Instead of preparing for Edinburgh, I’ll procrastinate by writing this…
For some reason, Fringe Review editor Paul Levy has offered to let me write my own Fringe blogs leading up to and during the festival. This was probably a mistake and has been widely condemned as a bad idea — primarily by his cat, who I met on a video chat conducted, I can only assume, to make sure I was “an okay human being” and “not going to just write the word ‘piss’ 700 times in a row.” A video chat cat, or vidchaca if you will.
(Update: I just Google’d vidchaca to make sure it wasn’t accidentally something obscurely offensive, and it turns out that not only is it not, but is a misspelling of viscacha, or “rodents of two genera in the family Chinchillidae…native to South America and convergently resembl[ing] rabbits.” Congratulations, we just learned something together.)
But we’ve gotten ahead of things. I should introduce myself: My name is Gabey (not Gabby), I’m an American (sorry) who’s been doing stand-up since 2015 (oh my God, why haven’t you quit yet?), and I’m taking a show to — you will never guess this next part — the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe. Oh, you did guess that? Dang it, okay.
Anyways, I’m not gonna tell you what my show is because that feels too transparently self-serving right off the top, so I’ll just say it’s the one at the pink venue with a title that is very long and deals with pig (singular). I figure if you wanna go find it, you will do so. But if you don’t want to find it, and I just throw out “Please go see my show, here’s a link to it, here’s what it’s about, I’m so desperate I just tricked you into reading what is essentially a blatant ad” right off the top, I would be on your side when that just alienates you to the point of actively not seeing it out of spite. (I will say, my show does involve some lovely doses of spite. Specifically, Welsh spite.)
Of course, as a PR-less comedian, I really should get over the whole “having shame” thing and just do whatever it takes to get any eyeballs on my show. The mere fact I’m taking time away from sending releases to real-life press to instead write this and am not plastering my show name all over in the process makes me a certifiable idiot. (Update: I’ve been told by my editor that he’s putting my show’s listing at the bottom of this and there’s nothing I can do to stop that.)
Because really, I have just enough experience doing comedy in the UK to know your audiences and I get along, actually, oddly well. After Vancouver, my second-favo(u)rite city to do stand-up in is British.
I don’t want bums in seats because I have delusions of being a hot new show or even “not losing a crapload of money,” I want bums in seats because I like you guys as audiences and, based on my brief experience, you guys seem to like me. And that sounds like a lot of fun. And, generally speaking, I’m a fan of fun.
So, in search of fun, here are some of the tactics I’ve used to try and sell tickets:
- Go on a podcast where we accidentally spend the first 20 minutes talking about the geometry of American football and rugby instead of my show
- Refresh ticket sales report (10 AM edition)
- Twitter?
- Tell friend (Timmy Booth, of Timmy Booth’s Manhole) that he’s in charge of not letting me refresh my ticket sales report
- Refresh ticket sales report (1 PM edition)
- Message Timmy Booth (of Timmy Booth’s Manhole!) and admit that I have refreshed my sales report and it is somehow his fault
- Press release pitch!
- Tag the accounts for All Creatures Great and Small and their lead actor in my Instagram story, inviting their cast and crew to come see my show on account of they are technically* both about the same topic (a Scottish guy and some farm animals)
- Feel horrified that it’s come to that
- Pray to sweet God that the admin for All Creatures Great and Small and/or their lead did not see my story
- Press release pitch!
- Check to see if they saw my story
- See that they saw my story
- Want to melt into the floor and die
- Feel the silver lining that, well, at least they haven’t blocked me yet?
- Want to melt into the floor and die anyway
- Wish I was one of those people who can just do things Like That on social media without feeling shame, like that dude who went viral for singing at Dua Lipa when she clearly didn’t want that to be happening for the most uncomfortable 30 seconds in British and indeed probably all human history
- Refresh ticket sales report (1:16 PM edition)
Now, the US is a magical land where, to generalize like mad, people do not want to go to a comedy show. Sometimes, when lucky, I’ll get to play a theatre that’s inexplicably packed, only to return the next night to a comedian’s natural habitat: a bar with six people, none of whom paid for comedy or were expecting this intrusion.
I’ll see British acquaintances apparently sell out 30 WIPs in two months without even being famous. Then I’ll leave to go do a show in an arcade bar where there are five comedians, four audience members, and two of them are actively playing Pong. You might even be so blessed as to be approached by one of the two non-Pong-playing audience members after, who will jump strait from “Hi my name’s Jeff” to “My friend walked in on the government’s proof that the Earth is flat” in — and yes, I timed this — under eight seconds. That’s almost as fast as a Cybertruck can accelerate from zero to 60, something I hope your country is never forced to witness.
In other words: Any show where I get more than two people attending, I’ll call it a win. Particularly if you’re not playing unmuted video games at the same time.
It sure is an odd space to simultaneously be stressed as butts about ticket sales while also feeling like “Holy crap, even a single human being on this Earth has bought a ticket? On purpose? Hell yeah, brother.”
Now, time to go refresh that ticket sales report. Because baby, it’s 1:16 PM.
*Are we stretching the definition of the word “about” here? Who’s to say. (Yes.)
Gabey Lucas: brings Gabey Lucas: A Berkshire Boar Walks Into a Bar (and Gets Shot in the Face) to the Edinburgh Fringe .
