June 8th Review
We’re officially 2 years old! Anyone who has organised a 2 year olds birthday party will tell you: “Expect the unexpected”. It makes more business sense for us to kid on the night went really smooth but where’s the fun in that. If an episode of Eastenders didn’t have a disaster or 2 in it then everyone would watch Hollyoaks so here’s some of our Drama from the evening so you can get the inside scoop and also see just how hard we work to keep it all together.
If you were there could we ask you to take a minute to fill out our anonymous survey here.
S
o the run up to this show was a scary one. Being the birthday show I really wanted to make sure it was a strong line-up and booked some cracking acts. All comedians were headline acts and all the dancers are headline acts when they perform on bills…plus I’ve been known to headline a few shows over the years myself.
However as things work out this show was full of disasters:
Tickets – Last month on the Monday before the show we had sold 94 tickets. This month we had sold 8. As it turns out there was another wee gig on called Rockness and there were 4 other shows on like ours that night plus all the comedy clubs around as well. On top of that…it’s sunny and people like to be in the garden when it’s sunny. This by the way is why Scotland has produced so many world class comedians and so few footballers in recent decades. Also, the despite putting up 20 posters in The Admiral we never sold a ticket at the venue…mainly because the tickets got lost – doh!
Staff:
- Stu Who There was a mix-up about timings so Stu was going to have to do the middle spot to allow him to headline elsewhere sorry for any confusion.
- My regular door girl Mel has been taking burlesque lessons and was making her debut over at another night
- my Event Manager, Star, was away Graduating.
- Mhairi my assistant manager at 5:20 on the day of Enterteasement txt me to say she wasn’t going to be able to make it – awch.
- Wullie the photographer who helps me set-up getting help up (not by gun)at a previous engagement so he wasn’t able to help out with the setting up of curtains banners etc.
- Gavin Webster got slightly lost and didn’t appear till the start of the show.
Believe it or not there’s a lot more but I’ll leave it there for now.
So with the room assembled…I’m gonna be honest…I used cello tape to assemble a few things that don’t normally require cello tape.
The Show
We started at 8:02 and the audience were pretty cool, we had a mad man down the front with 4 teeth and spoke a variation of Glaswegian Klingon so that’s always interesting. We went over the rules, don’t talk during the acts and cheer through the burlesque. Now while I’m doing this I’m thinking to myself, “Woody you’ve forgotten something really important” and I had – see normally at this point I introduce my team of 2 assistants and photographer so everyone knows we actually work there. However, as I didn’t have any staff and there wasn’t a photographer at this point there was no one to introduce.
Viv Gee
The comedy world is full off all different types of people but Viv is just amazingly nice and she’s an exceptional compere. About a month ago I was at a gig and viv was compering for 15 year olds and she ended up breakdancing on stage! Comedian, Actress, Poet & breakdancer – god knows what else she can do but 1 thing we need for our shows is adaptability. People turn up for the comedy, magic, burlesque and others have quite clearly there to hide from the police for a few hours…we get a mixed bag but it keeps it interesting.
So Viv did an AMAZING job in my honest opinion because it’s a job where you need to judge the crowd, think on your feet and adjust the timings on the night. So the show had started and she was off. It was her birthday the next day and the amount of comments I had about Viv was great mainly from a bunch of my friends who came to the show who have been saying for years “Female Comedians Aren’t funny” But after the event they were converted and want to know where they can see more of her. Well done Viv.
Gavin Webster
Gavin is a comedian from Newcastle and he’s one of my all time favourites. One of my friends actually turned up just to see Gavin perform. In the comedy world, Gavin has one of the loveliest reputations. Virtually every comedian I spoke to who had worked with Gavin insisted on telling me there “Gavin Story” So I was all glad to have him.
It was weird though because he went on stage and not everyone took to him at first. Which I thought was strange because Gavin 
Headlines all the big venues and I would consider him a real 5 star performer. He wasn’t dying or anything like that but he wasn’t tearing the roof off the place as I thought he would. Sometimes you just get a quiet comedy crowd…however, I think Gavin sensed that the audience were still a little cold and told jokes at the start as I’ve seen fellow Newcastle comedian Peter Kay do the same thing. So after 5 minutes, they were laughing after 10 minutes he had them and by the end of it he had them all holding their sides at his panda tale.
Then the weirdest thing happend. As Gavin does his sign off and say’s “right guys I’m going to go now.” Our local mad man says, “See before you go pal can I ask you a question?” A rather perplexed Gavin said “yes” and the guy asked him “What’s your real voice?”
What does that even mean?
So Gavin did another couple of minutes off the cuff about being from Surrey; but, it’s one of those lines that will probably end up in Gavin’s Book under the weirdest thing said to you at a comedy gig section.
Break
As breaks go…it was ok.
Viv came back on and I would love to say what she did but I was in the changing room getting stage instructions at the time so I only managed to hear the laughs.
Stu Who
Stu Was meant to be the headliner but due to a mix up with another venue it made sense to move him to the middle spot. As performances go he was epic. Right up our street with a mixture of Glasgow stories and personal life. It’s not one liner gags it’s just normal pub humour and observations. From start to finish it was Boom, Laugh Boom Laugh. Knock out blows to the audience and they loved every minute of it. The energy in the room was epic – we just wish we had him for longer but fear not people – he had a good time and will be making a return when we return.
