Unfortunately, I've
had to cancel tomorrow’s preview in Winchester with Norman Lovett as the
take-up hadn’t been as much as we would have liked - and while I could have
left it a little longer to see if we sold more, it made sense to call it
now, to allow time to inform ticketholders and to save the hassle of getting
there tomorrow to find we're just as quiet.
It’s very
frustrating, but ultimately can’t be helped, and it feels better to make the
decision today instead of leaving it hanging, particularly as most of the day was
spent going through the mechanics of cancelling it, leaving me no time to work
on the show itself. All this does is echo how I’m sick of being the one doing
all the organising and how I'm seldom, if ever, the one previewing my show on someone
else’s night with them doing all the booking and promotion. In fact, now I
think of it, in all the time I’ve worked with Glyn or on my own, we’ve never
previewed a show at someone else’s event. Not once; yet the times I or we have
offered other acts the chance to try something out in front of audience having not had to do anything other than show up are countless.
The aborted show
in Winchester was the first example of someone meeting me halfway by allowing
me to essentially perform under the umbrella of a club that wasn’t mine, but I
still booked Norman, took the financial risk and led the promotion. I know it’s
not the way these things go, but it would be nice if these arrangements went both ways.
The plus side to
losing tomorrow is it actually frees up the diary, giving me more time to work
on the show for the next preview at the Actors’ Temple with Phil Kay next Friday, without having to rush. Here’s hoping I use it correctly and make the
most of it; what I’ve lost in not having a chance to try the material out to a
new audience tomorrow (which is obviously always beneficial) I gain in having
the time to fix what I don’t like about it.