etc theatre, Camden
Not only was tonight the debut of Romantic Comedy, but it was also the first time that I’d ever done an hour one man show, made harder by the fact that there was no opening act or compere… just me, in a room, with people.
Slightly scared to say the least.
As much as I hate flyering normally for comedy, today it was just me at stake on a sunny sunday afternoon at very short notice, so using the photocopier at work and my Word skills I made some very shoddy flyers that myself and emm stood in Camden giving out.
I can happily report that whilst emm’s good looks got rid of more flyers the grand total of people it brought in was zero.
But never fear, my fervent emailing tactics of the previous weeks had garnered me just double figures of audience through friends and friends of friends.
And luckily, the etc is such a lovely intimate room that although it can hold about 50, ten doesn’t feel at all empty.
Everything felt wrong before I went out, my stupid PVC trousers, the trainers, the entire script, my head, everything.
Then the music fades and I amble onstage.
And it goes surprisingly well, within reason. My main fear of this first show was dying. If I die in a normal gig then at most there’s only ten minutes to squabble around before running offstage and letting someone else take over. If you die at the start of an hour then that’s a long horrible embarrassing time spent being refused entry by the ground swallowers.
But, no deathing. In fact the hour went by very quickly, and I didn’t get all of the material out. Having too much material at this early stage must be a good sign. To be honest I feel for the first time that I can do this and that it’s not one big horrible costly error. Though, I can still be proved wrong.
Got some good feedback and have a lot of thinking to do, mainly in that most of it I didn’t learn the material, thinking I could do what I normally do in 10/20 min sets which is to know roughly what I’m talking about, then talk about it. But in an hour this left me fumbling a bit too much, and listening back to my little recording of it there is far too much umming and ahhing.
And the story I read is far too long, it’s a great story and if read on paper it’s the right length, but I realised, a little late, that reading a six page story is a tad overlong and loses impact.
Also, running out of time means I kind of rushed and pretty much left out the conclusion of the entire show, almost making it redundant, so it was more like just an hour of chat than a show of any note.
But it’s a first preview, and enough to leave me happy.