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.

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You must watch this, it’s one of my favourites.

Notes

This was my second performance ever, and I had just come back from holiday and was feeling great, and really happy to be back, and suntanned and relaxed with brand new material. Almost everything hit just like I had planned, except something at the beginning.

I did make some beginner mistakes, not moving the mic stand, and forgetting my set list twice (although some people said it was “better” because the set list was way smaller using keywords instead of the whole thing printed out), and holding the microphone with both hands.

It’s still one of my fondest memories though.

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