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Last night my wife, Lisa, and I went to a performance of "The Blue Monkey Sideshow" here in Bloomington, Indiana, USA. The troupe put on a two and a half hour presentation of vaudeville mixed with self-made freak stunts, some gimmicked, some real. The show as a whole had something there, but there was one aspect of that particular performance that really caught my attention.

Because of the show's dynamics were similar to those that you would find at a Rocky Horror showing, there were members of the audience that began to yell out things to the performers. Given the context, I felt perfectly comfortable with the situation and recognized the hecklers as being overly excited audience members. The were two things that I noticed that were interesting.

First, there was a couple of very vocal hecklers, with one dominant voice in particular. Most of the time, she was not insulting, but rather prompting the performer on stage to do something. Most of the time she stayed with what was going on stage. For example, the performer takes off his shirt to lie on a bed of nails and the heckler yells "Take off your pants! Wooo!" - typical fun/tease. Every time the heckler spouted off, the barker for the show would throw back a canned "come-back". "This is why some animals eat their young." "Oh, you are from " etc. He provided a very aggressive insult reply to each heckle. The interesting dynamic that I noticed about this was:

The heckler has the power to be funny via the shotgun method - shoot many shots in the general direction and one of them will hit. That is, this person yelled things out every few minutes. About one in ten were very funny and very appropriate, and her good remarks was rewarded by great laughter. Several people around me were wondering if she was actually part of the show. When she made a remark that wasn't insulting, abusive or disjunctive, but also wasn't really very funny, the audience quickly forgave her, for everyone knew that she was trying to have fun and, after all, she is just an audience member. The dynamic of the show continued.

But! When the performer says his comeback, it HAD to be funny. When it wasn't funny or as clever as the heckler's, the show fell into a quick slump.

The performer is supposed to be in control. The heckler is not, so when they gain control, even for a little bit, they receive great support from the audience. But, when the performer looses control, even once, the audience doesn't forgive or forget. Although the performer comes to the heckler battle field with more ammunition, the heckler is the only one who is allowed to miss. Consequently, it's best to keep the exchanges SHORT!

The thing that the performer could have done to remedy this situation was not to continually challenge the heckler. He kept trying to best her. After the first couple of rounds, it was obvious that the rules of this particular performance had been established: "You yell out things - I say witty things back" Unfortunately for everyone, the performer ran out of ammo about twenty minutes into a two and a half hour show.

The second thing that I noticed was that the heckler was working as hard as she could to keep the show going. When ever the pace of the show lagged (which was VERY often), the heckler would yell out something. (Actually, I suspect that the heckler was a bit of a thespian as her timing was quite good.) The slow moments in the script forced the audience into uncomfortable tension. The heckler's remarks were simply a response to that tension.

The solution? Keep the pace up. Don't let the audience down, and they won't feel the need to fill in the gaps. Maybe taking thirty minutes of material and stretching it into a two and a half hour show isn't such a good idea.

If the Blue Monkey Side Show comes to your town, there is some juggling along with some other weird stuff. It's a fun experience if you go into it in the right frame of mind.

- Steve