How much is cool worth?

In the past fortnight I've performed in four improv shows; three in California and last Saturday an eight-hour shift in London's 50-Hour Improvathon. The most commercially successful of these was also unabashedly the least cool.

Tradition dictated that after that show came down we sprinted to the foyer to line up and high-five every audience member as they left the theatre. This was done smilingly without a hint of condescension. As my castmates happily chatted about the show, the cast and life in general it was clear that many, if not most of the punters were returnees. We'd played to a full house so this process took a good fifteen minutes before we could head back upstairs to pack up and change.

This is how you get your 1,000 Fans. By converting monologues into dialogue. By smiling and letting people touch you. By answering questions and asking a couple of your own. By not worrying about being cool.

Cool is the opposite of friendly. Cool is aloof. It's black-windowed limousines, velvet ropes, private rooms and everything else that limits interaction. At a commercial level cool operates on the old one-way producer-to-consumer relationship.

But cool only pays if you've got 100,000 fans each paying $1 for the monologue. This puts you at the traditional end of the Long Tail and good luck to you if you get there. In the book of the same name, Chris Anderson warns that when shooting for 100,000 it's all or nothing. A fanless rock star is just a guy in dark glasses with a day job.

I kick myself for keeping the Scenes from Communal Living cast back for production notes instead of sending them out to chat with strangers who'd come to see the show. By the time we got downstairs only our friends were still hanging around and they were fans already.

Cool doesn't pay as many bills as you'd think.

Scenes from Communal Living: wrap-up

As it's highly unlikely that Scenes from Communal Living will reappear in 2010, what follows is an assessment of the experiences of last year.

The year broke broadly into four interrelated projects: -

1. The initial Camden run (18 shows over three weeks)
2. Edinburgh (25 shows back-to-back)
3. Sydney (10 shows over a fortnight)
4. The return to Camden (16 shows on consecutive Sundays)

Initial Camden Run

An almost unqualified success. The cast were focused and committed to the rehearsal and performance schedule. The investment in PR ensured a decent level of press coverage. Friends and family made the effort to support the show, some on multiple occasions. The shows themselves were high energy and great fun and by the end of the run we were turning away punters.

This straight-shot multinight run approach may be the best chance that a show like Scenes has in terms of both creative quality and promotability.

Edinburgh

Hard but a 25-show run was always going to be. It was essentially the same cast as the Camden run, many of whom were distracted by other projects. This in turn ate into the rehearsal schedule and also left me with little or no post-show time to correct bad habits once we got started. As fatigue set in things got genuinely unpleasant off stage so it became harder and harder for anything good to emerge on stage. Houses were at the bottom of expectations. It was always going to be hard to achieve decent share-of-mind in the ultimate crowded marketplace, especially as I arrived with no real appreciation of how little love the Festival has for improv.

I don't regret taking the show to Edinburgh but in retrospect there's much I'd do differently: demand more commitment from the cast, perhaps even recast the show entirely and definitely do less than the full month. Also I was guilty of schoolboy howlers like not giving the best quotes from London critics sufficient prominence on the flier.

Sydney

This was really Marko's baby and everything I know is via second-hand reports (including an absolutely stunning review). Marko took a different approach to casting in that he chased a couple of 'alpha performers' then allowed them a lot of input in terms of casting and rehearsal scheduling. This seemed to disrupt his production timeline but the show's overall creative quality was seemingly unaffected. We made the decision to paper the house for the Opening Night in the expectation that this would create 'buzz' and we'd recoup the lost sales in word-of-mouth. This didn't really happen and we left money on the table by giving tickets to punters who would otherwise have paid.

My advice to Scenes from Communal Living's next 3rd-party director is to have faith in your ability to extract great performances from run-of-the-mill performers rather than chase reputations, especially as the Sydney 'alphas' ultimately didn't outshine the rest of the cast. The success of the straight-shot multinight approach was certainly vindicated.

Return to Camden

We expanded the cast and creative quality returned to pre-Edinburgh heights. I had taken a regular weekly slot because I was intrigued by the challenge of carving out an ongoing space in the London comedy landscape. My hubris was aptly punished, especially as I relied on some low-level media contacts, Facebook and fliering as my sole promotional tools. We were old news to both the London print media and those punters who had supported it earlier in the year. Tickets were unnecessarily expensive for a Sunday night show.

