This is going to be a familiar and yawn-worthy moan to some ears but I'd like to take a quick look at the state of the live entertainment circuit. With today's shaky job market twinned with ever rising living costs, it is pretty essential to find a way to make a creative career pay, and to do so with some sense of stability. This, however, is quite a big ask. While it's always been fairly difficult to make ends meet with any sort of consistency when working as a writer, performer or producer in live comedy, theatre or music, it has certainly got more difficult with today's corporations and commercial organisations staking their claim at major venues, events and festivals. Recently bemoaned by Stewart Lee in his article in The Guardian about the 'slow death of the Edinburgh Fringe', this 'takeover' means that much of the original fervour of discovering and enjoying a multitude of fresh and unique fringe-style live events has been replaced by audiences preferring to spend their hard-earned cash on a show they 'just have to see' because of the highly rated venue, star name, television link or major league sponsor. Artists and acts are being fast-tracked into the media spotlight meaning that a) some struggle to produce consistently interesting and innovative work but it's produced and seen regardless and b) we start to lose our regard for those who have gradually built up a career developing skills and proving talent along the way. This dearth of opportunity between poverty stricken artist and commercial sell-out reflects Lee's concerns for what was once, and really should be again, the middle ground. The place where artists and producers should be welcomed and rewarded for hard work, innovative thinking and fresh talent.
The reason why this doesn't happen is very simple. We can't afford it to. Whether you're the writer, performer, director or producer of live entertainment it can, without major sponsorship or funding, be very difficult to make a living. Even the prospect of attempting to hold down a full time 'real' job in order to offset the costs is rarely possible. Either you fail to dedicate enough time to the creative project, thus producing something of substandard quality, or you end up working a full time job in order to fund a wannabe job. You're still not making a living through either set up. Although there is many a 'wannabe' in this industry, once people have had a number of creative successes and have shown commitment, don't they deserve to draw a wage from doing so? Is this not the way to encourage variety and exciting work?
I certainly believe and wish this to be the case and so do plenty of others. With all sorts of people from audience members to the artists and producers themselves voicing concern and with outlets such as YouTube and Vimeo allowing people to get their independent projects out to large audiences I have every confidence that entertainment will start to join the entrepreneurial bent that the rest of society, setting up mini businesses making clothes, cupcakes and boutique gifts, is doing with great success. Which is why it's important for artists to step up their professionalism and commitment.
I recently met a promoter working on the live comedy circuit who is very vocal about the difficulties of making ends meet. In his opinion he is being shafted by both the 'big boys' of television and related media who are hijacking the concept of what comedy and live comedy gigs should be and the 'small fry' of open mic nights/free gigs that are apparently poaching audience members at the other end of the spectrum. He strongly believes that someone working full-time and extremely hard on showcasing talented, up-and-coming and award-winning comedians should not have his livelihood compromised by people looking to make a quick buck or essentially patenting 'what comedy should be'. He believes that no one should put in all that hard work and have to swallow the reality of always being penniless. His advice to budding comedians and promoters is that you deserve to make money, you shouldn't be working hard to deliver entertainment and not be able to pay for the things you need in life. His arguments are fairly solid and I got swept up in his 'power to the people' diatribe. I found myself thinking 'Yeah, why should someone who has spent years building up a club, booking all kinds of comics from unknowns to stars and has an obvious passion and dedication to the form have to constantly struggle against corporations and fly-by-nights?'.
Then I went to one of his gigs.
Now I'm not saying that all work that is well funded or advertised is of better quality. But there is one important thing to keep in mind. Due to the number of people who have a say in a final product at that level it is more unlikely that something unprofessional or entirely without merit will be produced. Yes it might be slow, boring, unexciting etc. but those shelling our their cash will at least know they are likely to be able to see and hear the acts, get in and out in an appropriate time span and see the comedian's listed. While I don't advocate setting up a comedy quality control committee I certainly feel that if we're going to rail against the system we need to prove that we can step up to the mark and deliver entertainment and experiences that people will feel justified in paying for.
Initially I was shocked by the cost of his gig. I appreciate that it's hard to price a gig somewhere below what the arenas and/or comedy store is charging but above the free/cheap gigs run by venues that know they can make the money back on the bar. Having said that I can't condone charging audiences £8 to sit through 10-15 very new, inexperienced acts before finally getting to see the headline do 20-40 minutes somewhere around 11pm. Many of these acts will be getting paid either nothing or next-to-nothing and therefore, with the exception of the headline act, the money is going straight back into the promoter's pocket. Scrolling through upcoming listings to find one featuring solid, circuit comedians I found that these tickets were being priced at around the same level at those for London's famous Comedy Store where a show will be slicker, have even more experienced comics and a central London venue. This show was anything but slick. Positioned in a room above a pub there was external noise, uncomfortable seating, messy lighting, a broken microphone stand and interruptions from the promoter's team. The show started 30 minutes late and overran greatly. Out of the seven listed comedians we saw three. The rest either didn't show or had to leave due to the late start. I'd come specifically to see one of the no shows but no one was offered any sort of refund or opportunity to leave. Instead the time was filled, unnecessarily, with the opportunity for unbooked comics in the room to perform a few minutes of material.
While the comedians that did turn up and go on included a couple of fantastic acts, overall the night shone an entirely new light on my perception of his arguments regarding earning potential. It sucks not to be able to make a living at something you love and commit yourself to but I don't see any dignity in managing to scrape a living by raising prices, short changing audiences, providing a lacklustre experience, failing to provide an atmosphere in which comics can do their best work and ultimately backtracking on promised line ups after an audience has paid their money.
Stewart Lee is right, we are at risk of killing the spontaneity, creativity and great minds within our profession if we don't go against the grain and support live, unsponsored, uncommercial performance - be that musical, comedic, theatrical or other. But that mustn't make us think that doing so means we are automatically entitled to the respect and support of audiences. Just because we call ourselves uncommercial doesn't mean we don't need to deliver a professional experience. Artists and their producers still provide a service. We are there to education, entertain, excite and inspire no matter how we go about doing that. By all means point out the flaws in the system, but make sure you are doing everything you can to prove you're worthy of just as great a level of success. Yes we deserve to make a living. But we still have to earn it.
No comments:
Post a Comment