Hecklers Welcome
Sunday night, I attended a comedy show written and performed by one of my favorite comedians, James Acaster. We bought these tickets months ago and then promptly planned a trip to Ireland to use them. He hasn't gone on tour very much, and it's been a while since he's been to the U.S. (although I was considering driving the 7 hours to Austin to see him last year when I was 8.5 months pregnant, but the show sold out too quickly). All that to say, this was a dream come true, and I immensely enjoyed the show. In my husband's words, "It met and exceeded expectations."
Inspiration can strike anywhere, even at a comedy show. James Acaster always does his own introductions. Before entering the stage, he came on the mic to lay down some house rules. This tour was called "Hecklers Welcome." He had opened it up for hecklers to call out whenever and however they wanted during the show. In his words, they could "fill their boots." The ground rules were standard things such as he would only call people out if they initiated the interaction, getting up to go to the bathroom wouldn't count, and that things like hate speech would get someone kicked out of the theater.
He closed the introductory speech by saying, "Even though James Acaster worked really hard and is incredibly proud of what he's created, he has to accept whatever happens here tonight." That one sentence stayed with me for the first 45 minutes until I could write it down during the interval (we're in Ireland, so they call it that instead of intermission). I was laughing far too much at his jokes and didn't want to miss a thing by taking my phone out to write that down, so the fact that I remembered it for that long should showcase how impactful it was.
Because here's the thing: we all work really hard on whatever we are doing. The second unfortunate truth is that we have to accept whatever is going to happen. With my dream of being a writer, one day, I will publish a book. I know that I am going to work incredibly hard on it. I know I will be proud of everything that I have achieved. I also know that some people will love it (hopefully), and there will be other people who drag it through the gutter. I have to accept that.
There's been a lot of talk with celebrity scandals about separating the art from the artist. Can we and should we be able to do that? I'm not going to weigh in on that issue, but I think the same question applies to our dreams. Can we separate our work from the results? Can we be proud of the show that we have written regardless of how the audience receives it? It seems like James Acaster can, or at least he's working on it.
The reality is that the only thing we can control is ourselves. We have the power to handle our attitude and activity and not much else. The only thing we can try to change is ourselves. It would be insane to try to change other people. So, we have to find a way to reflect on the criticism because some of it is valid. We get to decide whether to make changes or leave something as is. Sometimes a critic has a great point but we decide that making that change would go against the heart of what we are trying to do. Sometimes we take that critic's advice and produce a stronger better product. Regardless of what the critics or, frankly, even the admirers say, though, we need to stand on our own two feet with pride in what we've achieved.
This can be the scariest part of stepping out with our dream. James Acaster talks about how his dream was to make it to huge crowds on tour, and when he got there, he discovered that 4 out of every 5 shows in a week, there was someone in the crowd hell-bent on yelling whatever they wanted at him. It was the worst part, and in many ways, it made him hate stand-up.
During the Covid lockdown, though, he spent a lot of time reflecting and thinking of ways to take the power or fear away from hecklers. He thought back to an experience on the train where a group of teenage boys came on board and were pretty much torturing the whole car. At one point, they surrounded James, and one boy yelled at him. In response, James asked the teenager, "Why are you trying to scare me?" That conversation quickly turned into the teenagers leaving him and everyone in the car alone for the rest of the ride. James discovered that by calling out the fear, he had taken the power away.
So he launched the "Hecklers Welcome" tour. By inviting people to do and say whatever they wanted during a show, he had taken the fear away that it would happen. He could step out on stage confident that he would do his part, and anyone else could decide to interfere if they wanted. But he would do his part while feeling prepared for whatever may come.
And what he discovered, by opening it up to let people do whatever they wanted, was that people were already doing whatever they wanted anyway. They didn't need his permission to yell if they were going to. But he had found a way to take the fear out of it.
I think, with our dreams, we often get scared of the hypothetical worst-case scenarios. We take a few bad apples from our past experience with this dream and amplify that to cover everyone. I am inclined to take the criticisms from people who just didn't like reading my writing and assume that going forward, I will only receive hate emails. But what is more likely to happen is that the percentage of people who don't like my writing is probably about the same percentage it will always be.
Sure, I could have a massive dip in quality or say some things that I definitely shouldn't have said, and I probably will at some point. I will apologize, fix it, and move on in that scenario. But overall, the people who like my stuff will keep enjoying it, and the people who don't like it will keep not liking it. My dream isn't supposed to serve everyone. My dream is for me, first and foremost. As long as I'm happy with it, then I should keep going down the path that I'm on.
All of this is to say that I think we should take pride in our work and find a way to accept whatever happens once our dream goes beyond ourselves. We can't control what comes next once we start putting it in the world, but we can control how well we keep loving and fighting for our dreams. It's easy to get scared of the worst-case scenario. It's easy to want to hide our dreams in our minds. But I think, more often than not, we'll discover that the world is the same tomorrow as it was yesterday; the only difference is that now we get to see our dreams start shining in it.