Holy shit. The room is still too hot. As it turns out changing the temperature from 40 degrees Celsius to 38 does not a comfortable room make.
The 20 multi-color cooling towels hikers use and the primary-color hand fans that I bought seemed to help a bit while also making the audience look like members of a Southern gay Pentecostal Church. It was Sunday after all.
I asked the venue a day before if I could have three buckets of ice to deposit throughout the room. They agree to let me do that. On the day, they give me one big bucket which is probably more than the three small buckets put together but is not what I need. I need to distribute ice throughout this small room for it to work. Because the bar is busy and I never know how many buckets will be available, I think I am going to have to go out and buy a bunch of buckets. I place the big bucket in front of the fan.
The hiking towels need to be dunked in water, rung out and snapped for the fabric’s cooling to I activate so I am outside my venue dunking and twisting towels in a water-filled champagne bucket. I look like a pioneer woman doing laundry.
I have 20 towels but only six or seven take the towels. “ What are these? Your panties?!” one punter says in the back just before the start of the show and when there is still air in the room. 5 minutes later, as breathable air becomes less and less available, people started requesting the towels. “Can you throw me one?” Yes. Yes I can.
Two lovely people who had seen me do a short spot came after I specifically told them not to. I had done some of my best bits from my show in my short spot so why bother ? They are lovely locals and are among the few that seemed relatively impervious to the heat while everyone around them is melting like the Wicked Witch of the West.
The room is full and the show starts out great. People are laughing and fanning, fanning and laughing but with each burst of laughter the room gets ever so slightly warmer than it was before.
As the show goes on, people are struggling with the heat and losing. At one point, there is so little room in the air, people are a little giddy like a sea diver that has come up to the surface a little too quickly or a masturbator about to die from erotic asphyxiation. It feels like a tough mudder for paraplegics and then three people about to faint, leave. God love ‘em. They did their best to make it to the end.
My bucket speech is still shit but I have bigger fish to freeze. I have two choices. I can take my audience outside somewhere where I will bit the head of of any flyerer that would dare to poach them or I can limit my audience to half its capacity while taking the same measures I have to keep it cool. Today, I am going to try to let my flyerer do all the flyering for me (Though I am quite proud of the fact I am pretty good at getting people that would enjoy my show in. Several years of flyering wrong and reading Seth Godin’s books on marketing have taught me a lot.)
Oh, and I have to go to the dentist. Good times!
This daily blog will not be proofread for spelling or punctuation, just like Chortle.
It’s not the Fringe until you’ve seen your flyer disintegrating on Cowgate pavement.