06/10/06
When (and when not) to confront an audience -
Categories: I've just got home from a gig in Christchurch and I'm still thinking about it even though I got off stage just under 3 hours ago. Usually after a gig I come home feeling happy, or a bit disappointed, and mostly just tired. But tonight I'm feeling annoyed, and yet I'm not entirely sure that I deserve to be.
I'm pretty sure these feelings aren't wholly down to the gig itself, which is in a nightclub in the centre of Christchurch (near Bournemouth), and is your classic midweek 'ton'; 100 miles, 100 people, 100 quid. Nik Coppin was hosting, with Eddy Brimson opening and myself closing. It kicked off at 9:30pm (late for a mid-week gig), and the audience, while feisty and a bit 'green', got into the spirit of proceedings and with a bit of prompting, laughed hard throughout. Even if in some places we were having to explain every other joke. But the gig was doable, that's for sure.
Personally, I had one of those odd shows where the audience enjoyed it more than I did. I'll explain why. The room layout was a touch awkward and there wasn't a spotlight which meant that any routine that relied on seeing your expressions for subtle nuances; or any nuances, for that matter, seemed to go a bit dead. However, I was forewarned - one of the big advantages of going on last is you get to see exactly what does and doesn't work and you can tailor your own set accordingly. But none of these reasons explain why I disliked it.
The show itself went well, but what sapped the fun from it was the fact that there was a table of clearly unimpressed middle-aged women near the front who did nothing but talk loudly and huffily throughout the whole show. The on-the-fly decisions I make here on whether to confront them, make a passing mention, or plain ignore it, tend to be critical and I probably did all 3 at some point during the half-hour. The only problem with choosing to ignore people like this is that it's too hard. You can only block out people so much when they decide to be so obtrusive. It hinders timing, delivery, and confidence. Even though I should know better, I can feel myself subconsciously getting louder and faster to drown them out, and my delivery (and voice) suffers.
And maybe it was that twinge in my throat I've not really had since Edinburgh that made me feel so short tempered afterwards, but soon after my set, as I'm chatting to punters and flogging DVD's at the back, one of the ladies from that table sidled up to me and asked if I would like to join her at her table for a chat. Now, I'm used to the indignant, half-cut punter who, unimpressed with what I've done, 'wants to have a word', but she seemed a bit more erudite than that. In retrospect part of me wishes she wasn't, because if she'd have been a lot less accommodating I would have just ignored her and went home.
Politely refusing her offer to be a vitriol spitoon for her coven, she calmly asked me why I felt I couldn't 'defend my act'. The insinuation here wasn't that I was being offensive, it was just that my act wasn't funny, and she clarified that. Now, all comedians have at some point had someone say this to them, so it doesn't really bother me or make me re-assess my chosen career. I even let statements such as 'you're not funny' go, when what they really mean is 'I think you're not funny'; especially as the room was full of people who were laughing and applauding throughout. Did she feel they were one massive symapthy vote? I told her that comedy was subjective, and if she didn't laugh, I was cool with that.
So she asked why I thought she didn't find me funny. In fairness, I should have just bounced that back to her; I've had countless women in my life tell me that I 'shouldn't tell THEM what they're feeling'. Again, maybe backing off would have been the better option here. But I gave her my honest answer; that she wasn't really listening, that some of my stuff went over her head (she nodded at that. Arggh! Pride in ignorance, my biggest pet hate), and finally that she didn't like me *personally* because I had ripped into her table somewhat, for talking loudly throughout. She said, if that's true, then it was my fault.
Well, I couldn't let that lie. I don't get red mist usually, but the green and blue mist was being slowly faded out. The reason, I explained, that I was ripping into them for talking loudly and interrupting the show was because people had paid to listen to me, not them. She said, "But I've paid as well". Yes, but isn't that the epitome of bitterness to spread your displeasure when you aren't enjoying yourself? "When you did that, despite being asked politely by me and the management, you continued regardless. It was rude and it was ignorant." She continued regardless, unsurprisingly. "Well, lots of people around us weren't laughing, so it wasn't just us who didn't find you funny." I imagine some of those people were wondering what the accepted exceptions for not punching women were.
What made this conversation so much more bizarre was that I had three huge members of security stood that 'security distance' away in case she decided to do something mental (like, I dunno, agree with me) and I was breaking away from the conversation briefly every minute or so to sell DVD's and sign them for people who were not only being hugely complimentary about the show, but were getting drawn into my rebuttal of this lady's charge list. Nik Coppin was also stood nearby, frankly fascinated as to why I was bothering to make such a reasoned case to justify my existance to someone who clearly doesn't matter in the slightest.
So I've spent most of the 2 hour drive home thinking about what I did. Having DVD's to sell means that I'm sticking around after shows when normally I'd be gone in a flash, and sometimes I'm stuck chatting to people I'd normally run away from, so I'm going to have to get used to these situations. Part of me wishes I just left, but then part of me would have been bloody annoyed to have left her to assume the moral highground. She didn't desrve that. The sole purpose of my argument was to give her something to think about; that her opinion was only important to her, and that the impression she left on a room of strangers was that she was both ignorant and impolite. Good. I hope that seed was planted fully, and as I write this, she's entering a similar blog on 'cross-stitch weekly' about her massive contrition, and realisation of how worthless her own self-importance is.
I should also be thankful that I got the lady I did though. As the rest of the group left the venue, one particularly gnarled and inebriated woman from that table screamed that she'd 'write a terrible review of me in the Standard'. Either she meant some sort of local Dorset publication, or Bruce Dessau has seriously let himself go. "OK", I retorted, "What's my name?". "EXACTLY!" she announced triumphantly, and walked into a fruit machine. That's the sort of punter feedback I'm right at home with.
Comments:
As written here, her arguments contain no logical coherence and contain non-sequiteurs. Your own arguments are sound.
Your reasoning will just have increased the ire, as hers was an emotional as opposed to rational response. She surely never really wanted you to defend your act, that was never the intention.
Surely all she wanted was for her and her companions to vent spleen; in the role as the entertainment that evening you are, to some degree, dehumanised, and as such she wouldn't have given two hoots about you.
Sounds like a dreadful evening. It's a real feather in the cap for misanthropy.
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06/10/06 @ 16:44 I would like to hear you defend the suggestion that being stroppy, ignorant, middle-aged and female (the only things we know about this person) somehow correlates with a liking for cross-stitch.
Or was she sat doing embroidery while she slagged you off, and you just forgot to mention it?
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23/10/06 @ 15:57 I can trace my anti-cross-stitch sentiments to the demise of the car magazine J-Tuner, which folded this week. I wrote for this magazine for about 18 months, since it started, and Future publishing decided there wasn't a market for it - despite them having THREE cross stitch titles that all survived their cull.
As D Atkinson alluded to, the feelings were endemic of misanthropy, not misogyny. I just find that women tend to argue more vociferously in that environment, because, unlike men, they don't have as much fear that it will cascade into an actual fight. I find men slightly more contrite when facing off to strangers - unless of course, they are actually trying to *start* a fight, in which case, the opposite is true.
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