In London a 50-or so seat theatre is a promoter's black hole: there's no way that anything less than a consistent run of 90% houses will break even after PR costs have been factored in. The theatre was unwilling to offer much of a discount and I glibly refused to see that as I was going to lose money anyway I might as well have set a loss-making ticket price from the outset and got bigger houses. I also wonder whether the specific nature of the show (scenes always set flat-share arrangements) was a negative for improv fans who will happily turn up every week to watch the same actors work in a more demonstrably open format.

2009 taught me a lot. I'm a little sad about the 2010 hiatus but needs must.

Five lessons (large & small) from 2010

Theatre in London is hard, hard, hard

Achieving decent houses over a long run means attracting a mix of price-sensitive local regulars and brand-sensitive one-off tourists

Confusing art and craft is deadly for anyone involved in a creative pursuit

Comics beware: craft is more about application than inspiration. You may know what you want to say right now but do you know how to say that thing in a way that works for the paying audience who only turned up to laugh?

Improv is a pastime

Treat it as a sideline project and you're free to fly. Treat it like a job and you'll never get a mortgage

Away from the world of finance, business hasn't changed all that much

Clients have much the same needs as two years ago, they're just a little more cost-sensitive and a lot more time-sensitive. They're also more risk-averse so having a prominent and trusted brand helps

Collaborations are fantastic, partnerships are dangerous

This year I've worked with wonderful and creative people on projects that have made me truly proud. At the end of each it's been great to part without making open-ended promises

Schadenfreude (n)

i. please derived by someone from another person's misfortune

ii. being a member of a smaller audience in a larger venue than one's own

Supporting from afar

Although the London run of Scenes from Communal Living has another five Sundays to run already it feels a little valedictory. Whilst the shows themselves are as strong as ever the houses are painfully small and I feel for my cast. Any dreams of breaking even financially are long gone.

At such times my thoughts get a little poisonous where my 'non-arty' friends are concerned. All of them love the idea of what I do but very few make the actual effort to support a show.

There's a passage in the novel Past Imperfect by Julian Fellowes, who also wrote Snobs and the screenplay for Gosford Park, that captures this beautifully: -

As if one is likely to sit down and send off three thousand postcards when a personal appearance is scheduled. Obviously, they understand this will never happen. The message is really: 'We are not sufficiently interested in what you do to be aware of it if you don't make us aware. You understand that it does not impinge on our world, so you will please forgive us in future for missing whatever you are involved in.'

Parallels

Last night I sat in on a rehearsal for the Sydney iteration of Scenes from Communal Living. It was only the third rehearsal but the parallels between their work and my London cast at the same point on the production timeline were uncanny. There was the same early reticence to work with unfamiliar people, the same two-steps-forward-one-step-back development of actors who absolutely nailed the audition but also the same wonderful commitment to break new ground.

The portents for the show itself couldn't be better.

Relentless

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is relentless. There are no days off and the second that one show comes down you're already thinking about the next one.

I love it!

Second guessing

The Festival is a marathon not a sprint. Already I've met bruised and beaten acts who are questioning why they're in Edinburgh.

In a 2006 interview for a Fringe podcast, veteran comic and The Now Show regular Mitch Benn identifies the three separate audiences at the festival and describes the frustration of trying to please them simultaneously.

The audiences in question are of course: -

1. Critics and reviewers; who need to seem decisive and knowledgeable
2. Agents and producers of TV and radio; who are looking for the Next Big Thing
3. Punters; who just want to be entertained

Obviously these needs run in parallel and the only possible response to this supposed dilemma is to follow the advice of that old fool Polonius. Do what you came up here to do.

No such thing as bad publicity

Before I left for Edinburgh on Tuesday I did a 15-minute radio interview for TalkSPORT to promote the cricket show. I almost never listen to commercial radio so was totally unaware of the programme in question. I had no sense whatsoever of their editorial viewpoint which regularly veers off sport to a default stance of extreme reactionary politics (Lock 'em up or send 'em 'ome. Better yet, 'ang 'em).

At yesterday's show a punter said that he had come to see us after hearing me on his favourite radio show, whose politics he agreed with wholeheartedly. As he represented a full third of the audience I decided to just get on with having fun at Andrew's expense.

