Show 4:
After a long & exhausting day passing out flyers in the rain, it was showtime. We knew we only had 4 people, but we've had small shows before and decided to make the best of it and have fun. Some of our best shows have been only a handful of people. (Arkansas, Missouri, North Dakota)
I knew we would be in trouble right away. Two people didn't understand English at all. The other two, who sat in the front row, were older couple from London that were "mad dogging" me from the moment they walked in. They rolled their eyes when I tried to give them one of our "question" cards and so we started the show. They looked around disgusted by the empty seats. In retrospect, I wish we would have just refunded them then, and not done a show. However show must go on I went up and did my individual time, and they looked angry throughout my whole set. Then Doug came up, and he tried everything but they just stared blankly. We did the rest of the time as duo, without the interactive bit obviously, and it was more like a line reading after awhile. They refused to laugh, literally, and no matter what material we did they just got angrier and angrier. We tried to interact with them, asked them questions...nothing. After the "show", which was by far the worst in my life. I went up to them, I said obviously you didn't enjoy this at all. We would love to give you a refund. They refused the refund but told us how much they hated us, our trite American humor and they let us know politely that our show would bomb in the UK and no one would appreciate our "jokes". (the day before I posted about how much I love UK audiences, they have the best sense of humor. I still stand by that, just not these two). Also, they suggested I stop doing comedy altogether. They actually made me break down in sobs when they were talking to me. First time that has ever happened. They were very pleased about it, and it was the first time I saw either of them smile all night. We decided to quit comedy forever after that show.
Show 5:
We took the morning to recover. Literally, almost cancelled the show that night because no one had bought tickets yet, and I was still traumatized from the night before. However, 2 tickets were sold so we decided we needed to get out and work it. We put our brave faces on and went out to flyer like mad all day. We were determined to have fun no matter what. Our 2 tickets had grown to 7 tickets sold, and we didn't have any more strength to flyer so we went to the show before ours. A really great comedian and impressionist was doing his show, "Rubbish Rebel". We laughed, had fun, and it was time to set up and take tickets. A few people came in, then more and more and more - until only had a few seats empty! Each of us went up (and I have to admit I was struggling with a little fear from the night before) but we both killed, destroyed and I even did a bit about our "American lovers" from the night before. George Cameron Keys came to the show also, and it was great seeing a MAUI face! We had tons of questions, our duo set was super fun, everyone laughed and several were from the UK. We went a little past our time, but had fun and were flying high from the adrenaline. We got some great twitter reviews after the show, and spent quite a bit of time talking to people from the audience after as well. Lots of performers were there along with the normal crowd of young and older married couples. We decided to maybe not quit comedy.
We literally went from our worst show ever in the history of either of us doing comedy to one of my favorite shows. #Edfringe is an experience to be sure. A great one, a learning one, I'm excited that Doug Wyckoff is filming all our sets because I think it will make for a really interesting contrast.
Every day is new though, we have only 2 tickets presold for tonight, so we did some promo stuff this morning, had a really exciting interview for a publication that will publish in a few days and now are going out in the still rainy weather to pass out more flyers.