I have always said that if you do not put the work in for getting an audience in for your show, you have no right to complain when no-one turns up.
Okay, I’ll admit that I haven’t always said this. I barely said it at all in my childhood and teens. It was only something I started saying when I began promoting comedy shows.
However, when you have put in three hours of flyering and it only results in a handful of people attending the show, then you might have stronger grounds to complain.
But this is the Edinburgh Fringe and there is no point in complaining about the tough times, because it will achieve nothing other than boosting a word count in a blog. When faced with lacerations to the soul at the Fringe, you just pick yourself up and get on with it.
In spite of the somewhat negative tone to the start of this blog, we have actually had two of our best shows of the run so far on consecutive days. I spent the better part of three hours handing out flyers on Saturday because I wanted to get a full-house after a quiet first week.
From three-hour stint, only about five people came from it. We managed to boost our numbers up to about 15 from persuading people who were in the pub anyway and dragged a few people off the street minutes before the show was about to start.
So we had a lot bigger audience than we have had for quite a few days, but I was hoping for a full-house as it was a Saturday. But never mind, we put on a good show and the people who attended were entertained.
Sunday was much the same in terms of audience size, but it was much better in terms laughter decibels. Our back row was particularly loud. We also had our best collection at the end of the show, with one man putting in a whole £10 note.