15/09/05 It's For Charidee...!

I had another gig at The Stand last night. It was a charity fundraising event for "Enlighten", an Epilepsy charity.
I was happy to waive my standard massive fee and perform for free. There was a fairly big crowd there, although it felt slightly different from a normal Stand night. I think most of the audience had some connection with the charity rather than being the usual random crowd of comedy punters.
I got a good reaction though, and I sure was pleased with the way it all went. I'm definitely a lot more unfazed now about doing comedy club gigs. I feel confident that the audience is highly unlikely to be as tricky as a few of the ones we had to deal with during the record-breaking Fringe run of "Park's Circus".
One feature about last night's audience was that I got big laughs which would last a couple of seconds, but then it would cut out to complete silence again.
The best audiences are those that laugh big, but then there's a kind of ripple effect where there's pockets of laughter in the room, that just keep going way beyond the first big guffaw.
When this is happening, you get a domino effect, in which people are laughing out of sync with other people, and that this in turn can start people who'd stopped, laughing again.
When it just cuts out completely, it feels like you're starting all over from scratch again, rather than building on a continuous laugh foundation.
There should be a term to describe this comedic phenomenum, but unfortunately there isn't, so you'll have to make do with my anorakish description for the time being.
Anyway, although I waived my large fee, I didn't waive my willingness to accept free drinks from the bar, and ended up getting ever so slightly pissed. Not big and not clever. At all...