It has been pissing rain since the morning. I am awake an hour earlier than I should be and know I will regret it. It turns out I am doing three spots in addition to my show in at 9:05 pm.
It is a Sunday audience and my theory about them has developed over the many years I have been at the Fringe. Sunday people are tired as they slowly recover from whatever they did to themselves over the weekend. Their brains are in a state of light sleep and cannot be arsed to think. They are squeezing as much fun out of their last day on vacation as thy possibly can and this is never really very fun, like drinking a milkshake after it’s all gone.
With these audiences you have to be the ones having fun and the tired audience is usually quite happy to live vicariously through you. One of the spots is in a venue with benches which I hate with a passion. Benches are the worst. They are shitty for your back and nobody wants to sit on them after 10 minutes. People are sitting the booth type seats built into the wall all around the room, “lap dance seats “ as I call them as I first saw them in a documentary about exotic dancers years ago. Nobody used the benches to sit in.The audience use the benches as tables for their drinks and one guy takes out a tin, puts it on the bench and starts eating lentils while everyone watches. This is not the atmosphere of a comedy show. This feels like the waiting room for a backpacker’s vaccine clinic. Nobody is responding to set-up punchline jokes at all. All they responded to was crowd work so I did that for the rest of my time and got out of there. You are only as good as your last gig. Whatever that was, it was not a gig but I enjoyed insulting people that enjoyed being insulted.
I have coffee with Yuriko Kotani in a super hip coffee shop that have very expensive uncomfortable benches. Her show is doing very well this Fringe and we talk about performing in hot rooms. I bitch to her about things only someone familiar with Japan would relate to and find out Richard Gadd had done a show in the room I am doing now and that was nice to know. I do love my room. I love that it is intimate, has chairs with backs on them and everyone is facing the right way. I just wish it wasn’t so damn hot.
Since it has been pissing rain nonstop from the morning, my room is a little cooler than usual. I have a surprisingly full room of people who have responded well to my flyerer’s strategized technique. At the beginning of the show, I hand out fans and have hiking towels ready but the audience only uses the fans. A few audience members struggle with the heat but don’t keel over. The show and audience really came together and it felt and sounded like a proper night out. I was very proud of the show which was only marred by a clumsy bucket speech and a card reader that refused to work.
I am very happy to be home by 10:37 and asleep by 12:30. Victory is mine.
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