The Gig From Hell

The Night Everything Fell Apart (Comedy Mindhacks #139)

Last night I produced a comedy show that, when I try to think of a name for it, all that comes to mind is “The Gig From Hell.” I was performing in this show, too, and I had invited my comedian and friend, Chris Tester, to be on the lineup with me. This, to be clear, was a benefit supporting a local veterans non-profit. The event was part of the inaugural year of a regional, outdoor BBQ competition featuring 45 teams from around the country.

Our pay for the night was dinner, which started at 6pm, and was to be followed by stand-up at 7pm. Since I don’t like eating before I perform, I made a to-go plate with some grilled sausage & onions, shrimp & grits, and peach cobbler. At that point, everything seemed pretty normal. I had even taken a bit of the peach cobbler and…it was incredible. But within minutes, all that changed. The first problem? After they finished eating, almost everyone left.

There had been around 30-35 people inside the large walled tent where I had set up, but most of them apparently came for dinner rather than comedy. As soon as they ate, they bolted back to their RVs and wherever else they were staying for the competition. It was frustrating, to say the least, especially because I had hauled in and set up my own microphones, cords, speaker, stands, soundboard, cameras, extension cords, and everything else we needed for the show. By the time I took the microphone, there were exactly two people sitting in chairs watching us. Two!!!

Still, a gig is a gig, and I believe in performing my best whether there’s two people, twenty people, or two hundred. So, I started performing. Within about a minute of being on the mic, I heard thunder, and lightning started flashing outside the tent. Within three minutes, rain started pouring and several people rushed inside for cover. Suddenly, my audience had tripled from two people to six, which normally would’ve been fantastic news. Unfortunately, none of them were actually watching me because they were busy trying to put up one of the walls of the tent.

So there I was, standing with a microphone telling jokes while six people were frantically trying to weatherproof the room around me. Since there was absolutely no point pretending this was a normal comedy show anymore, I started narrating what was happening and trying to add humor wherever I could. Honestly, for a few minutes, it was kinda fun. The comedy “set” that I had in mind was anything but “set”; within a couple minutes, it was completely irrelevant. Then…the rain really started.

Within about five minutes of taking the mic, it was pouring buckets. Before long water started rushing underneath the sides of the tent. My cords were getting wet, puddles were forming around the microphone stands, and people were literally, in the middle of my stand-up, yelling instructions across the tent about what needed to be picked up and moved. By the fifteen-minute mark, nobody was thinking about comedy anymore. We were basically running a disaster-relief operation with a sound system. But I kept going…kinda.

Somewhere around twenty minutes into it all, the spot where I’d originally been standing was completely covered in water. Like…completely…covered. A couple minutes later, I was standing in mud and what had to be close to a foot of water. I kid you not, the woman hosting the event was standing a few feet away from me when she suddenly looked down and yelled, “Hey, there’s a tadpole!” I guess when wildlife starts attending the show, it’s probably time to wrap it up.

So, I called it, although in retrospect I probably should’ve done that long before I did. A brand-new microphone fell into the mud and some of my equipment was soaked. Meanwhile, the bags I used to carry everything out were sitting safely inside my truck where I had put them before the show started. That meant I had to shove my wet equipment into black garbage bags so I could somehow get it back to my vehicle. Somewhere beneath roughly two feet of water was also my brand-new 100-foot extension cord, which I decided the BBQ competition could hang on to for the next couple of days. If you’re so inclined, check out this short clip to watch some of it unfold.

Then, just before I made my dash through the storm to get my truck, something completely unexpected happened. The woman running the event literally asked me if I’d come back Saturday and host the awards ceremony. I had just performed comedy for two people, nearly electrocuted myself, sacrificed an extension cord to Poseidon, and watched a tadpole swim across my stage. And…somehow, I got another gig.

I ran through the rain, backed my truck up as close to the tent as possible, and we started loading everything into the back seat. Once we got it all in, I drove Chris through the storm to his car and finally headed home. I was completely drenched and waterlogged. When I walked through the front door, my son saw me and immediately lost it, and then his six high-school buddies saw me and did the same thing.

Standing there soaked while a bunch of teenagers laughed at me, I started thinking about the evening I’d planned. I had brought a bunch of new jokes I wanted to try, prepared for crowd work, hauled in all my equipment, and even emailed the organizers that morning to ask whether there was a backup plan in case the weather turned bad. They told me there wasn’t one, and although I knew storms were possible, I couldn’t have predicted anything remotely close to what actually happened. Pretty much every plan I’d made for the evening had been blown to smithereens.

That’s the strange thing about producing comedy shows, and really about performing in general. Preparation matters tremendously, and I’m a huge believer in doing as much of it as possible. But preparation can quietly create an illusion that if I’ve planned everything correctly, the evening should somehow cooperate with my plan. But…live performances don’t always work that way. Sometimes the audience leaves, the weather changes, equipment fails, schedules get messed up, and tadpoles start swimming through the venue.

I think that’s especially important for comedians like me because it’s easy to try to define a successful gig before the gig ever starts. Maybe success means getting a certain number of laughs, testing three new jokes, doing ten minutes of crowd work, getting good video, or absolutely crushing a carefully prepared closer. None of those are bad goals, but last night there eventually came a point where none of them were available anymore. They were gone. The conditions changed, which meant my definition of doing a good job had to change with them.

At first, doing my job meant performing comedy for the people in the room. Then it meant trying to entertain six people while they put up the wall of a tent. Eventually, it meant getting expensive electrical equipment out of standing water, helping everyone respond to the chaos, and recognizing that there was no comedy show left to save. The goal kept moving because reality kept moving. Being stubbornly committed to the original plan wouldn’t have made me more professional; eventually it would’ve just made me an idiot standing in a foot of water holding a microphone.

As I said, being professional certainly means showing up prepared, knowing my material, bringing what I need, and doing everything possible to deliver what I promised. But sometimes professionalism doesn’t look like executing the original plan perfectly. Sometimes it looks like remaining useful, flexible, and relatively pleasant when a storm hits and the original plan becomes impossible or just no longer exists. The fact is: What happens around my performance often reveals just as much, if not more, about me as it does the performance itself.

That’s also why I’m glad the evening didn’t end when I finally stopped telling jokes. I could’ve looked around at the flooded tent, soaked equipment, muddy microphone, abandoned extension cord, and almost nonexistent audience and decided the entire thing was a failure. By almost every definition of success I’d brought with me that evening, it probably was. But apparently the woman running the event saw enough in the middle of all that chaos to ask me to come back. I also heard her answer a phone call and say, “Man, these comedians are troopers!”

I drove home thinking I’d just survived the gig from Hell, and I’m still not sure that’s an exaggeration. I didn’t get to test the material I’d planned, didn’t get the crowd-work practice I’d expected, didn’t perform for the audience we’d anticipated, and didn’t even bring all of my equipment home. But I did get another booking. So, here’s my big takeaway from all this: Sometimes success is executing the plan, but other times it’s showing people who I am when everything falls apart.

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