Hold Music Featuring Cher: Inside the Bomb-at-Pride Crisis Line

The call comes in around 1:47 p.m. on a Saturday in June. Somewhere in a park in West Hollywood — or Chicago's Boystown, or the scruffier, more honest version of the same park in Providence, Rhode Island — a comedian has just read the run sheet and discovered the truth: their set is scheduled opposite the main stage. Opposite the headliner. Opposite the moment the entire festival crowd surges toward a drag superstar descending on a glitter cannon.

They call the Pride Performer Crisis Hotline. This is the transcript.

"Thank You for Calling, Your Tragedy Is Important to Us"

HOTLINE: Pride Performer Crisis Hotline, this is Dionne, how can I help?

CALLER: Hi. Hi. I'm sorry. I'm — I go on in twenty-eight minutes and nobody is here.

DIONNE: Okay. First things first: are you safe? Are you hydrated? Are you wearing a shirt with your own face on it?

CALLER: It's a merch shirt.

DIONNE: We'll workshop that. Tell me your time slot, sweetheart.

CALLER: 2:15.

Dionne audibly inhales, the way a nurse does when the chart says something bad.

DIONNE: Oh, honey. You've got the 2:15. That's the slot directly opposite soundcheck-to-headliner transition. That's not a time, that's a warning label. You are officially Performing Into the Void — June Edition.

The Five Stages of the 2:15 Slot

DIONNE: Let's walk through what you're about to feel, so it doesn't feel like a personal attack. Stage one: Denial. You'll tell yourself the main stage crowd will "wander over." They will not. They are chained to a barricade by the magnetic force of a hype man saying "make some NOISE."

Stage two: Anger. You will resent the booking coordinator, who booked forty-one acts into a six-hour window out of what I can only describe as optimism-based warfare.

Stage three: Bargaining. You will start doing crowd work toward the food trucks. Do not chase the food trucks. The food truck crowd has already eaten their feelings and has no room for yours.

Stage four: Depression. This is when you'll spot your ex in the main stage crowd. Do not wave. That's a different hotline.

Stage five: Acceptance, which at Pride looks like doing your tightest five to a man in a puppy hood, his very supportive boyfriend, and a woman named Karen who wandered over from the voter registration table. Karen will laugh at everything. Karen is your audience now. Love Karen.

Your Official Survival Kit

CALLER: What do I bring?

DIONNE: Checklist. Say it back to me.

• Sunglasses. Officially for sun. Functionally so nobody sees the exact moment a joke dies and you blink back the light.
• A fully charged phone with your notes app open, so between bits you appear busy and booked, like a woman with options.
• A fake booking agent script. If a fellow performer asks what's next for you, you say, "Sorry, my agent's calling," and then you have a full conversation with a dial tone about a "theater run in Minneapolis." Commit. The dial tone is your scene partner.
• One prop. Not two. Two props is a street performer. One prop is a bit.
• Emergency glitter, not for you — for throwing over the set like a finale, so it looks like something happened.

CALLER: What if nobody claps at the end?

DIONNE: Then you clap. You clap for you. That's not sad, that's dramaturgy.

Rebranding the Wreckage

CALLER: Is there any point? Should I just cancel?

DIONNE: Absolutely not, and here's why. Every queer comedian has a Void Story. The 2:15 slot is your origin story. Hannah Gadsby didn't get here by playing packed rooms her whole life. Some of the best material ever written was workshopped to six people in folding chairs while a cover of "Believe" blasted from four hundred feet away. That hold music you're hearing right now? That's Cher. We play Cher on this line because Cher also started small. Probably. Don't fact-check that, it's a hotline, not NPR.

The truth, baby, is that Pride audiences are feral, distracted, sunburned, and dehydrated — and the ones who do find you at 2:15 found you on purpose. That's not an empty room. That's a congregation.

CALLER: Okay. Okay. I think I can do it.

DIONNE: You're going to do it, and it's going to be small and it's going to be holy. Now hang up and go be somebody's favorite discovery. And if all else fails?

CALLER: Blame the booking coordinator.

DIONNE: At tag, baby. At tag. This line closes at sundown. Mwah.

The Pride Performer Crisis Hotline is not a real service, but the 2:15 slot is devastatingly real. If you're performing opposite the headliner this June: sunglasses on, dial tone ready, Karen is waiting.