Stevie Martin: What REALLY goes on behind the scenes of a preview
REVEALED!
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REVEALED! 〰️
Edinburgh Fringe 2024 is here! And so is our annual features series. This year, it’s all about REVELATIONS: the gossip, the mysteries, the spies and the moles. Because everybody knows you can’t keep a secret at Edinburgh Fringe…
Stevie Martin is bringing her show, clout, to Edinburgh Fringe. Here, she reveals what’s actually happening at a comedy show preview.
By Stevie Martin
It’s the run-up to the Edinburgh Fringe, so I've been doing previews of my show 'clout' everywhere from London to Manchester, Bristol to London, one in Wales and even some in London. Previews, for the uninitiated, are just where you test out a show so as to tell what works, what doesn't, and what is utterly humiliating.
Every single preview goes exactly the same way, and I get a lot of friends and relatives asking questions like “are you scared” and “how is performing to 15 people above a pub a sustainable career” so thought I'd reveal what actually happens behind those pearly gates. Curtains. Sorry, pearly gates is when you die, isn't it?
During the day leading up to a preview, I like to cold-water swim, do yoga, enjoy many meals and certainly not work myself up into a frenzy, convinced nobody will laugh and I should cancel the show by saying I've got something inarguably bad (like, for example, death). As you can see, I’m very emotionally balanced, which bodes well for August, when I'll be performing this show every day for a month.
We join the preview two hours before showtime, while I'm sitting on a train heading towards tonight's venue. Let's say it's in London. Right in the centre. On top of that building in Tottenham Court Road that reads CENTREPOINT. Right on the roof. Anyway.
5pm: I don't need to run my lines on the train, because everything in my show is so loose and free that I have no lines. I'm one of those comedians that runs off vibes and good times. The jokes just fall out of my brain via my mouth like laughter or song or a song that provoked laughter. The way I see things, what's the point in choosing to do stand-up, a pure artform famous for being comprised of one comedian and one mic, and then creating a show requiring a 288-strong slideshow presentation complete with 17-page colour-coded script made up of various text-formatting signals so I know how many times to click a particular slide, when to click that particular slide and whether there even is a particular slide? That doesn't sound funny! That sounds like a financial business work meeting! And I say this as a person who has had many jobs in business, work and :financials. The point is: I have made things really easy for myself by definitely 100% not needing technology or using multimedia.
5.15pm: I read a book. It's easy to forget I'm doing a preview, because I'm so chilled about it. It helps that every joke I've ever tried in the past has worked, so I don't have any reason to be concerned. Nobody has given me notes like “Please slow down when you're talking on stage”, “I'm not sure the owl bit is working” or “maybe you don’t need all that technology/multimedia”.
5.30pm: I trace an idea for a joke with my finger on the window. A man in the seat behind me on the train applauds.
6pm: I get to the venue, which is perfectly set up for all kinds of comedy shows because the government has provided adequate funding for a variety of theatrical spaces across the United Kingdom.
6.10pm: Setup is minimal because I don't have a bag full of cables, a need to plug my laptop into a new projector which it will inevitably not recognise until I restart it, restart it again and say things like “Honestly it's never done this before” to the technician, or 32 sound cues that need manually adjusting to every single different PA system. I certainly don't have to edit photos and videos of myself on each different stage for specific jokes to work, because that would leave me too stressed to be funny.
6.30pm: I have a drink and a laugh with all of the staff, and the other comedian who is on the bill. It's really important to be friendly and not inadvertently appear rude by pacing up and down, cables falling out your pockets, reciting your 17 page script like you're about to perform a one-woman robo-Hamlet.
6.45pm: If I was using a projector (which I'm not, for all the reasons previously stated) it would probably still not be working at this point. I may be on the verge of tears, so thank god that's not happening.
6.50pm: Someone asks if we're ready to open the house and let the audience in, and of course I am! It's just me and the mic and my freewheeling thoughts! Also I've been doing this for so long, it's second nature. I'm not one of those comedians who took a break from live comedy for five years to do online stuff and are still working out how to be normal on stage.
7pm: I have a snack while the audience files in because, if anything, my stomach is at its most settled at this point.
7.01pm: The show begins on time and I remember to record it on my phone to listen back to, later. I definitely don't forget to do this.
7.30pm: Halfway through the preview and I’m experiencing what writers and creatives on Substack refer to as “flow state”. This is when you are so engrossed in what you are doing, you don’t even think about it. Time becomes elastic, the world falls away. You can tell you’re experiencing flow state when you stop commentating in your head over the top of every joke you tell. If you are thinking “well that fucking died” or “why did they not laugh at the moth bit but they enjoyed the toucan bit” then you are not in a flow state.
8.01pm: The show ends and I'm thrilled to find it's exactly an hour long. The perfect time.
8.24pm: The audience stops applauding.
8.30pm: Every bit of the show worked, and I don't have loads of cables and laptops and screens to pack up, so I leave the venue swiftly after helping the staff re-attach the roof I dislodged with my joke trajectory. On the way out I assist an audience member who laughed his head off to an ambulance.
8.31pm: Every audience member has instagrammed or tweeted about the show, meaning the next show has sold out. The audience also appeared to be comprised of everyone who was mean to me during both primary and secondary education, an ex-boyfriend who said I “wasn't funny enough” to be in the university sketch group, and a blogger who gave me a horrible review in 2018. He has posted a video of himself crying with remorse to social media and changed the name of his blog to “Stevie Martin”. I try to tell him this will be very confusing SEO-wise, but he doesn't listen, or maybe he can’t listen, because my jokes blew his ears off.
8.45pm: On the train home I listen carefully back to the show. I didn't forget to record it, and in the slim chance I DID remember, I 100% don't listen to five seconds before becoming thoroughly depressed at the sound of my own voice and deleting the file.
8.50pm: There's some noise bleed from the headphones, and we have to stop the train several times as more and more passengers hear snippets of my humour and become hysterical.
9pm: I eat the dinner I prepared earlier and popped into a Tupperware. Some comedians are so busy thinking about their show that they forget to plan ahead, end up eating three packets of crisps and a small bottle of train wine, then go home and hoover up half the contents of the fridge (cherry tomatoes, quorn picnic eggs, pickled onions, hummous with a spoon, cold nude leftover pasta you should mix with pesto but the pesto has gone white and fluffy so you are forced to swallow it bald, 150 olives). Psychologically I find it more helpful to maintain normal eating habits during previews, otherwise I'd go to pieces in Edinburgh by week two which has absolutely never happened and I don't know what you're talking about can everyone just shut up and leave me alone.
9.30pm: Bedtime. There is no adrenaline running through my body and I don't stay awake until 2am worrying about every single thing I did or said on stage, in my life, since birth.
Stevie Martin: clout is at Monkey Barrel 4, July 29th — August 25th, 3.35pm. Tickets here.
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