The other week, I was listening to the BBC radio programme Desert Island Discs from 2018., where Lauren Laverne was interviewing the comedian Alan Carr.
I’ll say upfront that I’m ambivalent about his work. I enjoy watching it if I happen to catch him on TV, but it’s unlikely I would deliberately seek out gig tickets.
Although he’s known for stand-up comedy, he made a remark early in the programme about how he doesn’t watch other comics because he doesn’t enjoy it. He went on to say that if he’s part of a bill, he’ll only show up for his section and then leave. You can listen to the relevant section on BBC Sounds from the 10m 30s mark.
When I hear about a comic with the stature of Alan Carr saying he doesn’t watch his peers, it sounds like Stephen King saying he doesn’t read novels. Frankly, it comes across as dismissive towards the other acts, even if this doesn’t seem to have hurt his career.
For as long as I’ve done spoken-word events, there’s been an expectation that if you’re invited to perform as part of a bill, you arrive before the start and watch the other performers until the end. It feels like a collective experience and, in some cases, helps to gauge the mood of the room. In more elaborate productions, showing up early also gives the crew time to run a technical rehearsal.
I find I always learn something from the other acts: a turn of phrase, a particular delivery, a way of holding the audience, or – every so often – how not to do these things.
In one positive example, I’m reminded of a Josie Giles gig in Birmingham shortly before the pandemic. I knew a little about her work, and next to nothing about Joelle Taylor who was on the same bill. Having watched a lot of poetry, I thought I’d seen it all before. Yet both their performances were so well done that I walked out of that building saying, ‘I didn’t know you could do that with words.’
There are negative examples too, like the amateur actor who thought he would try stand-up comedy. I’ve no idea how he stayed in his theatre group without being able to read a room, but some of his gags were incredibly out of date and offensive, and nearly every one fell flat.
So I’m curious about other people’s experiences. Do you stay for the whole show when you’re performing, or do you dip in and out? Is this just an expectation for some types of gigs but not others? Am I, in fact, in the minority?
That was where the entry was meant to end, and I clicked Save yesternight with a view to redrafting this entry today. I then received a message from a couple of local writers. They’re looking to bring a poetry evening to Dundee in April, and we’ll need to discuss the type of material they want.
Whoever is on the bill with me, I’ll definitely be listening to their performances.
Gavin Cameron 