Tour Whore, September 30, 2012

TLoTH
by Cameryn Moore

I did a show last weekend with 6 people in the audience, two of them paying. The next night was spectacular, relatively speaking: 17 people in the house, 14 of them paying. That’s an increase in paid ticket-holders of 600 percent. Holy crap! Wow!

I’m back in The Land of Tiny Houses.

TLoTH, for short. I don’t know if you can pronounce that, but I wanted to put a name on it. As soon as I put a name on it, I have something to hang my explanations on, to try to make you understand. I think it really captures the parallel-universe feel out here. I mean, doesn’t TLoTH sound like an alien city that you’d find in a near-future, off-planet, pulp-fiction novelette? That’s EXACTLY how it feels. The cars look pretty similar, but I suspect the people-looking people around me actually are hiding an external brain, or at least a USB port, at the nape of their necks and WHY DO THE HORSES ON MARS HAVE SIX LEGS. 

I’m competing with everything else going on in the city that night

Really! It feels almost that weird out here! After 3+ months out on the Fringe circuit, I am back doing self- and co-produced shows wherever I can, wherever a venue will take me and my dirty mouth, wherever I can find a producer who promises to bust their hump to promote the show. No longer am I competing for potential audiences against the four or seven or 14 other shows in my time window; I’m competing with everything else going on in the city that night, including staying at home and eating white-cheddar popcorn while watching TV.

I don’t like to be in this land. It is LONELY. And you think you work hard out on the Fringe? Psht. It is easy there. There all the punters marks audiences are more or less in one place. There you have entire walls dedicated to posters, and reviewers who, even if some of them are theatrically illiterate or emotionally stunted, still have some kind of mandate to go out there and watch these little shows. Out here in TLoTH, NOBODY GIVES A GOOD GODDAMN.

It’s not just the reviewers. Entire cities have no idea what I’m talking about when I say Fringe theatre. Or they think it means an all-girl Hamlet with riotgrrl music as pre-show music. Without the concentrating influence of the Fringe, I resort to flyering outside of other theatres, if they let me… I know, right?! SOMETIMES THEY WON’T LET ME FLYER OUTSIDE THE THEATRE. They don’t want people to think that I’m affiliated with them, or they don’t want me to “bother” their audiences. Anyone who has seen me in action knows that I don’t ever bother people. No, people stop and talk to me only if they want to. (Or rather, they’ll continue letting me talk to them only if they want to.)

A solo show? What’s that? Do you show your tits?

No theatre happening? Then I force myself to experiment with … related events, mostly burlesque shows. And those audiences there, they are not always the most discriminating public.  Yeah, that’s fun… A solo show? What’s that? Do you show your tits? Oh, well in that case… In that context, my powerful, well-crafted solo production would clearly be a complete rip-off even at a quarter. This attitude, yes! Even though they just laid out $15 to get in, and dropped at least $20 on drinks and another $10-$15 tipping the dancers. And their life isn’t changing! They haven’t been brought face-to-face with their shadowy side! The biggest thing they’re walking out of that show with is a half hard-on! [PAUSE to catch my breath] Sorry.

Sometimes—often—I’m not sure why I keep doing this part of my tour. All of my Fringe colleagues have pretty much gone back to their home towns or a decent gig, or gone out to kayak along the beaches of Vancouver Island, you know, unwinding in a big, serious, gotta-rent-some-equipment sort of way. I could do that, I would save on food costs, on the cost of taking my phone sex calls on my cell phone. I would save on scouting out long-term billeting arrangements, and just have a series of awkward one-night billets, and get back to Montreal in seven days instead of 70. That would be nice.

But the funny thing about TLoTH… I can’t stay away. I can’t. Because there are tiny houses, and then there are intimate houses. The way I reframe some of my audience interactions would make a real estate agent proud, except I’m not even exaggerating. Sometimes, yes, the tiny houses are silent and all folded arms and some bastard falling asleep in the front raw, and smiles instead of laughing, and tepid applause instead of the roars that I’d gotten back on the Fringe.

But sometimes there are houses of 17 people like last night, who were close enough that I could see their eyes tearing up from something I said. In the crossed-beam glare of the two rented lights, I could look right at them, I could talk directly to them. Sometimes there are 9 people who sit and power the Q&A session for an hour, and then take me out afterward and buy me some kind of fancy steak dinner and thank me for what I do. Once in a while, someone approaches me afterward on FB or via email, or right out there on the street, and says, “You changed me. You were speaking to me. You were exactly what I needed to hear.”

In TLoTH, people can connect differently. And connection is what I’m trying to do; it’s the vision that has possessed me over the last three Fringe tours. I didn’t know what I was doing when I first started, let alone why I was doing it. But now I know why, and if there is something special happening out here, away from the Fringe—if I would not get to have these conversations without touring TLoTH, then fuck it. I guess I’ll keep doing it.

camerynmoore.com