I read "My Scary Encounter With a Stalking Heckler"
And you can read it too, here.
I think it's a normal thing for a comedian -- especially one that's fairly new -- to be fascinated and frightened by hecklers. One of my favorite things to do is watch videos on YouTube of performers wrecking hecklers on stage (like the one where the guy smacks the audience member with the guitar?! Awesome.)
In real life, I've had very little interactions with truly malicious audience interaction and I consider myself fairly lucky, though I'm certain the time will come.
AFTER show creeper creepiness happens occasionally, and I'm sure my most lovely girlfriend, Sarah Mowrey, will tell you all about our Amarillo, Texas outing. We dealt with it the best way we could, "not shaking the hive," and all that. We politely smiled our way through awkward questions about our relationship (which we did mention briefly about on stage, separately), we left rooms when creepers would enter them, and when all it all got to be overwhelming, we booked it to our hotel room.
I guess it was really the first time where I felt really helpless in the scope of a performance situation and reading the article just kinda brought it all up for me and made me think about the lack of "how to" that surrounds this situation for comedians. I wanna say this is specifically a lady comedian issue, but I mean, really, I've seen Curt Fletcher straight up physically confronted at a corporate gig and nobody -- not the staff, not the crowd -- did anything. Even crazier: Curt went on to do 30+ more minutes of comedy.
So, ladies -- or, like I said, any comedian for that matter -- what are we supposed to do?
I looked at the comments under the original article I found a couple that I thought were interesting:
TheLadyAye : I've been a professional performer for about 7 years and I've faced down about every thing there is and GURL, let me tell you...
DO NOT EVER apologize for wanting to feel safe -- it's not weak, it's not girly, it's not wrong! It's a basic human right and the producers, performers, and bar staff should back you up 100% and if they don't, RAISE HELL. There's crowd work and then's there crap -- and your job description DOES NOT include taking crap. DO NOT STAND FOR IT.
mamabigdog: This sounds like it was a terrible experience unlike anything you've been through before . . . You did plenty of things right! You didn't back down, cry on stage or try to engage him on his icky level. You left the stage on your own terms, and he looked like the idiot he was. You were roundly supported by the staff and other comedians (although I wish that someone had stepped up sooner and ejected him not only from the club but also the bar), so no one thought you were being unreasonable . . . Most importantly, don't let this keep you from the stage! If this is your thing, if stand up is what you want to do, don't let one super creepy loser keep you from it. You have every right to be there doing your thing, and he has no right to be ruining everyone's night. The venue management really should have better plans in place for things like this.
It seems like the responsibility is really being put on venue to take care of this. I read Comic Insights by Franklin Ajaye, and in it he interviews a bunch of professional comics, including Ellen and asks her specifically about what she does to handle hecklers. Her response, basically, is the exact same thing as the commenters above. She makes arrangements with the management at the venue before hand and then they're responsible for taking care of the situation.
Maybe I'm getting all Jodie Foster in The Brave One (ps. how gay is this post now that I've mentioned both Ellen and Jodie Foster within lines of each other?) but I feel like there's something more that I can do and should do.
It's just scary as all get out. How am I supposed to go to other cities to perform without an entourage of boy performers? How are Sarah and I supposed to manage late night shows by ourselves downtown on Saturday nights? I mean, especially in the latter example, let's assume responsibility does fall on the venue -- well then, crap, because Sarah and I ARE the venue.
What would you do? What do you do?
