Derek Scott Mitchell and a bit of Dutch courage
How to reach show fitness on a cocktail of delusion, consistency and nuggets from McDonalds.
If I really have to be on the clock for one of my freelance copywriting clients, I have to log on at 8am. If I'm in Europe, I can have a bit more of a lie in. I’ve written about all kinds of things - especially industrial processes. You got to do, what you got to do! Someday when I'm on Graham Norton's couch it will be a fun little quip to say this was my day job. But at the moment it’s my reality.
After I finish that, I record a sketch. I write, edit, and post at least one sketch a day. I’ve got it down to a science. I have a Notes app that is a well of stupid ideas. I just sift through them until I find a slightly passable one, then turn it into a 90 second sketch.
Just before I’m leaving to go to the venue, I’m usually tweaking my new work in progress, Goblin. It’s a technically intricate nightmare, to the scale of “Like, really how on earth do we put this thing on in a technical sense!” Every time we're about to do it, I regret having made the show the way it is because there's 10,001 sound cues. There's a lot of recorded voices. Inevitably, I’ll have rewritten some bits since the last show, so I'll re-record voices, then edit those in GarageBand, then put those in the queue lab. It's really, really intricate and time consuming. I'm usually doing that right up until the moment I have to leave.
Kathy (Kathy Maniura) and I have a suitcase that we’ve dragged around Europe, full of wigs and costumes for all the shows we've ever done. We call it “Big Silver”. It's a big Samsonite suitcase with everything in it needed for every kind of emergency. In an earlier iteration of my show, it even had an inflatable paddling pool which I could pull out and use to cover myself in baby oil.
When I get to the venue my average arrival is an hour before the show. I go to the closest bathroom and get changed, it's no big deal, it's part of the business. When you’re starting out, there’s this impulse where you need to get into a meditative state and get into whatever. I feel if you’re really a professional, you don’t need that. I can just turn it on. I’ll probably be chatting to the stage manager or director just before I go on, there's no need to be super method, unless you are like Jared Leto playing a serial killer, but then that’s probably more for attention anyway…
The last few weeks, I've had a gig every single day. The month and a half before, I did 40 shows in 26 days. I'm always performing now, so I’m finding it easy to switch it on and off and that's amazing. It means you're in your element and in your craft as an artist and a performer. It's called show fitness. People talk about it when they are on a West End show or after they finish a month in Edinburgh. What I’m happy about is that I’ll be in that state when I go up to Edinburgh - I'll be able to hit the ground running. That doesn’t guarantee it’s any good though! Sometimes you can have shows that don’t go well… It can often be not good…
Recently, I had a couple sit right in the front row, and I could tell from the beginning that this was not what they were expecting, and after the show after I had given my emotional all, one of them came up to me and said, “I just have a bit of feedback, I think you need more visual cues at the beginning of the show… I’m thinking sock puppets?”
Being a performer, especially a comedian, if you don't have a medical level of delusion when you're writing your own material, you won't be successful. You need to be delusional, because every rational voice will say this is not a good thing to be doing to yourself, to be putting yourself through. It's not healthy for you.
It's not bad for you in these early days. What we're all gunning for is some form of financial and professional stability and it's very hard to get that. So you have to be delusional, and you have to love it. Thankfully I have both.
When I come off stage, I usually think of edits that could be useful and try to write them down whilst it’s fresh. I do my best to record all my shows, but sometimes it's important to just get it down if you notice something during the show.
What’s crazy is I have a larger following in the Netherlands due to my other persona (Double Dutch), and I’ve started doing meet and greets after every show. It feels mad to me that 100 people will queue up to see me. Thankfully there are all quite normal people that just want to say, “thank you”, “great show” and “we also noticed these weird Dutch things” and it’s great to properly engage with the audience like that.
In a past life I've helped with some of the big drag show meet and greets with the Ru Paul drag queens. That was insane. An absolute horror show. 14 year olds would line up, would get their shaking, sobbing, tears shooting out of their eyes then come up with a bust of the Queen made out of pasta covered in blood and they’d go, “This is my blood. For you. I made this for you” and the Queen's like “ooh… this has to be a special moment.” My job then was to step in and be like, “Okay buddy, your time's up” and these 14 year olds in tears would complain and say, “No! I paid for a minute!” Horrible, horrible… So far my meet and greets aren’t like that. If they do get like that, I’ll stop.
What I find amazing now with social media is that, 10 years ago you would have no idea about your audience, you would be completely dependent on promoters to do all that for you. Now you own yourself much more. I think that worries people in the traditional industry a lot more. It’s a great power to have and incredibly freeing as an artist. It allows you to be authentic.
I genuinely like performing, there's nothing on earth that I want to do more, so when it's happening, I'm more aligned. It’s like my soul and my body are in perfect harmony. Nothing else matters and everything, all of the endless tireless grind that I've pushed myself through that day and for years is worth it in those moments.
Heading home, in the Netherlands we’ll usually drive to the gigs. My husband and I have got into the habit of unfortunately getting McDonald's because it’s so close to our house. During the recent tour we would go all the time. My McDonald's order would always be the same, nuggets (no carbs). Eating it on the couch, probably at like one in the morning with a little bit of Drag Race on TV before bed. That’s bliss. Heaven on earth. I've never been happier.
Find more of Derek’s content here and details for his upcoming shows
We saw what you did in the dark:
16/03/24, Please Don’t Destroy at Leicester Square Theatre, “I just blasted!”
Please Don’t Destroy hit Leicester Square Theatre this week – their first ever performance in the UK!
The trio - Ben Marshall, Jon Higgins, and Martin Herlihy - have been writing and performing comedy together in New York since 2017. It’s a classic story: comedy nerds find one another at a prestigious university; two of their dads work on Saturday Night Live; they get the gig; they go on an international tour (just kidding, but not really).
The digital shorts they’re best known for are fast-paced and can typically veer into magical realism (favourite sketches include one where Martin has a second face on his head, who died; and one where Martin unknowingly features in a Netflix documentary about his own life), so it was hard to predict how it would translate to a live performance.
The result? Sharp, wacky sketches – from behind-the-scenes on New Year’s Eve on a British radio show (“We’re not pandering, we perform this every time,”) to a dustbowl scene interrupted by an item missed off a shopping list, the chemistry between the three crackles and, as seasoned performers and writers, their timing is pitch-perfect.
Sure, some sketches lacked originality, and one about a homophobic doctor could’ve been skipped altogether. Plus, you’d think with a movie under their belt and a regular SNL slot, they might have produced something a little more… well, ‘produced’. And their solemn musical warm-up act, Ian Sweet, felt out-of-place in front of a silent, seated audience.
Yet their charm was evident – and it’s always fun to watch funny comedy guys who are friends do comedy together. Like white bread when you’re preparing for a colonoscopy, it’s super easy to digest.