Here’s a philosophical question: if there are no audience and the gig still goes ahead, is it a gig?
The rational answer would be ‘no’. However, if I lived my life thinking rationally, I wouldn’t be doing stand-up comedy.
I was faced with such a scenario last week. There were about seven comics, in a small and dingy room that looked like one of the places you see on TV where reformed young offenders would share their stories with groups of teenagers to make them think about turning away from crime.
This analogy would have rang a little too true had any of us been a reformed comedians, telling our stories to others to make them think about what they’re doing with their lives. I would have ignored them regardless.
As you can imagine, it wasn’t much fun. Fortunately, towards the end of whatever it was, a man who said he was homeless poked his head around the corner of the door and thus became our one audience member. His one small action transformed what had become a support group into a gig and all was saved.
Nope, rationality, I am not going to listen to you.
My next gig was one that I run in Walthamstow, which was back after taking August off. We normally do pretty well in our small and weird little room and we managed to get it at pretty much capacity of all 20 chairs, in what was a friendly little gig.
On the subject of gigs that I run, I can confirm that Ruby Tuesdays is no more. We are moving to Mondays in October, so will be known as Ruby Comedy Mondays. I am currently in the booking process and will reveal exciting news about headliners in due course.
See, it is possible to write a blog without mentioning Edinburgh. I am in Fringe remission.