Onwards, outwards

On Friday I reached an 'in principle agreement' to stage a version of Scenes from Communal Living in Sydney with an Australian cast in December. My thinking is to see if the idea is replicable and possibly even franchiseable. I'll co-produce the show with Marko Mustac, an old friend who is also one of the best producers of improv in Australia and who will also be its director.

What's the point in living and working 'globally' if I don't leverage that experience to create something interesting?

Production timelines

There's a moment when you stop building the boat and concentrate on repairing it in the hope that it at least floats when launch-day comes along

Frustration

Last December I declared that 2009 would be my Year of Playing Nicely with Others, something that doesn't always come easily to a long-term freelancer like me.

This Friday is the improv show's only London preview before Edinburgh. It will be the first time the (expanded) cast has ever performed together so I arranged for two rehearsals this week. Finding synchronous diary time for a director and seven performers the fortnight before Edinburgh was always going to be tough and I should have realised that it was too good to be true.

One actor texted me 90 minutes before last night's rehearsal to say he was double-booked. Another button-holed me five minutes before the rehearsal to say that he was unavailable tomorrow night. Both actors went to great pains to tell me how committed they were to my project yet each presented me with a fait accompli.

What really annoys me is that I was forced to rewire my quite carefully considered rehearsal plans at short notice.

Because many actors are sensitive to anything they perceive as criticism a lot of directorial comment (aka 'notes') can only be successfully delivered away from a performance environment. The pre-show tone must be 100% motivational and a harsh post-show assessment can be unfair, especially if directed at one individual who has no opportunity to work on the 'note' ahead of the next show.

Rehearsal time is a director's most precious commodity. I am nervous.

Lingua Franca

My parents have been visiting us from Australia and we spent last week in Provence.

(Tough, I know)

What we didn't know ahead of time was that the Festival d'Avignon runs for all of July. It is the oldest and largest francophone arts festival in Europe and certainly a decent rival to Edinburgh in August with the same tension between the formal event and the Fringe (Le Off). The same festival buzz was palpable; random posters plastered on every available surface and streets jammed with flierers begging us to see their show. All very exciting.

Except that obviously and frustratingly everything was in French.

So when I went along to see La Compagnie Du Capitaine perform Soiree Impro I was intrigued as to how much I'd understand.

Within minutes it was obvious which actors were genuinely funny and which were merely clever. The better performers were the same ones as in every cast; committing to character, overaccepting every offer and physicalising the story at every opportunity. The witty wordplay was lost on me but there were more than enough moments where I laughed aloud to justify the cost of the ticket. The 'alpha improviser' (there's one in every cast) was as good as any I've seen in a long time.

I don't speak French but I do speak improv.

Production

Many years ago I was involved in a discussion about the qualities needed to be a good theatre producer. I said that whilst the job obviously entails intimate dealings with 'creative people', the essence of being a producer is not of itself especially creative. It is essentially an organisational role best summed up as: -

Living in a constant state of low-level paranoia

A minor epiphany

I can't direct what hasn't been written.

Authenticity

Last night I went to watch a friend perform at a London hip-hop event that showcased works-in-progress from artists working in that culture. The idea behind the night is to give hip-hop performers (rappers, dancers, poets, etc) the chance to develop stage pieces that may one day have a bigger future in front of less sympathetic crowds.

After each piece there was a Q&A and the audience gave focused and positive feedback. The night is run by Jonzi D who has created an environment based on his belief that hip-hop is an authentic dialogue between performer and audience.

It was a quite wonderful experience until the very last act; two sexily-dressed women in the All Saints mold. Incredibly they lip-synched to their song, a vacuous rap about not much at all. They certainly looked great and their dancing was superb but even a newcomer like me could see that they just didn't fit.

Authenticity: we know it when we see it.

Noses pressed up against the glass

The UK comedy scene is much exercised by a slanging match on chortle.co.uk (the industry website). The nub of the issue is that a comic, who I would describe as no further than midway up the food chain, has taken issue with the Edinburgh Free Fringe.

His criticism is little more than a rehashing of the reasoning that if a market is flooded by cheap (or in this case free) product then the consumer gets dangerously confused as price no longer functions as an indicator of quality. The argument is a sort of weird take on Gresham's Law; that cheap / bad comedy will drive the good stuff out of circulation.

