I had a late show last night. It starts at 12:15 on this ship, which is 3:15 a.m. my time. I felt completely exhausted before my show, but once I hit the stage, all of that goes away. The crowd was very nice. I felt as if parts of my show were moving too fast last night. One of the downsides to doing one show in the big theater and the next in the little lounge is that the two venues have distinctly different feels which require different timing. I have spent quite a bit of time on this ship in the last two months which is nice because I have actually developed relationships with the staff here. They come to my show even though they have seen it before. This gives me extra motivation to try new material and to do a better show than I did last time.
I'm very fortunate that the few people that I deal with on ships like me and like to work with me. Work on cruise ships is based almost entirely on reviews and reports from the cruise director and their staff so it is important that these people like me. About half of the entertainers that do this job are not well liked by the staff. Their futures are insecure and their schedules are rough because of this. It is interesting to me the reasons why some entertainers are liked and others are not. It has very little to do with the quality of their show, at least directly. It has more to do with how they conduct themselves offstage.
For the most part, fly-on entertainers like myself have one of the easier jobs on the ship. Pretty much everyone we encounter has to work more and harder than we do. That being said, until you have done the job, done the waking up in the middle of the night at home to travel all day and do a solo show in the middle of the next night on the ship without proper rest or proper food or a proper shower you can't appreciate exactly how difficult this job can be. So to sum up that last paragraph, while the job is one of the easier ones on the ship, it is at the same time harder than folks think it is. When your whole job is the show, a solo show that is all you, and that show doesn't go well it is very hard to deal with. When the folks around you don't appreciate how difficult your easy job is, they can say and do things that would cause you to over react. When the guy with the easiest job over reacts to a little problem, he is labelled as a head-case, a drama queen, an asshole. I am well liked on cruise ships because even though I am a head-case, a drama queen, and an asshole in my personal life, I don't bring it to the ship.
Being well liked on a cruise ship as a fly-on is like being a good student in a kindergarden class. Show up on time, do what you are told, don't ask questions, and even if they are completely wrong about what they are telling you, don't ever correct the teacher. Also, if you must cry about something, find a quiet corner where nobody can see you.
There are about fifty reasons why the show last night shouldn't have gone well. It did go well, but there are lots of reasons why it shouldn't. If for some reason it turned bad, regardless of the reason, it is my fault and only my fault. There are all kinds of technical problems, all kinds of distractions that could come up that are completely out of my control, but as the comic, it is my job and only my job to deal with those problems and make the show as good as possible.
Ask any comic, any solo entertainer to tell you about one of their best shows ever, or the biggest round of applause they have ever received from an audience. They will not tell you about a perfect performance with a perfect audience that was perfect technically. They will tell you a story about a disaster, a nightmare, a series of unfortunate events and how they adjusted on the fly and improvised and worked through it and how much the crowd appreciated what they experienced. And they will take full credit for it even though the two guys that started fighting or the lady that choked on the olive or the technician that tripped over the plug for the light board and banged his head on the volume control for the microphone knocking himself unconscious deserve at least partial credit.
Perfect performances in controlled environments are great for TV and movies, but live shows are special and exciting because of all of the variables, all of the little things that could go wrong. I embrace the fact that every show is different, it is what makes my job great.
tommy on 08.05.08 @ 03:53 PM CST [link] [No Comments]