August turned out to be a month of some very bizarre and unexpected extremes. Fortunately, I'm an extremist.
MINNEAPOLIS,
MINNESOTA
FOUNDED: 1867
POPULATION:
382,578
HIERARCHY: large
city
MOTTO: En avant!
VENUE: U of M Rarig Center Arena
By all accounts,
this was another record-breaking year for the Minnesota
Fringe: audience numbers
continue to grow, a number of new and upcoming companies did surprisingly well,
and I heartily congratulate the new administration on their hard work to bring
this about. As for me, I had the worst audience response and turnout that a
show I've produced in the Festival has had since
2005. My audiences in both Kansas City and Indianapolis outstripped my
hometown attendance by an order of magnitude. What happened?
One trend that I
noticed was an upsurge in the suburban audience -- I saw several audience
reviews talking about making the trip into the city, etc. I know this is a
grail that the staff has been chasing for some time, and I believe that it's
ultimately good for the long-term health of the Festival. One of the bizarre
short-term effects is a major spike in the overall conservatism of the audience -- I saw some of the most
audience-friendly comics being sternly lectured about the vulgarity or
non-traditionalism in their shows. And, uh, I am on the opposite end of the
spectrum from audience-friendly.
At just about
every show, I'd walk onstage to see a large number of older patrons glowering
at me humorlessly. And I was torn between my typical mental response of
"I'm so grateful that you've come out to hear what I have to say!"
and "Oh, man, you are really not
going to have a good time for the next hour."
(This did give me
the surreal experience of being pulled aside by people in LA and KC saying
"You really need to step up the raunch, dude, seriously" and being
pulled aside by people in my normally progressive hometown saying "You
really need to dial back the raunch, dude, seriously.")
But I think that
having a handful of audience members stumble in from outside of my target
demographic -- that's a smaller issue. The larger one is, where the hell was my
core audience? I'm coming off of a string of well-attended and well-received
storytelling shows: the audience that met them with warmth and enthusiasm was
nowhere to be seen.
The most obvious
notion is that they were leery of the content. I'm hesitant to accept this,
because I've done quite well producing political
comedy before. But that was
during the Bush administration, when being a libertarian was cool and weird and
sexy. Under a Democratic administration, it's a dirty word. I spoke a while
back with an older libertarian comic who confided in me that he just couldn't
get any traction with that material in the Clinton years, and for the first
time I think I'm starting to understand what he meant.
(I must have understood
this on some level, since I largely quit political blogging once Obama
was elected. There just
wouldn't be any more fun to be had: we must regard our leader with great
solemnity, now.)
I did a show a
few years ago with another storyteller who advised me to cut the phrase
"libertarian activist" from my standard bio, concerned that audiences
would associate me with the Tea Party. My immediate thought? That I had been a
libertarian for years before this vaguely racist pack of anti-intellectual
bumper-sticker-shouting paranoid hacks
stumbled drunkenly onto the scene, and I would be damned if I would yield the
title to them.
My experience
this year to me suggests that my consent was never necessary, and that they've
already won that battle in the public eye. Libertarian
is a dirty word, and will be for the foreseeable future. We lost the war; and
insofar as one of my goals with this show was to humanize the philosophy,
my inability to get an audience in the door to hear the material made that a
resounding failure.
INDIANAPOLIS,
INDIANA
FOUNDED: 1821
POPULATION:
820,445
HIERARCHY: large
city
NICKNAME: Circle
City
VENUE: ComedySportz
Indianapolis
ME: Hey there!
I'm doing a political comedy show over at ComedySportz.
PATRON (peering at the card suspiciously): I saw
this in the programme. I didn't know what to make of it.
ME: Then you
should come and see the show! And still not know what to make of it!
The executive
director of indyFringe is
a real sweetheart, who pulled me aside partway through the Festival and asked,
with some concern, how my experience had been going. A number of people had
been asking her warily about the
libertarian, she informed me.
See, I didn't
need her to inform me of this, because part of the bizarre, translucent nature
of Fringe fame means that I've been hearing a lot of this firsthand. Either I'm
incredibly lucky this year or people are talking about my show constantly, because I've been
overhearing conversations about it in every city I've been to.
There was one
particularly insufferable couple in Indianapolis. As I stood outside doing my
aggressively intensive vocal warm-ups,
they peered in through the window and spent several minutes pointing at my
audience, making fun of them, and laughing. I smiled, nodded, and agreed that
whoever had brought this show to their town must be an idiot. I then waited
until they left, slipped my flask back into my pocket, stepped inside, and
proceeded to do a show in which that audience laughed at nearly every sentence
out of my mouth for the next hour.
