify candidates for cutting. What bits I like doing the most versus bit that I need for the structure of the show or bits that are needed later for call backs. In some AIDS would be the ideal candidate for cutting. It is long, it is risky and it is a stand alone piece that doesn’t really connect with the later pieces in the show. It seems a needless risk tonight, But on the other hand I really feels that it lends a certain something to the show. It is controversial and darker and pushes the audience and often defines them and creates a sense of jeopardy for me. So i decide to do it.
And on to AIDS. The opening section relies on a fairly quick fire serious of statements that are almost immediately interrupted by Weirdo 1.
I am never annoyed at Weirdo 1. Weirdo 1 is just enjoying the spirit of the show but I feel I have to say enough is enough at this point. Maybe I shouldn’t have? Maybe I should have seen how crazy things could have got? But I find when this is the case no matter how funny in the moment the audience leave feeling disappointed at the absence of structure. They don’t know that is why they are disappointed but they do feel you have let them down. So I just bluntly state that I may have to ask him to leave. I leave it hanging enough for him to hopefully get the message and then I soften it with some humour. He is silent from here on in. Hopefully I gave him enough rope to provide entertainment and not upset the structure too much?
During the Driving Routine I do a call back to the hand gesture forgetting the original routine that sets up this theme was shot to pieces at the early stages of the gig. The call back works despite the fact that logically it shouldn’t have? I don’t fully understand comedy.
The end of this routine about my mother at my funeral doesn't fully work and I am becoming dissatisfied by it in general, feeling the end lacks another ingredient.
The Jesus routine is filleted. In fact I only really perform the first half of it. This may be a deeper indication that I don’t fully enjoy this bit as much as the rest. I get out at the line about “This is Britain and a queue is a queue is a queue.”
The Love/Hate section at the end goes smoothly and is the most conventional of all the routines today as it without event. It feels strange performing without having done all of Jesus. Instinctively I feel that I am at the end too soon even although the running time is now an hour. I create a sufficient climax at the end and it is a good out to the show.
AFTER
Today I actually got to know the material a lot better. Because I really had to think about what bits I could cut and for it to still make sense. At times with interruptions it was not worth going back to the point where I had been interrupted and the rest of the section was abandoned. Other times I exited routines early because of time pressures I created new “endings” by making the middle of routines the new end bit. It is good not to think of material as fixed in stone but as a fluid evolving thing.
The interruptions actually pushed me to a better performance than if i’d had a tamed audience. I was forced to think on my feet but it also produce moments for me to reset as well. Bizarre moments of respite in amongst the chaos.
Aside from the interruptions it was a technically flawed performance. Quite a lot of stumbles over words. A few times I started a sentence with the wrong word and had to work out how to swing the sentence round to where I wanted it to go. Other occasions i.e. The Jacket routine said the wrong thing entirely i.e My mother lives in London when I was supposed to say Glasgow and had to ad-lib my way out of it. That said watching back the tape these stumbles seem almost unnoticeable what does strike me is the change of gear between the ad-libbing and scripted sections and the need to maintain the energy off the back of the ab -libbing sections straight into the scripted parts. At the moment there is a drop of energy for several moments at these changeovers.
This was really the only show in the run where I didn’t have time to do the whole show. The various interruptions and my dealing with them ate up time and I had to improvise edits. I was aware that the room was getting hotter and hotter and the audience would tire out if I kept them over an hour so I wanted to bring the show in on time. Perhaps it was a mistake to tell them that any heckles would be recorded? Having said that the interruptions made it a more interesting performance and the audience got a unique version of the show. It kept me on my toes and actually produced a more bespoke show. Ironically the artifice of the recorded format produce a more genuinely live experience than many lives shows.
Possibly my favourite audience and possibly my favourite show in the run. The only thing I am not happy about was when I had to tell Weirdo 1 that he would have to leave if he didn’t shut up. This was necessary as he was going to become too much of a feature but I wish I could work out a way of doing it that makes it funny without giving him further licence to chip in further. This show had a real sense of occasion. Not sure if just because the BBC recording but also because of the various “characters” in the room and I was able to play the part of an intrepid performer trying to keep the show on the road despite all the curved balls. So this created a fictitious jeopardy that added to the drama. This show got a bigger round of applause at the end. Tonight the overall performance transcended its individual weaknesses.
On the way out Weirdo 2 again reiterated this point that I shouldn’t have laughed at my own joke. How do you tell somebody to fuck off that has just given you a tenner? I was tempted to try.
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