Not hot n sticky this week phew!
I thought there would be hardly any acts due to the fact that most acts book a month in advance and I only got the Google forms set up two weeks ago. I steel myself to get set up and prepare for awkwardness.
The Edinburgh Fringe has taught me how to handle a small room. When three people turn up to your show, you know that there's no way to spin this into a buzzing gig, and your brain shouts “Why am I here?” The classic mistake I've seen is where the MC gets angry with the few that turned up “Why didn’t you bring your friends?” Don't do it! It never works out well.
Quickly you learn two essential tricks of the trade:
‘Reference and move on’. Don’t get stuck with the elephant in the room, shout “Oh look there’s an elephant! Budge up everyone and give the elephant some room. There's lots of elephants out there so I herd."
The other trick is to give more of your energy. The room isn’t going to buzz with laughter carrying everyone along, so you have to give it pace and energy. The more you go for it, the more respect, smiles and laughter will come back. So give it a little extra va va voom.
My third tip, and I know I said there were two but re read the last sentence and....
Make it personal. Deliver punchlines to a specific person as if they are the only one in the room, then focus on someone else. Conversations work on a one to one basis so make it chatty.
And finally get to know awkwardness. Awkwardness comes just after the moment you went all observational i.e. you pictured yourself failing, which made you hesitate and fail some more. When that happens, take a breath, then go back to tip number one. “Wow! That one worked well, not!”
Quillarious!
An interesting one where we got into it without getting very funny. My bad! I’m going to list my critiques so I can reread them for next week:
I put too much pressure on digging for the result and didn’t give it enough light and fluff.
Again there wasn’t enough separation between Punch and Backstory rounds.
I need to clearly explain the rounds rather than rush into them.
I didn’t get the room into ‘flow’ with the word association.
But we got to the point where Sergi and Joseph performed the story and we got some funnies:
_Photograph_By_Shantanu_Kuveskar.jpg)
The story so far......"Eddie Lizzard head honcho of the Lizard elite had recognised the crisis in the ongoing war against the Fat Cats led by Chairman Meow.
The chameleons positions had stiffened, yes it was a cold war. All except one who had a reptile dysfunction.
Both sides had agreed to secret talks.
They met in that famous strip club Karma Cameleon run but the infamous Fidel Cat-stro and his side kick Chat Chivara. Where the pussies could be stroked and the chameleons could simply blend in.
As they sat down they knew the stakes were high, both side desperate to avoid...
Neut-clea war!"
To be continued.....
Thanks to:
Eleanor Conway, David McIver, Michael Hughes, Lee Hurrell, Lisanne Fridsma, Joseph Murphy, Harris and Sergi plus the audience lady Joseph chatted up in the bar.