Indianapolis may
have been wary, but you would never have guessed it from my audience turnout,
which was consistently robust -- and once I guided them through their initial
trepidation (which typically takes me about 5-10 minutes) they were hooting,
cheering, and applauding. I had one group that came with the explicit intent of
sabotaging my show through heckling: they quickly became among my most vocal
supporters.
Indy has one of
the strongest senses of community of any Fringe that I've toured to. This can
be attributed, I suspect, to several factors. For one, it's much smaller --
there's only 64 shows -- which means audiences are seeing a larger percentage,
and are consequently much more game to take chances on an unknown. For another,
it's geographically tight-knit: just about everything takes place in a
four-block radius. With copious buskers,
you turn onto Mass Ave and you enter Fringe World.
I was dragging my
heels into this one, dreading every performance; and I walked away from just
about every performance feeling like my skin was singing. After an
uncharacteristically negative hometown experience, Indy's adventurous audience
restored my faith in the circuit.
"What we
love about you," the ED said to me, "Is that every show you bring
forces the audience to make a choice."
I'll take it. On to Chicago.
SO WHAT HAVE I
LEARNED?
That I still have
a lot to learn.
FIRST AMENDMENT
BOX RESPONSES
As part of the
tour, I've included in each programme a "First Amendment Box", in
which audience members may write any extreme, absurd, or politically incorrect
thought -- and submit it anonymously. I share them here, with no commentary or
context.
- I want to
control the weather
- Mandatory oral
sex at all voting locations
- A chicken in
every pot and pot in every pipe
- Health care -
flat tax
- Snowman tax
RE NEXT FREE
ELECTION:
1) All Republicans are obsolete and irrelevant
post Andrew Jackson;
2) Hillary Clinton is too morally ambiguous and
ego [illegible];
3) another [illegible] free candidate after
Obama, if we must, but a hyphenated name like -- Garcia-Schneider!
America is a land
of illusion, full of pageantry and falsehoods. There are figureheads in the highest
offices, producing theatre, hiding behind false ideals, letting the wizards
behind the curtain do what they like. I sometimes feel like I'm watching a
movie and I'm the only one who can tell Bruce Willis has been dead the whole
time. You can be free in America, but you have to have enough money to buy it.
War against pigs.
Legalize meth. Ban the behind the ass under the balls angle in porn. Forget the
Alamo. Lower the drinking age to 13. Ban anime, execute all anime scofflaws.
Smoke weed. War against the mail-men. Set Mike Pence on fire and throw him down
stairs. Don't comply. (BLACKS!) Eternal salvation or your money back!
SUBGENIUS.com
If those fucking
tea-baggers and crazed evangelicals got all the dumb shit the way they say they
want it, they'd still probably not realize how fucking stupid they all
are! Dumbass Libertarians are included in this mini-rant I wrote. Your ideas as
a Libertarian are repulsive!
The Repubs are
like bank robbers. You might not approve, but you can sort of understand. The
Dems are more like the guy who takes a tennis racket and tries to chop down a
lamppost because he thinks it's the Antichrist.
The electoral
college should be disbanded and all governmental positions, federal, state and
local AND all federal, state, and local policies should be voted on by the
people of the US. Even tax changes!
Change the
national anthem to Mm-Bop. Or something with a peppy tune. The internet gives
too many idiots a forum to be...idiotic. And, apparently, I am too much of an
idiot to deny them my attention.
To the extent
that we have taxes, men should pay more, as they disproportionately commit
crimes and burden the criminal justice system (which is a big business in
America anyway).
America is not
the greatest country in the world. Christianity is not compatible with being a
soldier.
We are all
doomed! Unless we are not...revolution. It will be televised this time.
End of life care
is too expensive -- sick old people should be euthanized.
Campaign finance
reform is priority one. All other concerns are secondary.
There is no hope
unless we can bring ourselves to compromise with our enemies.
As a gay man, I'm
terrified of AIDS but condomless sex feels so good.
I really want to
hate your show, but I don't. Bravo. Keep inquiring!
I believe that
eugenics may be the answer to our future survival.
Robin Hood was
returning citizens' extraordinary taxes! Thanks!
[Drawing of a
marijuana leaf.] THIS. (I am an intellectual.)
If the world
smoked a joint, there would be peace forever.
Stupid people
should not be allowed to reproduce.
(I pretty much say
everything I think.)
A right not
exercised is a right lost.
#GaryJohnson for
President
Anything I
believe
I believe is true
But
I don't believe
everything I believe
is true
