Doing a Gig In Your Work Clothes
The first time I remember doing it was when I was working for a company that those days was called CSC, which used to stand for Computer Sciences Corporation. There had been a mild re-organisation of the management, and some initiatives to make the employees feel more engaged with the company were brough it. One of these was to ask for volunteers who believed they could entertain some of their colleagues during their lunch break. This happened in the weeks before Christmas. I read a few short pieces, including my signature poem, Dear Jared, and a short story with a Christmas theme, called Ten Pence, Please. The whole performance lasted about 25 minutes. I had forgotten to take with me the printed sheets I had prepared the previous evening, and so I read from the screen of my work laptop. I placed it on one of those adjustable desks they issue to people with chronic lower back pain, which was very handy. The reaction was a few indulgent smiles, a few titters – mostly in the right places, and a barely audible collective sigh of relief when this unusual and potentially dyspeptic ordeal was over. The manager who had arranged it considered it to be a roaring success.
The next time was three jobs, and two periods of involuntary unemployment later, at Square Chapel Theatre in Halifax. I was working at NHS Digital in Leeds, and I stopped a bit early in order to get the train. I had been invited by Steve Anderson, who at that time was a well-known performer in the West Yorkshire folk scene, and an arts event organiser in Calderdale. He also ran a vegan catering business.
Again, it was winter. Leeds station was a wind-tunnel of sleet and jaded irritability. The train was delayed by 10 minutes. That was not enough to make me miss my slot at the performance, but I had arranged to meet two friends, Gaia and Winston, in the pub, beforehand.
I got covered in another layer of sleet on the way to the pub, but I found them, and they greeted me cheerily, even though I was late. Gaia and Winston had brought their own vegan catering micro-business with them, in the shape of a Tupperware box containing egg-free coleslaw, which they were using to augment a large bowl of Wetherspoons chips. Winston and I drank pints of bitter and Gaia had her usual large dry white wine and soda.
Square Chapel Theatre was warmer than the pub, and we met Steve in a welcoming and well-lit bar, remarkably free of wet boot-prints. Steve insisted on buying me a pint, and I let him, because I was not being paid for this performance, nor was I getting any travelling expenses.
The auditorium at Square Chapel seats about 80 people, on fixed seats in sloped rows, like a small cinema. There is no stage, and so the performers are at the same level as the front row of the audience.
It was what I would call a knowledgeable audience of about 35 people. They all looked as if they wanted to be there. They all seemed reasonably sober.
The first performer was Steve himself, who played a couple of folk songs, and did a poem about the Duke of Wellington in his native Geordie dialect. He did it very well.
Square Chapel is too small to have wings or a green room, and so I had sat in the first aisle seat that was vacant, which was about four rows back. While Steve was performing, I re-read the provisional running order I had written in my small notebook, and tried to decide whether it needed adjusting. My slot was 7 minutes.
When it was my turn to go on, I checked that the mic stand did not need any adjustment, and I looked at the audience properly for the first time. That is my favourite moment of any gig, the second or two you get to find out what the audience is like, and whether where they want to go is the same place you decide to take them.
Gaia, Winston, and Steve were on the front row, only a few feet away from me. For the first time, I noticed that another person in the front row was Janine Rochester, a creative writing tutor about whom I had made a formal complaint, 6 years previously. The formal complaint had been dismissed at the first level of enquiry. There were two further levels available, and I escalated it to both of them. It was still dismissed.
I decided to change the running order.
I made my opening piece fairly new one I had written during my last period of unemployment, which had lasted for 18 months. I had entitled it, On this occasion, which I was not sure about, but had not been able to come up with a better one.
After I had been made redundant by CSC, I swore I was not going to write poems about being unemployed. I then wrote two poems about being unemployed. The first is called Jobseeker. On this occasion is the second. They are both what some people would dismissively call “list poems”. I prefer to call them “crescendo poems”. Jobseeker is more of a diminuendo, with a mood of gradual resignation. On this occasion is about getting angry. The stanzas get gradually longer, as the narrator counts an increasing series of job applications, through the days of the week. Stanza 4 refers to having to give an undertaking to commute to Birkenhead, 5 days a week. Even Janine Rochester showed her susceptibility to the comic potential of the word “Birkenhead”.
This was the poem’s first real outing. I had read it to my wife. I read everything I intend to perform to my wife in advance of the first performance, poetry and prose. But standing in a damp suit of clothes, in front of an audience, belting out words into a microphone, and with my stomach absorbing my fourth pint of beer, I found out whether the piece needed any further editing, and how to phrase it.
The clothes I use for performances that don’t take place on a day when I have been into the office, jeans, braces with badges on, and a brightly coloured T-shirt, constitute a look that I call, “the world’s worst children’s entertainer”. That is what I wore to perform it 8 days ago.
The last time I performed it, 2 days ago, was a work day. My current manager, Annette, had insisted, upon hearing of the poem’s publication, of seeing the book it had been published in. This is a handsome hardback called We’re All in it Together.
We had each driven over 200 miles to be in the office in Epsom. It was near the end of the working day. Most other people had gone home.
I told Annette that contemporary poetry divides into page poetry and performance poetry, and my piece was definitely performance poetry. She admitted that, because she was used to reading work-related documents, force of habit had made her try to read it as quickly as possible, and she realised she was not absorbing the sense of it.
And so loosened my tie, undid my top button to facilitate breathing, and I performed it for her, in the open plan office, in my work clothes. She appreciated it, and followed it assiduously through each stanza. Annette also happens to be from Merseyside, and appreciated the reference to Birkenhead.
If you want to read it, you are going to have to buy the book. If you want to hear it, you are going to have invite me to give a performance. I can do it straight after I finish work, if you like.
iamhyperlexic 