If there’s one
thing I’d like to remove from my performing life it’s not being able to get
into a space until just a few minutes before the show begins.
This was pretty
much the case with tonight’s London Mostly Comedy. The show before us came down
just after 9:00pm and we were on at 9:30pm. We knew it would be like this, to
be fair, as there’s always another show booked into the same room before us,
but being forewarned doesn’t make it easier. There’s still a mad-panic-dash to
make sure everything is set up and works before we begin.
It doesn’t help
that we tech everything ourselves, as we can’t afford to pay anyone else. While
our technical set-up isn’t complicated, it’s essential to our act. When you
only get in the space a few minutes before curtain up and don’t know quite what
the situation will be until you walk in, it adds tension. You also don’t get time
to run all of your cues. The show is performed to the mental background noise
of ‘will this all work’.
Tonight, it
didn’t. The venue has a new projector that for some reason showed some of our
usually perfectly-visible slides as an almost black screen. If we’d had time to
run through every slide before we’d begun we would have known this. As it was,
a couple of visual jokes were lost.
I run the
slideshow and audio cues myself on stage by remote control. Tonight I used a new
remote, as our old one had given up the ghost. The new design is
shocking, with all the key buttons I use positioned within a tiny surface area. Finding the right one is akin reading braille. On top of this, there was little time to take in the
stage space we had to work with. We were performing on their panto set, which
should have been perfectly adequate for us, but I hadn’t realised how tight it
was until I ran on at the top of the show; another setback of getting in last-minute.
At least the
technical and front-of-house staff are excellent. It’s not their fault it’s
like this. They do everything they can to make our get-in as slick as possible,
but it’s hard when you’re working against the clock.
I suppose we
should be used to it. We’ve done countless gigs in venues with barely any
set-up. Sometimes we’ll turn up to find there’s only one mic, as the promoter
didn’t consider the fact that we obviously need two. In one Edinburgh venue,
people literally had to walk past where I was on stage to get to the toilet. I
had to put up with this every day for a month. There’s always something.
Despite this,
tonight wasn’t awful. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t awful. Glyn had a good one, me not so much. Reaction was muted for my solo set, but most of the material was
untested. I was also flustered by the tight get-in. That said, I did enjoy some of the banter.
At least tomorrow’s Hitchin
show should slightly less rushed. I have a casting in the afternoon though,
so I’m not sure what time I’ll arrive. Love it.