There is no shortage of responses accusing the writer of a badly disguised ulterior motive: he is somehow promoting his ticketed show. I don't really understand this accusation as (a) he's only talking to the industry, but also (b) he's just pissing everyone off anyway.

This year I'm directly involved in two Free Fringe shows and two ticketed shows so obviously I think that there is a place and a role for both. The genuine and incontrovertible benefit of the Free Fringe is that it affords Edinburgh locals easy access to the festival that takes over their city for a month every year. Tickets for a nighttime show start at £8 for a one hour performance. A couple seeing three hours of comedy is paying at least £50 before they've even made it to the bar.

The Edinburgh Festival is one of the truly great events on the British cultural calendar. It's fun and funny and wonderful and sexy and cool. To have it go on around you in your home town but to feel uninvited would be terrible.

Dreaming spires

Last night I ran a workshop for the Oxford Imps, the university's improv troupe. The session was held at beautiful Magdalen College and the guided tour of the grounds beforehand was an unquantifiable bonus.

A theatrical 'workshop' is a strange beast; not quite a rehearsal and not a part of a progression of classes. It should not be positioned as remedial and neither should it seek to alter the artistic DNA of the group in question. I find that such sessions work best by piquing the interest of the individual performer rather than speaking to the wider group. Anything more usually falls prey to overreach.

The session turned out to be a strange confluence of my two worlds. Whilst the content was obviously 'comedy', as the Artistic Director invited me seemingly with no more than partial consultation with the wider group, the context was decidedly 'corporate'.

I've wandered into enough corporate training rooms in enough places to know the unspoken question forming in the collective mind: -

Why exactly am I here?

Neither the 'arty' nature of the subject or the youth and relative inexperience of the participants absolved me of the need to answer this. Throughout the session I found we lost impetus unless I kept restating that our aim was personal development and not a wholesale, group-wide step change.

So no different in attitude from how I would approach any sales or marketing team training.

In Toronto

I am in Toronto for a few day's consulting work. I've visited about half a dozen times over the last few years and I've always enjoyed coming here. A big part of that enjoyment is due to knowing people on the local improv scene.

When I travel I make an effort to gig wherever I can. Not only is it good for the bragging rights, it makes me question the 'comedy assumptions' that naturally build up when you only perform to one sort of audience, even if that audience is as vibrant and varied as London.

I didn't get on stage this trip but instead hung out with improvisers, some of whom I've known for years and some I was meeting for the first time. I gave myself the minor goal of checking out small theatres to see if I might stage a Canadian iteration of Scenes from Communal Living in 2010 but really it was as much about hanging out as anything else.

A commonplace observation that I've made before is that because improv is a necessarily collaborative craft, improvisers tend to have more social skills than stand-ups. I doubt that the Toronto stand-up comedy tribe would be anywhere near as welcoming of a foreign producer in town to set up a show.

Five quid comedy

A couple of posts ago I aluded to the comedy staple of drawing attention to the (low) cost of a show as a way for a compeer (MC) to get a cheap laugh. Typically the exchange goes as follows: -

MC: So mate, you're here with your girlfriend?
Punter: That's right
MC: Been going out long?
Punter: About a year*
MC: Well, you're really keeping the romance alive if your idea of a Friday night out is a five quid comedy night in a dingy room above a pub

(cue: audience laugh)

Obviously the joke is damaging to the night's 'brand' as it forces everyone in the audience to ask just why they are where they are on a Friday night. This means that the comics have to work that much harder to remove the question from the collective mind.

The above exchange occurred verbatim at last Friday night's gig in Soho. But the acts proved to be worth much more than £5 and the audience went away happy.

On Saturday night I did an improv set as part of the amazing Midnight Matinee series at the Tristan Bates Theater.

The two gigs are no more than 200m apart and both were £5 entry.

Saturday night's compeer made the audience complicit in the night's proceedings. Here we were in the middle of Soho starting a show at midnight; just when everyone else is closing up shop. Your five pounds didn't just just get you the promise of entertainment, it got you one-night-only membership of a very exclusive club.

Pricing is only a signal in the marketplace until the punter takes his seat.

* This response can be anything from "This is our first date" to "Ten years" and the joke still 'works' (from the MC's perspective)