THE REAL PROVING GROUND

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

It was 20 years ago this week that I was introduced to the living hell that was the Christmas comedy season with the late, lamented Jongleurs comedy club chain. This wasn’t anything that new for me, as I always remember the holiday season as a time for many office parties that paid very well and that was often the only good thing about them. I remember one day in December, 1997, that I did seven gigs starting at noon that day with three gigs an hour apart in Lancaster, about 90 miles from LA. This was followed by a happy hour party that paid about three times as much as the day’s other six gigs combined, but where the attendees were varying degrees of obnoxious, and felt they could be that way because of what they were paying me for my half hour of hell. My relief was doing sets later that evening at the three major, and proper, LA clubs.

That half hour of hell I described above would happen a few times over the years at the Jongleurs gigs, but my orientation came on that fateful first night in 2001 at the venue in Camden, London, and almost had my entire run of gigs cancelled. By the time late November and December had rolled around, I’d enjoyed nearly a year of mostly well received gigs for the various venues Jongleurs had scattered around UK, so my confidence was brimming as I began a run of 20 gigs that would all pay double the usual salary.

Jongleurs would pack the room with large groups from various businesses, and people would pay around £40 per person to have their office party at one of the maybe 12 venues they had across UK, going as high as 18 in the next few years. Dinner was included, and the performers were fed as well, so I would get really goddamn sick of turkey! I would do their Christmas run of gigs for the next seven years, but it could have all gone belly up after this first gig.

What was so awful? Let’s start with the people themselves. I think if I were having an office party, the last place I would want to do it is someplace where you had to be quiet. And these people most certainly didn’t comply. I was going up second (of three acts plus an emcee), which normally is a favourable position to be on the bill, as the closer would go up after the interval, and sometimes the patrons would get aggressively drunk during that interval. Overall, I think an interval is a great idea, something US clubs were reticent to try, because they were really hung up on keeping momentum. In UK clubs, it worked fine over 90% of the time.

On this night, however, the audience had their own game plan, which was to get horribly sloshed, and screw the guys up on stage. The first act struggled, and the emcee, who was a magician, came back up to do some time before bringing me up. He had already succumbed to the chaotic mood of the room, so chose to do a wordless magic trick, which got almost no notice. He then did nothing to bring the focus back before introducing me. Not surprisingly, I came up to chaos.

Now to be fair to the emcee, I can’t blame him for his attitude, nor for my lack of response. I could have remained silent until I could gain some form of attention from the audience, but chose instead to launch into my act, with one very drunk girl in front talking louder than my amplified voice and not acknowledging in the least that there was a performer hoping to entertain. And so it went for 20 very long minutes, with me getting frustrated, mostly with myself for not reading this horrible crowd better. I put the act on autopilot for the bulk of my time, not even getting the equivalent of courtesy applause when I left.

Many in that precarious position would have fled the club as soon as they left the stage, but I chose to hang around and support the closing act, who was American like myself, but had worked exclusively in UK since graduating from college. His name is Reginald D. Hunter, and he’s been massively successful in the ensuing 20 years since. He and I had worked together quite a bit over the previous year, and had a bit of a friendship, so I thought I’d stay for the solidarity of it all. And he showed me exactly how to handle them!

He took his time getting into his act, making sure that all eyes were focused in his direction. And when one woman dared to continue talking, he was forceful in saying, “Either you be quiet, or I’m going to insist you leave.” He’s a big man with a commanding presence, not to mention very funny, and while he didn’t have the stellar set I would see him have many times over the previous year, he still accomplished what I was unable to with this crowd. I almost felt worse seeing that than when I was onstage.

And Jongleurs let me know about it next day, or more particularly my agent got an earful. They were planning to cancel the remainder of the run of gigs they had booked me for. My agent said to them, “Yeah good luck finding a replacement on this short of notice.” Somehow that worked on them, and I was given a second chance. That next night, I did almost none of my existing material, and definitely none that I had done the night before. Somehow, it all worked, and I wound up doing the entire run, and the same for the next seven years, with some equally bad nights, but at least none resulted in cancellations. I’m just happy I survived that first night’s disaster, and that the rest of the 2001 run went smoothly enough that Jongleurs kept me in their plans. I also learned to really appreciate when Christmas Day actually came around!

November 30th, 2021



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