The Bristol-based powerhouse of a mum-cum-Gen X comic, Louise Leigh says, “Don't fear the 'bad' review - all reviews are still worth the paper they’re written on (even if they’re not on paper)”.
I’m the greatest, just nobody’s noticed
I’m writing this with a sense of fear. Will I summon the negative opinions of all and sundry? Will reviewers turn up to my show determined to test my theory. Will I be bombarded with 1 star reviews? Notwithstanding, I want to say this, “In some ways, every review at the Fringe is a gift”.
Oh Louise, you fool, surely that’s nonsense. Surely the only review worth having is one that makes you a ‘staple wanker’, (my term for someone at Fringe Central, guillotining strips of paper with four and five stars on them and attaching them to their flyers). I mean ‘be a staple wanker’ is on my written list of goals for this Fringe, so yeah. I want that.
But stay with me. Couldn’t one take some positives even from the negative?
A lot of the time, comedians are working in a feedback vacuum. Not on stage. On stage we get the best feedback of all: live responses from the public. All gigs are, in that sense, market research. “On a scale of titter to guffaw, how much are you enjoying this?”
When we’re not on stage that feedback disappears. Most of us are agent-less, manager-less, submitting clips and scripts and pitches, while sending out press releases, self-taping and mostly getting… crickets.
When you don’t get a gig, you’re never sure why. Is it because you’ve wildly overestimated your powers; or because the promoter thought your jokes were somehow off-colour; or because they’ve heard you’re a bit of a plonker; or that you’ve befriended one of their mortal foes and there’s a rumour going round that you pull the legs off young female comedians.
You get used to just firing your stuff into silence and it can feed your delusion. “I’m the greatest, just nobody’s noticed”. Or it can force you to flounder trying new things: being more persistent when you should perhaps give yourself a chance to get better before reapplying. It’s very difficult to learn and grow in an environment where you don’t get feedback.
Billions of years ago, I worked for a well known cable channel, in the commissioning department. We received dozens of submissions a week, many for shows similar to ones we already had in development and some wildly impractical. My job was, basically, rejections assistant. I had two bosses. One, a man who had been on the end of too many rejections and never wanted to turn anyone down and the other a woman who had perfected a kind but constructive rejection technique. I learned so much from this pair.
The man would make me type up (told you it was billions of years ago) letters (literally, the Triassic!) that left a tiny window of hope. They praised, they fawned, they softened, they never quite said, “No”, and so producers returned with pitches that were no better than the first things they’d sent. My workload increased and so did theirs, but with no growth or improvement or greater chance of getting a commission. Still, everyone thought he was a lovely man.
The other boss’s letters were very clearly “No”. She was firm and brilliant at giving constructive criticism. People who got a letter from her knew where they were and what they needed to do to get better. Their next pitch would be closer to the money.
So, this year, if I get reviewed I’m going to try and see it as something of an appraisal; an opportunity to see myself through others’ eyes. Obviously, I’d like to be fighting over the good guillotine in Fringe Central, but if a review leaves me in tears, I’d like to pick myself up and see what the reviewer saw and use it as an opportunity to get better.
And I reckon I can hack it. After all, I’ve got teenage kids at home. They are my harshest critics, but they do teach me to look at myself through a different lens.
I’m determined to use that skill if I get reviews this Fringe. I hereby pledge to try to take negative commentary on the chin and use that iterative process to make my show better. So in spite of the fear, I say “Come on then, reviewers! Let’s be ‘avin’ you!”
