Silent comedian Tatterdemalion talks non-vocal communication and connecting with the audience ahead of his 2015 Edinburgh Festival Fringe show.
Giving up verbal communication in a solo comedy show might seem like an odd choice, but I’m not the first. In fact, there are a great many fantastic performers that have made a success of it.
Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton were the great stars of the silent screen and their background was influenced by the vaudevillian clowning of their parents' era. More recently and closer to home, we have seen performers such as Dr Brown and The Boy with Tape on his Face, while the company Pig Iron do excellent shows that eschew talking.
So I’m in good company - but how do I see the task ahead of me? How do I control the audience? How do I draw them in and keep them captivated? And most importantly, how do I make them laugh? When physicality is your only method of communication, you have to be a lot more expressive. It forces you to be imaginative; a lot of my communication is done through the eyes as well as the body.
You really have to connect with each individual member of the audience on a one-to-one level - catch every single eye and make them feel that the performance is for them and them alone. Obviously, this becomes trickier the larger the audience becomes. However, it is possible and it has to be done. You don’t want people to waiver or lose interest; they must be engaged at all times.
I try to be the biggest idiot in the room and therefore render myself unthreatening. With traditional stand up, quite often the highest status is the performer's; with this style of comedy, the performer’s status is the lowest. If I’m an idiot, it gives permission to everyone else to be their own idiotic selves and we create laughter and a show together.
It also takes away the heckler’s biggest weapon. The heckler normally attempts to lower the status of the performer by tripping them up. If I’m a tit already and happily so, they can’t make me look like one because I already have the lowest status in the room.
It’s important that the audience feel safe and are happy to contribute; if they do, I go where they take me. There is a great deal of improvisation and off the cuff performance in my show, which is another difference to stand-up (often stand-up is very rehearsed in order to get the timing and phrasing right). I still have moments that are more set and rehearsed, but I have to remain open to making the most of new things that come up; they're often the most delightful aspects of the show.
It means that I tend to guide the chaos rather than trying to control things too much; if we go off on a tangent, all the better!
Intoxicated audiences can be fun, but also a bit wild. My show being at 5.45pm should mean that people aren’t too belligerently drunk! It will be a challenge however and I will have to meet it should it arise… I’m not averse to ejecting someone if they are deliberately trying to ruin the show for everyone - either that or turning the tables and putting the spotlight on them.
At the end of the day it’s not about controlling the audience necessarily, it is more about encouraging them to enter my world. In my world we all get on famously because we are all idiots celebrating our idiocy together, laughing at one another and at ourselves.
Tatterdemalion, Assembly Roxy, Aug 5-31 (not 19), 5.45pm.