If you’ve seen my stuff before, skip to the middle
Notes
I got an email from a comedy club manager on Tuesday asking me to come in and do 5 minutes for Thursday night. I was really surprised because I’d just taken a 2 month sabatical and only resumed comedy last week, and suddenly I had another chance to take to the stage at a professional non-open mic venue! So I jumped at it!
The first half of my set I use the cat/vet story. I’ve used this 4 times so far, and the only great reaction I had was on the very first night I used it, and since then it has gone down further, and further. I feel sad about that and can’t quite identify why except maybe I’m just not passionate enough about it anymore?
Then I went into my new Transformers bit I started last week (but couldn’t record back then). I’d retooled it a little and made it longer, then came up with a great tag just a few minutes before going on stage. It worked a treat! It’s my new favourite bit.
And finally I finish with a mix of new and old coffee bits. I have a lot of stuff about coffee and this was the first time I tried to chunk them all together. The result was pretty good, though I skipped a few beats and the very end needs tightening up.
Overall I realise I went way too fast, and yet, finished exactly on 5 minutes! So, I’m happy about that. And I didn’t forget anything! The audience took a while to warm up but I’m pretty sure they liked me at the end. Compared to the other performances of the night, I was in the middle of the pack – a few didn’t fare so well, and others blew me out of the water. Which is good, because the audience wins!
Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever be able to be a “great” comedian. I definitely have trouble converting some of my ideas into stuff that is funny, and even more problems working out how to perform them on stage. But it’s still early.
I also heard last night about a competition called Green Faces. I couldn’t work out how to enter the Perth rounds, but I might like to give it a try with a mix of some of my lesser known and newest material (definitely not the cats bit anymore, for now).
PS: If you have any advice on how to take better video under stage lights, I’d love to hear them.
I hadn’t done a comedy show in two months, and for the past month I’d been waiting for my turn to come up at Lazy Susan’s. I spent about a week preparing but despite having written lots of little bits in that time, I couldn’t find any funny way to string them all together.
So I wasn’t sure, do I go up on stage and say what I have to say in the off chance the audience finds it funny, and for the experience, and to get myself back into the swing of things? Or do I cancel. And I prefer not to cancel, because it might give me a bad rap next time I try to get a spot. (As fate would have it a lot of people cancelled at the last minute).
I decided to go on anyway. Which is lucky because by the end of Tuesday I’d really refined my set-list into something I thought was good enough to try out.
And I was wrong! Haha. Okay I knew going in things would probably suck, and reality confirmed my suspicions. But with that said, out of the dozen or so bits, the audience found 2 or 3 funny, which means I can refine them for next time.
Unfortunately the event wasn’t taped, which is really sad, because I have stage amnesia and can’t remember which bits the audience liked and didn’t like. I’m not sure what I can do about that.
Topics covered include:
- What’s weird about prayer
- Suicide in the morning
- What’s hard about being fat (this is probably too complicated)
- McDonalds Coffee (a new one, there was a laugh in here somewhere)
- Men and Women
- Sex (this got a big laugh)
- Transformers (this got a big laugh)
Some of my routines were based on Christian ideas, though I’m not Christian. It’s just that I listened to a Best of Christian Comedy 2000 CD a week ago and it was so bad, it wasn’t funny at all, and I thought I could do better. Woops.
I also forgot my set list part-way through which sucked. It was caused by nervousness rather than not preparing.
Overall I’m satisfied, and wanting to do better next time, and that’s that.
I was in the wildcard round of the RAW Comedy competition tonight. I put a set together which was a mix of what worked last Saturday and last night, plus one or two funny bits from the past and one or two completely new small things that I’d always wanted to do.
Oh, and for the first time, I didn’t wear a suit. Now that I’ve tried it, I like both.
I was first up on stage and I just didn’t do as well as I could have. The audience didn’t seem to like my material as much as I had hoped, and for the first time since I started I forgot my set part-way through and had to check my cheat sheet.
Almost everyone on the night was better than me (I still kicked one or two), but the three winners were definitely great and deserved it. I didn’t deserve it, yet, but when it comes around again next year I’ll be ready with a vengeance.
I recorded my set, and hopefully I can put it online later if the festival organisers authorise it, now that I’ve lost.
I prepared a set almost exactly the same as the last half of my Northbridge street set from Saturday which got a good reception, so I knew it was good, and yet when I ran it last night it went okay but not great.
I didn’t feel alone though, despite there being about 60 people at the club, there was something off with the mood compared to last week, all of the professionals were struggling to get anything out of them.
I did do something different this time, every time I looked down at stage I reminded myself to look at the audience instead and try to make a connection. That didn’t work, I mean I did it, but there was no connection.
So tonight is my big night and I have to decide am I going to do the same thing as before that didn’t win it for me, or am I going to run my new stuff knowing it worked once and bombed once.
I was flicking through a book called Comedy Secrets, where it had a paragraph or two about why material works one night and not others, and that some studies have shown external factors have a big impact on how the audience will receive material. Still, I feel like as a performer we’re meant to be able to turn the crowd around and make them laugh because out stuff is FUNNY. Not just funny in the COLD or the HOT or on a SATURDAY but FUNNY. And when we know the audience can randomly like or dislike material despite it being funny, it’s hard to know where the line is between saying – I had a shit night – or – the audience had a shit night.
I performed a free event last night on the edge of the Northbridge Piazza. It was 5 minutes of my Raw Comedy set, followed by 5 minutes of brand new material. It all went really well, but unfortunately I forgot to tape it.
Thanks to everyone that came and watched, and if you took photos please send me copies. Thanks.
I’ll probably do the same thing at the same time next week, but hand out the new comedy cards I expect to have this week
