It’s so hard to
get any interest in my previews at the moment.
It doesn’t help
that they’re all organised by me, so
the onus is always on me to drum up an audience. If I had the luxury of previewing on
other people’s nights this wouldn’t be solely my job. This is what we
offer acts who come to Hitchin Mostly Comedy and we always deliver, but sadly
no-one returns the favour; I know this is largely because most other acts
probably see me more as a promoter, but it’s hard to not take it personally,
much as it’s hard to not let the uphill slog to coax people to come and see you
get you down.
There
will be plenty of other acts who are in the same boat to be fair, as the scene is
saturated with previews at this time of year. The fact Mostly Comedy does
consistently so well is an anomaly. It’s hard to get much comfort from this
however, when you need these gigs to go ahead so you can pull your show
together in the first place.
That said, it’ll
be easier to get an audience in Edinburgh. Encouragingly, each time I log in to
look at my sales reports for August the numbers go slightly up. I’m a
long way from a sell-out run, but the fact people are booking before it’s even been
promoted is a positive sign.
It helped that I
received two encouraging tweets out of the blue; one yesterday…
…and one tonight…
…that made me
feel a little better. It’s nice that someone’s actively excited about seeing
the show, and that someone else felt the need to pass on a few positive and kind words apropos of
nothing. There are a few nice people out there if you look hard enough; I’d just
like a handful of them to turn up tomorrow, so I look marginally less of a
dick. I’m not ruling me looking like one out altogether though, as that would
be madness.