EDINBURGH FRINGE: 28TH AUGUST 2015

FRIDAY 28TH AUGUST

SHOW 18

VENUE: NEW WAVERLY ARCHES

TIME: 8PM

AUDIENCE: 9 

Before

Having completed two shows in my new venue - The Hive - I am now relocating again for Friday and Saturday. The good people of Freestival have kindly agreed to house me in the New Waverley Arches. The new ‘new’ venue comprises four rooms, each located in its own arch underneath Jeffrey Street. I am an intimate of Edinburgh but even these arches are new to me. In Edinburgh there seems no end to arches and caves. The room is rather similar in capacity to the Just the Tonic Caves but the roof of the arch is far higher. There are, rather appropriately, large religious style murals along either side of the room. The venue is near to the Canons’s Gait and is also similar to my original time slot. But the venue is new this year and so largely unknown. And although centrally located, between the Royal Mile and Waverley station, it feels strangely out of the way. 

I arrive about half an hour before my show. I go into my room and do a sound check, set up the music, prance about the stage, sit in the audience chairs, see what it is like for them, go back on stage, prance about some more, go behind the curtain, prance about back stage. I find a hole in the curtain I look through it and spy on the theoretical audience who are yet to arrive. I rather like this room and it has a back stage area which none of my other venues have had this year. I can see possibilities for alternative intros, starts, off stage bits. It feels more theatrical. Will anybody come? 

I walk out into the courtyard to try and drum up some business. A couple in their thirties arrive with my flyer. “We couldn’t find you. We looked everywhere. We asked at the old venue. When I mentioned your name the barman looked like I’d handed him a shit.” 

I try to make light of this while offering some background info on the venue debacle. But the fact is a member of my audience just called me a shit and the show hasn’t started yet. 

I survey the rest of my audience. I know that some of them shouldn’t be here. That it is not for them. Some of them have stumbled in by mistake. I no longer have a venue I am operating a Venus flytrap. 

There are nine audience here. Two of them are my friends who have seen the show before. There are seven audience here. Two of them are a septuagenarian couple who are very proper and not cut out for stand-up comedy at all. There are five audience here. Three of them are women in their sixties. They think they will like my show. They will like it up to a point and then not like it after that. They will feel betrayed for ever liking it in the first place. There are two audience here. They are both a couple in their thirties. They went to the old venue. They asked for me, the barman looked at them like he had been presented with a shit. Then they told me about it. They called me a shit. There is no audience here. Normally nine people would be enough to go ahead with but the ceiling is very high and height absorbs noise, absorbs laughter, absorbs energy. “Please welcome to the stage Stephen Carlin.”

During

“Look folks there are only nine of us here (really none). It’s up to you. We can go ahead if you want. I am happy to go ahead but you’ll have to carry the show. Carry the whole audience, just the nine of you. So if you’d rather not, no biggie, just say…”

“Oh yes we want to go ahead” they nod. This appears to be some customer focused survey. It is nothing of the kind. I am dipping their hands in the blood. Now we are all responsible for what is about to unfold. And what is about to unfold? I don’t know. Some kind of uphill struggle. But I know the challenges ahead. I know the realities of a nine people audience in and a large cavernous ceiling, for an hour. A nine people audience when some of them shouldn’t be here. They don’t. Democracy is power in the hands of the ignorant. 

There is a sense even from the start, that the more accessible parts, the less controversial parts, the more user friendly parts are coming across as being on the edge of acceptability.  I can sense that the audience feels that they are being racy for liking the more innocuous parts of the show. What happens when I get to the parts that are in genuinely poor taste? What then. I am having to guide this audience by hand.

I sort of cajole this audience through this show. I flatter them, I am giving them all a “we’re all men/women of the world here” nod. The trouble is they are not men and women of my world. My friends are in the audience; they don’t count. The couple in their thirties would be at home in my audience; as some of the more cautious elements. The three woman in their sixties have no business being at this show. They could enjoy me in a club set- if they were sat up the back. The older couple, I feel are so far from any kind of reference point that maybe they will accidentally like it? But I fear never wishing to attend any live performance again. 

I am giving it a lot of “we’re all friends here”.

But I can see how people start selling pyramid schemes. This show is a giant pyramid scheme and I am trying to flog it to punters who are too clued up about their own tastes. 

There is a mood of “isn’t this all very jolly?” The trouble is I know what is over the horizon. I know when I get to certain parts of the material, the fragile camaraderie is going to shatter. 