Suraya Ahmed
Suraya is a the first belly dancer we’ve had on our line-up. She came on stage and performed her routine using a stick…what’s ironic about this is that she ended up needing the stick as she went over on her ankle as she took to the stage. No one in the audience would have known this as she continued regardless but by the time she was backstage she was in considerable pain. I’ve packed painkillers in the box just in case something like this happened but when Suraya came off stage she asked for…tiger bam. Funnily enough…we didn’t have any. Cracking act though and something to keep the night different for the regulars.
Cherryfox
Cherryfox is the second pink haired burlesque act we’ve had in as many shows…believe it or not they are both English and they are the only 2 burlesque acts in the world I know of with pink hair so having them back to back is quite something. Cherryfox took to the stage to perform a ‘Sing & Fling’ act. If you don’t know what this is, she sings…and flings her clothes off. It’s pretty cool and something we’ve been after for a while but hardly anyone does it because it’s pretty difficult. Anyhow, we had a minor fault with this in that after our sound check was done a DJ monitor was plugged in so this created some feedback during the high notes. I’ll be honest – I don’t know what that is but we’ve never had problems before with music in there and we’ve tracked down the cause by the end of the show.
So we owe Cherryfox an apology for not getting this right but most of it was fine and it was well received by the audience…also it helps that she’s stunning.
Vendetta Vain
We love her! Vendetta has her own style when it comes to burlesque and has amazing stage presence. She’s never officially studied 
drama or anything like that however here’s a wee bit of theatre trivia you can throw into conversation when your posh friends are visiting. All theatre goers don’t know when to applaud. What should happen at the end of a performance is that it should be so powerful that the audience sit in appreciation for a while to let it absorb than after 10 seconds or so everyone should start clapping. What actually happens is that as soon as it’s over everyone starts clapping instantaneously. The only reason I say this is that Vendetta’s performances remind me of theatre performances and at the end of a performance she stands motionless just letting the audience absorb what they’ve just seen. Which really is nice to see because so many girls run off stage once the performance is over
This month she performed her Russian act for us which came with the weirdest music I think we’ve ever heard. It’s not really an Enterteasement cheeky teasy fun burlesque act but as Cherryfox was performing a dark number we went for the Russian act as it was a good transition
At the end of the performance the audience erupted with one of our best burlesque reactions of all time.
Great act! Unbelievable reaction from a World Class Performer.
Thanks for coming back to Scotland Vendetta
Break
Woody
Right It’s my gig and I’m writing about how I did so this is a tough one. I’ve performed most of the things that I do in my normal act at Enterteasement and as we had a lot of people coming to this show that have seen me over the years I decided to do something none of them had seen me do before.
Apart from being a magician and Enterteasement organiser I also make a few pennies here and there playing poker. I qualified for a tournament last year with 180 players and I managed to win the tournament and I got a nice trophy and everything. People often ask me if I cheat and the honest answer is no. I was only allowed to deal one hand in the tournament I won and as I quite like all my fingers on my hand I think I’ll continue to play by the rules. However, I do have a few advantages in that I study the key elements of becoming a good poker player and this is a show I am putting together called “I wouldn’t want to play cards with you”. On Saturday I displayed the ability of reading people’s reactions with my attraction game. The girl Nina looked through some famous faces and I asked her to memorise and rate who she wanted the most. I know this sounds like a bit of a weak tie in but the reality is true. When a beautiful woman walks into the room a man’s heart rate will increase, the pupils will dilate, the speech rate will change and it’s exactly the same when someone looks down at a good hand The end of my trick was a comedy one where it was a photo of me and it got a good reaction.
Next I performed my Truth or Lie game where I got 5 audience members on stage and asked them all a question. The holders of the white ball were to tell me a lie and the holder of the black ball was to tell me the truth. Luckily for me I managed to figure who was telling the truth and who was telling porky pies.
Poker chip
I have 2 favourite magicians. One from France and one from America. Both have routines with poker chips and I’m happy to say I’ve combined them both and managed for the first time I put the poker chip on my unsuspecting volunteers shoulder 3 times without him noticing plus I put on it the back of his hand so I’m happy with that.
Next up with the ability to move cards. And I performed a classic in magic and managed to get 3 cards into a spectator’s hands. This trick was recently performed on TV and the magician done it via jumping from car to car. I upped the stakes by doing it with a Glaswegian mad man who decided to come on stage and nearly rip my headset out of my head whilst trying to give me a hug. But again it went well.
Overall – I’m quite happy with my performance, there was a lot of new stuff in there and I was a tad stressed out but I got through it.
Overall thoughts…I’m delighted to have a month off. The last 5 shows have been really good fun and the word is spreading about Enterteasement. It’s known in the comedy & magic world as a really good gig and the burlesque reactions this year have been far better than the last 2 years so we’re heading in the right direction.
If August – December as as good as February to June then I’ll be happy…but I’m aiming to make this even better. Thanks for reading, remember to like the page www.facebook.com/enterteasement.
Big thanks to
StuWho: http://www.facebook.com/stuwho?
Gavin Webster: http://www.gavinwebster.co.uk/
Viv Gee: http://www.facebook.com/viv.gee
Surya Ahmed: http://www.facebook.com/suraya.ahmed
Vendetta Vain: http://www.facebook.com/VendettaVain
Cherryfox: http://www.facebook.com/TheCherryfox
Woody the magician: http://www.facebook.com/woodythemagician
We’re back in August – December on the Second Saturday of the month. We’d ask you to pop your name into the newsletter and we’ll let you know when we’re back.