I practiced my heart out for this one, a real show at Laugh Resort, then missed a punchline early on and lost the confidence of the crowd, setting myself up for very few laughs. They were nice enough to let me finish hanging myself…
I think what I learned here is that my facial expressions and the strength of the opener can be determining factors in how well the show is going to go. I don’t think the material was wrong for the crowd – though it’s possible, it’s not a very helpful belief.
It was a very tough night for the first few comedians too, but comedians near the end really won the crowd over, especially when they had interaction with the crowd. But I think it was confidence in themselves and their material that really sold it. I think it’s a mistake to do Laugh Resort without believing in yourself 100%, unlike some of the other venues which are more forgiving.
Skip this one if you want to, I bombed pretty hard.
Notes
Here you go on stage and have to try to last 5 minutes without 3 audience members voting you off (which they do during your act by holding up elephant pictures). Of about 20 comedians only 6 made it to the semi-final.
I really screwed up here, missing a punch line, forgetting where I was the moment I stepped on stage, and having a facial expression where I’m begging for laughs from the audience. I really hated myself for that.
I felt worse for the other comedians, some were hilarious and deserved to win but didn’t. Others weren’t funny in the slightest but lasted the 5 minutes just by not saying anything controversial (or funny at all). The judges were extremely harsh in the first round, however then the judges were swapped with other people and were extremely forgiving in the second round. So that sucked too.
But to be clear I completely lost this one out of my own mistakes. Oh, and it reminded me it’s important to be able to run a clean set, which I won’t be able to do for a long time.
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.
I wasn’t very confident, I forgot my set list twice, and some of my jokes didn’t hit, but God damn it if the audience wasn’t nice enough to laugh anyway because I had put so much love into the material, and lots of it was genuinely funny. This is one of my favourites and has some of my funniest and most original personal observations.
