We had our largest audience of the Fringe so far last night, with 29 people. I was delighted.
It was a good show, but felt I had to work hard for my laughs. This is partly because it was a Friday night and there was a fair amount of noise coming in from the main pub, so I felt I had to compete with that to be heard. Because of the noise, it was difficult to hear the audience tittering and I could only hear the belly laughs. So for the first part of my set, I could see some of the dreaded blank stares; I didn’t think it was going particularly well and I was in for a battle.
So I upped my game, by this I mean I got more shouty and it seemed to pay off. After some audience interaction, several belly laughs followed and I hit my stride.
Because we weren’t telling people where to sit, we had quite an odd shaped audience formation. The seats to the right of the stage area were full, as was the back row. But somewhere in the middle, there were empty seats and there was a solitary man sitting on his own in the front row who was with the people on the pew things along the side of the room. I am aware that if you are unfamiliar with the layout of our room, then this will make little sense to you. In which case, you should come to our show to see it for yourself.
Paul had a decent set and we made just over £40 in the bucket. We also had some really positive feedback from audience members, who genuinely enjoyed the show and came out of their way to say so.
In my experience, if an audience member hasn’t enjoyed themselves then they won’t do this, with their behaviour dependent on how badly you have done. If you haven’t done very well, they’ll smile slightly at you and say ‘well done’ or the kiss of death: ‘you must be very brave’. But if you have properly died on your arse, they will avoid making eye contact with you and try to leave the venue as quickly as possible to get away from the stench of a bad gig. Neither of these behaviours have happened in Edinburgh, although there is still two weeks to go.
We are about one week into our show and we have had some really good gigs. But I know we can do better still and we have yet to hit top form.
- Love and Langton’s Dirty Laundry is on at 11pm every day until August 25 at the Kilderkin, 67 Canongate, Edinburgh, EH8 8BS, as part of the PBH Free Fringe.