I am having flash forwards to doing the AIDS material and I just can’t see it working. I just can’t see these nine people scattered across this fifty seater room taking it. I just see a train wreck. I just see the end of the gig as we know it, all momentum and good will gone. I keep running different scenarios in my head. Different ways of saying it. Different edits of it. Different moods. Different deliveries. I speculate about what could happen between here and the AIDS material that could make the audience well disposed towards it. Nothing is going to happen. They won’t like it. I play chess. I am trying to think 10 moves ahead. “Well if I say this and they laugh at that, and then they go for this.” None of them end with the audience liking the AIDS material. And AIDS is looming like a deadline. Twenty minutes away now, fifteen, now ten. Nothing is changing I cannot see it working. I think about re-ordering the material, sticking AIDS later, moving it closer. No still it won’t work. Now the point where I will have to do AIDS is drawing closer and I still haven’t come up with a way of making it work. But I have to do it right? It is the show. I can’t not do it because they won’t like it; I keep assessing this audience. I keep getting the same answer back: they are not going to like AIDS. I draw on the experience of every gig I have ever done. On the thousands of times I have been on stage. On the thousands of audiences. I run through the memory banks. The same answer keeps coming back. They are not going to like AIDS and after that they will not like anything and you’ll never get them back. I try asking myself the question a different way but it makes no difference, they will not like AIDS. I feel that a bomb is counting down to zero. It is going to blow up in my face. That any wire I cut will still lead to it blowing up in my face. 

And still it comes nearer. And still I have no solution. And then it occurs to me. Just don’t do it. Just don’t do AIDS. But isn’t that bottling it? Isn’t that the opposite of what you are supposed to do? To be fair the show can work without it. I have still not resolved what I am going to do. 

Then it comes. I come to the bit where I should do the AIDS routine and I do the opening line “And I’ll tell you something else that is none of your business.” And then I just cut straight to the Bad Driver routine and side skip AIDS. And the audience are looking at me. All big eyes. A bunch of innocents not knowing what nearly went off. And I saved them from it. And I saved me from getting nothing in the bucket. But I bottled it and it doesn’t feel good. Maybe it feels like this to thwart a terrorist attack and nobody thanks you and you secretly resent yourself? 

After

I think that not doing the AIDS material was a good call. I think it would have wrecked the show. It wouldn’t be like awkwardness in a big audience which is still an energy you can play with. This would just fizzle out. It was a good call. It was not bottling it. Sometimes it is difficult to know where wisdom begins and cowardice ends. 

EDINBURGH FRINGE- 24th AUGUST 2015

MONDAY 24TH AUGUST

NO SHOW

In addition to my solo stand up show, “The Gospel According to Stephen”, I am also performing in another show at the EdinburghFringe, “Routines” with Dana Alexander, Will Mars and Matt Roper. 

This show is the brain child of Will Mars. It lies somewhere between stand-up, improv and theatre. It is a show within a show. There is a stand up gig with compere and three acts run along fairly conventional lines. But the show also features the green room, where the audience get a peak at the goings on back stage. The dialogue for the green room scene is largely ad-libbed and often refers to events unfolding in the gig, references to actual audience members, reviewers that are in the day etc. There are also “freeze frame” moments, where regular time is suspended and a moment-in-time is drawn out. E.g. as the compere and other comedian cross on stage they may have a momentary exchange of words, this moment can be stretched out in this show to ten and twenty seconds. 

I have been enjoying “Routines” immensely and am having a ball working with the other acts. It also provides an opportunity to stretch myself performance wise, to display different skills and to drum up publicity for my solo show. I always exit flyer "Routines" for my solo show. 

Routines is being performed at a Laughing Horse Free Fringe Venue; my Solo Show is being performed at the PBH Free Fringe venue. This contravenes PBH terms and conditions. PBH insist that if you play their Free Fringe you don’t perform at any other Free Fringe venues. Laughing Horse Free Fringe has no such embargo on playing PBH venues. Neither do Freestival nor Bob Slayers “Heroes of the Fringe” nor do the paid venues. 

Routines finishes at 4.45pm. After we exit flyer, we then have to reset the room for the next show which includes re-arranging all the chairs. We finish this by about 5.00pm and exit into the Three Sisters Court Yard where we chat/debrief for about 15 minutes. At around 5.15 the cast of Routines and I leave the three sisters to head to my flat for diner. 

The Event

As we are walking, I switch on my phone. A text message appears from Peter Buckley Hill timed 3.51pm, this is during "Routines".

Hello Stephen. I have in my hand a flier for a Laughing Horse show with your name and face on it, for a full run. Can you please explain? Thank you. PBH. 

Almost immediately, a second text comes through from PBH times at 

Hello Stephen. I have had no reply to my previous text message. It is clear from the evidence that you have broken the Free Fringe Ethos and Conditions by being a permanent and billed member of a Laughing Horse show. Your Free Fringe show is therefore terminated with immediate effect. 

Regards

PBH

People around me start getting very annoyed on my behalf but I remain strangely calm. I have to think through my options. PBH is an implaccable kind of a guy and I don’t think he will change his mind. I will have to start making alternative Fringe arrangements. There is a eye of the storm quality to all of this. I need to find a new venue. Alter the flyers and posters. Get some publicity. 

Word spreads fast. Alex Petty calls to offer me a slot at Laughing Horse. John Campbell asks for an interview for his blog. I speak to Bruce Dessau. There are messages of support, messages of what the fuck? I put a notice on facebook.  A discussion rages on facebook as to the rights and wrongs of the thing. 

