Preview Perils
IT SAYS MATURE AUDIENCES ON THE FUCKING POSTER, PEOPLE.
by Cameryn Moore
All the forms are in. (I think.) My marketing print material is in the pipeline. The promo/special event calendar is starting to fill up. R105 tax waiver application went out three weeks ago. A little more than a month until I head up to my first fringe, in Montréal. I can relax, right? No. I have my preview to write.
The preview is that little 2-minute piece that gets thrown into a preview showcase evening at many fringes, in theory so that audience members get a sense of what your show is about and make that crucial extra star in the program book next to your show blurb. I think for this season I am doing a preview at Montréal, Winnipeg, Victoria, and maybe Vancouver, I can’t remember. Calgary, do you have a preview night? If not, don’t. Or do. No, don’t. I can’t…. God, I am so conflicted. It throws me every year, even though, compared to the 31-page, multiple-choice script that I'm working from for power | play, it is a tiny little thing, a piece of bathroom graffiti. How hard can a third of a page of script be?
It’s hard, motherfucker. Really hard. Working on my preview brings out the diva in me, and I don’t always like that bit. I sound like a pompous, elitist asshole in my own head. “How can an audience possibly understand the intricacies and subtle lyric beauty of my show from two minutes of material, let alone one?” Ugh.
What I’ve come to understand is that Fringe-type previews are less about giving an accurate, compelling taste of your show, and more about charming the pants off the audience in a way that burns your name indelibly onto the surface of their brain. I have two minutes in which to make you want to spend an hour with me later on this week. It’s the Fringe equivalent of speed-dating, and it feels IMPOSSIBLE.
Two minutes of no tech, full stage wash, no specials, no sound effect, just me and a room full of increasingly inebriated strangers. (The beer tent rant is forthcoming, probably the weekend after I do my first beer tent fly-by of the season.) Or a lawn full of judge-y seniors and some families, all of whom are up past their bedtime. Last year, I got a slap on the wrist from the Winnipeg Fringe for using the word “cunt” during preview night on the outdoor stage. What. It was 9:30, THOSE KIDS SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN BED. Instead of taking to task a Fringe performer for trying to keep her preview segment representative of the work, maybe you should tell those parents off, hmm? As far as I’m concerned, 8pm on a Wednesday night is already into adult time, as far as public spaces go.
it’s gonna be full of pussy and dick and tits and probably kink
A slap on the wrist still stings, though, so every year I embark on this internal struggle. I worry that if I don’t really give people an authentic taste of my show, they’ll show up and be shocked, and I’d much rather filter my audiences before that moment of walk-out. But by now, hasn’t word gotten around that a Cameryn Moore show is for adults only, and it’s gonna be full of pussy and dick and tits and probably kink, and IT SAYS MATURE AUDIENCES ON THE FUCKING POSTER, PEOPLE. So maybe I don’t need to be quite so graphic during the preview. But if I don’t, does that mean I’m a sell-out, pandering in the opposite direction, a misleading direction? I mean, they need to know. Even from a strictly consumer point of view, for idiot fucking consumers who can’t read, they need to know, right?
See what I mean? Deeply, deeply conflicted about the Fringe preview.
And it takes time to write, for me, at least. It should take time, God. We’ve got 120 seconds up there, don’t want to waste a single one. I know there are some shows that are more physical or improv or dance, where they aren’t working from a script, just creating attention-getting moments on stage, but that shit STILL takes time to pull together. Me, I start with a chunk of script, wait, there’s a swear word in there, is it important, can I work around it, use it in one place and pull it out in another? Wait, that references something from earlier, do I need that earlier bit or does it make sense without it.
is it hard-hitting enough to make an impact?
I read it out loud, time it. Shit, 45 seconds over, really? Nothing looks as long on the page as it reads out loud. Trim, slash, burn, punch, punch, punch. Is it funny? Yes? If not, is it hard-hitting enough to make an impact? Ideal preview for my shows is funny AND impactful, because that at least is kinda representative of the mixed-genre works that I present.
I read it again, over and over, out loud to myself and then again to any of my friends who will sit still for it. Needs to be under two minutes, actually, and don’t put the very most important information at the end, because if you end up running long for some reason, because of audience heckling or you forget a line and stumble, you don’t want that important information to be lost when they pull the lights and cut the sound (like they do in Montréal, those hardcore Frenchie motherfuckers).
And then? IT’S JUST ONE MORE THING TO MEMORIZE. Fuck. I thought I was done with that for the year. Memorizing doesn’t come easily for me, but I force myself back into it one more time, because yeah, I want to make a good first impression, I want it to be smooth like buttah from the moment I stride onstage and take the mic. It won’t be, but I want it to be, and if it’s not, it won’t be my fault, dammit.
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