Two Dead Clowns: Chapter 1 is over

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!"

So this guy pursues me and my website for a month wanting us to take over his bar/restaurant for a night once a week and do an event.

So I propose doing a play from 7-8:30 and then a drag show from 9-12.

We meet a bunch of times, hammer out all the details. He says, "Whatever you need, whatever you need. It's your night.

Then the day comes to set up and we get there and nothing had been set up the way we talked about. His helpers were 2 hours late. I knew right away this wasn't gonna work because he clearly, even though we met repeatedly, he clearly didn't understand the concept of theatre and that you have to actually be in early and rehearse, etc.

So finally we get the play set up, people are arriving and about 10 of his regular patrons are in the back at the bar drinking and laughing and talking loudly. We stupidly assumed this would stop once the play began. We told him repeatedly that it had to be dead-quiet while the play was performed.

The restaurant is a big long place. The stage is at one end and the bar is way down at the other end.

So we start the play and they don't shut up at the back. And I see my tech person keep running back to tell them to be quiet and they just ignore her. And this goes on for 15 minutes til finally I stop the play and yell as loudly as possibly, "SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

The security guard (who is hired, by the bar, to work OUR event) says you can't talk that way to people." I say, "Then shut up. We've asked you nicely for the last hour."

So we go get the owner and he asks if we can talk outside and basically he wants to know how we can compromise.

COMPROMISE???

I remind him that we agreed it has to be dead quiet and then he says, "but I can't tell my customers to shut up."

So I say, "Fine, there's no play. This will never work."

He says, "But can we compromise, somehow?"

"Compromise how????? Have you ever been to a play? Or a movie? You can't have people talking during a performance."

I wasn't even that angry at this point, it was more like I just realized the absurdity of trying to make this work. The thing that angered me the most was that he pursued us. He said he was willing to do what it took to make this thing work. And then when it came time to deliver he didn't.

So Two Dead Clowns was performed for 15 minutes. And my friend snapped a photo of me stopping and yelling, "Shut the fuck up!"

And this is the truth. I've been onstage constantly since I was a kid. I have never been in a situation where I couldn't hear the words coming out of my mouth. It was a totally surreal experience. Imagine doing a play in a living room while a super bowl party is going on in the kitchen. Impossible.

Now if I'm gonna talk truthfully about Two Dead Clowns I have to own my part of this. It is a much more complex play than I thought. The line-load is huge. The voices are difficult. It needed 10 minutes of cuts, etc. I have never felt so unprepared before to perform. It's just a massive undertaking and the time off has allowed me to breathe, re-examine it, make cuts, memorize, work on the voices, etc. It's just much harder than I had anticipated.

I'm currently looking for a new venue and schedule for the show. I believe in it more than ever and I'm incredibly excited about it and I'm very grateful about having that original start date cause it motivated me to get on with it even though things didn't go as planned. And I'm excited knowing this won't happen again because the next time it will be in a theatre.

So that's Two Dead Clowns in San Diego, Chapter 1.

We are ready for the next Chapter.

Ronnie