I phone the venue to see what's what. It is already a fait accompli. The venue staff have been called by the pub owner to instruct them not to let me perform.

I turn up at the Canons’Gait for my allotted slot. I am not sure why I do this. I tell myself it is to apologise to any audience members who have turned up. I hope I’ll bump into to PBH so I can have a chat with him/ argument in person. I want to thank the staff. But perhaps it is just force of habit or maybe I'm hoping it's not true. There are a few audience members still milling around. I apologise for their wasted journey. I try to explain why I have been kicked out the venue. They seem perplexed. I enter the venue. Is PBH there? Will this be a showdown? Or a polite chat? He is not there. A chain is across the entrance to my venue. The chain is routinely used to close the room during performances but tonight it has “Show Cancelled” sign attached to the chain. The chain takes on an extra potency. 

I walk into the bar. There are four of five customers in there. I approach the bar to speak to the bar staff. I want to thank them but there is a lot of not meeting my eyes. It is not just embarrassment it's a though I am a sex offender who has just moved into the neighbourhood and I’m not making much headway of the pleasantries. I don’t know what they’ve been told? But I get the impression they think I have done something heinous. The only experience I can liken it to was the time I stole a forklift truck at a summer job factory and the management was a mixture of disappointed/angry/disgusted/embarrassed/ashamed. 

Come on guys. It is not like I’ve killed somebody. 

This is a particular low point and the only moment where things really get me down. I enjoyed a good relationship with the bar staff and knew many of them from last year when I played the same venue. I have always made a point of getting on with the bar staff. The performance space has its own bar which is manned throughout my show. Therefore there is always one member of staff present throughout the whole performance. They watch many shows throughout the run and are good at giving feedback. Several of the bar staff are also performers so their input is always worth listening to. 

I leave the Canon’s Gait and wander aimlessly for a bit. I never knew how adrift it felt to not have a show at the Edinburgh festival. Sometimes acts who are having a year off from Edinburgh arrive in Edinburgh for a few days and always say how much they are loving not having to do a show; it must be hell. 

A Solution

I decide to speak to Bob Slayer. I go to Bob’s Comedy Bus. Bob is having a snooze on the lower deck. He wakes up. 

“Beer, Stephen?” 

“Yes, why not Bob?” 

Bob opens a bottle of Badger. “that’ll be £4 please Stephen.” 

“Sorry, I don’t have any money.” 

“Why did you order a beer then?” 

“I thought you were giving me a drink for free” 

“Why would you think that? I’m running a bar!” 

“I thought you were being nice to me?” 

“Why would I be nice to you Stephen?”  

Good point Bob.“Because I was kicked out of your venue”

“Why have I been kicked out of my PBH venue?” 

And this is how Bob Slayer offers me a slot at Bob’s Heroes of the Fringe. I am now playing The Hive at 10.10pm on weekdays but I still need to find a venue for the weekend. I feel restless with no show tonight. A load of adrenalin and nowhere to go. I often fantasise about a night off. What I would do, what I would see. The reality is not so good. All this energy and nowhere to go. 

The Result

Laughing Horse, Freestival and Bob Slayer all came through with offers of venues. 

From comedians there were kind of three schools of thought. 

1. You have been treated outrageously. This is a ridiculous rule. 
2. You did break the rules but the punishment seems excessive, particularly in the last week of the fringe. This is counterproductive.
3. You broke the rules. What did you expect? Of course PBH was right to throw you out.

I found people to be very kind and utterly unpredictable in their opinion. 

Many people got in touch to express support or offer their own stories of clashes with PBH. Some people told me frankly that I was wrong. But everybody was unfailingly polite and courteous about it.

I received both support and criticism from unusual places: There were self-confessed rebels who were quick to tell me that rules are rules. Other, apparently more conservative figures, were wholeheartedly behind me. Neither did the support necessarily split into predictable camps. I had very strong support from some PBH people and criticism from others outside the PBH organisation. I also had assistance from people who thought I was the architect of my own downfall but who wanted to help me nonetheless. I met some people who were frightened to express their real opinion in public lest they damage their future bookability with PBH.  

Overall I experienced a greater sense of camaraderie than at any other time in stand up. 

Some thoughts: PBH has done a great service to comedy in setting up the free fringe. The free fringe was set up to allow artists to take back control of their careers. If they are now hidebound by restrictive practices then it is not in artists interests. This rule of exclusivity does not serve artists and needs to be scrapped. 

The feud between PBH and other branches of the free fringe is utterly ridiculous and is of no interest to the public and relatively few performers. In any case this feud is a one way street and is not reciprocated by Laughing Horse, Bob Slayer or Freestival. 

Without getting into the rights and wrongs of incidents like mine or Cowgatehead, these incidents create an impression of amateurism on the free fringe and damage the overall free fringe movement. Again, regardless of the rights and wrongs, these incidents have been bad PR for PBH free fringe.