Don't have the skill? Then you'd better have the will
By any measure Friday night's gig was a tough one. The stage was in the corner of the pub with no room for the rows of chairs to denote 'audience'. It was a 'free' gig so the punters there for the comedy were mixed in with a majority who were simply out for a drink and a meal at the end of the working week. The bar, about eight feet from the stage, didn't stop (noisily) serving the entire time we were on stage.
Readers of this Blog will recognise this as a pretty familiar workplace for someone on my step of the comedy ladder. Every night of the week across the UK there are stand-ups battling away in rooms that are no more set up for comedy than they are for polo. Implicit in accepting the booking is an understanding the acts will somehow compensate for all these negatives and create a night of great comedy.
How has this been allowed to happen? Why is it that we comedians turn up to work when the odds of success are so severely stacked against us? Much can be explained by the attitude of the agencies that are paid to book the acts for these pubs. Oftentimes the bookers take zero responsibility for the show aside from ensuring that four or five warm bodies are ready to go onstage at about 845pm. No demands are put on the venue in terms of technical (Is there a stage? A microphone, even?), logistical (Will you stop serving drinks at the bar whilst the acts are performing?) or marketing (Is this going to be a paying audience? How much are tickets?). As a performer you literally have no idea how hard your job will be until you arrive at the venue.
Understandably this gives rise to a high degree of cynicism amongst acts on the circuit. For me this has lately tipped over into a dangerous sort of out-and-out negativity.
Last Friday's gig wasn't an agency booking. It was booked by the night's compeer; a highly talented comic who is starting a small circuit of regular shows near his home town. As I said, it was a tough crowd but the opening act won them over. Okay, he pulled out every trick in his 20+ years on the circuit including ventriloquism and getting the audience to clap along to Beethoven's Ninth ('Ode to Joy') played on a banjo but he got there.
I went on next and lost the room. The audience traveled that mortifying arc from amusement to bemusement through polite silence and onto unsurreptitious chatting amongst themselves.
The interval was scheduled for immediately after my set but the compeer did something interesting. Instead of simply getting a round of applause for me and telling the crowd to get a drink, have a smoke and be back in twenty minutes he stayed on stage and got the audience back where he wanted them before the break. It took him another quarter of an hour but he stayed up there to recalibrate the room so the punters were more likely to stick around for the rest of the show (remember that the audience hadn't paid to watch us and so had far less stake in seeing the night out).
These two acts stood in stark contrast to my performance. I've gotten into the dreadful habit of walking into rooms and declaring them 'unplayable'. Put it down to too many long car journeys with acts who make the same declaration on the way to the gig and who make a show of checking the watch on stage before asking aloud "That was about twenty minutes wasn't it?"
In his new book Linchpin: Are you indispensable? Seth Godin makes the distinction between 'the art' and 'the job'. He uses 'art' in an especially broad sense: -
The job is what you do when you are told what to do. The job is showing up at the factory, following instructions, meeting spec, and being managed.
Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can.
The job might be difficult, it might require skill, but it's a job.
Your art is what you do when no one can tell you exactly how to do it. Your art is taking personal responsibility, changing the status quo, and changing people.
I call the process of doing your art "the work". It's possible to have a job and do the work too. In fact, that's how you become a linchpin.
The job is not the work.
What annoys me most about learning this lesson is that I've never needed it with my consulting business. I've walked into badly designed, badly laid out rooms overfilled with recalcitrant audiences all over the world but I've never declared them 'unplayable'. The thought has never even occurred to me. I've reflexively taken a deep breath, smiled broadly and launched into the day-long training room equivalent to 'Ode to Joy' on a banjo.pp 96-97
If you don't have the skill to do your job when things get tough then you'd better have the will. Last Friday I brought neither and got found out.