I enjoyed my first Brighton show tonight.
I arrived in town at around four-ish, with my (unpaid) assistant Stephen in tow, and made my way to the venue, laden down, as ever, with a mass of equipment. Rather fortuitously, my show is the first on every day, which is great, as it allows more time to wrestle with the - as usual - erratic technical set-up.
Minutes into the get-in, the comic who's assisting with the running of the space arrived to say the audio desk had blown out a week ago and has yet to be replaced; not the words you want to hear when your show is heavily technically reliant. She was the first to admit that she wasn't hugely tech-savvy, but between us - and with my reasonable sound knowledge (and experience of having to make gear function in a variety of bodged situations) - we managed to get the bare minimum to work. The only setback was the feed from my Mac would every so often emit a horrific foghorn-like sound that vibrated through the whole building, that would stop the moment you ran a cue through it; all this, despite DI-ing it into the desk with a view to eliminating this sort of interference in the first place.
(I'm aware that the above makes for dull reading.)
Consequently, the show went up a tiny bit late, meaning I had to cut the odd bit here and there to make up time. The audience wasn't huge (I had about twelve in), but they were a lovely crowd and very responsive. It was an enjoyably relaxed conversation between me and them, with an overriding feeling that they got where I was coming from and understood my style. They seemed to enjoy when I went 'off-book' the most, which happened a fair amount, what with the occasional foghorn interruption and the football fans chanting outside the venue, who were in town to watch Brighton play in the Championship semi-finals, which was being shown on a big screen at the stadium down the road; I like my shows to correspond with major sporting events.
All in all, it was a promising start. I'm looking forward to doing show #2 tomorrow, safe in the knowledge that the equipment should work; famous last words...