Yet another week has past, and for anyone that gives the slightest shit about my life outside of stand-up, I have found a part time job. I left the UK to come travelling because I felt stuck in a job I didn't enjoy. That job was picture framing. The job I have just got, is picture framing. That has to be some sort of irony or karma or some shit. The difference here is that I'm thankful for the money and would've given my left nut for a job so I won't grumble.
On the comedy front a few things have happened. And a few things haven't. I still haven't had a call from The Ellen Show yet. Personally I think she's bordering on rude now. There has also been no mega money deals or even so much as an offer to be in an advert for piles cream. This whole saga is taking longer than exprected. But I will be patient.
In terms of what has happened, there was another workshop on Tuesday for starters. Frankly I'm running out of original and new things to say about the workshop. It's pretty much the same routine every week. I had my gig "reviewed" from the week before. I think people thought it was OK, they again said there was a friendly and responsive audience which made it easier for the performers. When they said it, I couldn't help but think "Fuck you, maybe we were all just funny and you're fucking jealous", I also thought how good it would be to put on a good performance in front of a bad crowd and see what they thought then. In retrospect I wish I had never had that thought. I had a gig on Tuesday night at Syn and, let's just say, it wasn't a good crowd. But I'll talk more about that later. I also made the mistake of mentioning I had 5 or 6 beers to calm my nerves. At which point half the people there looked at me as if I'd just shat on their kids presents on Christmas Day. It was a look of shock, disgust and disappointment. I just wanted to try and take the edge off, is that so bad?
The other observation I wanted to make about the workshops recently, is that there have been a group of 5 or 6 girls and guys turn up together. They call themselves a "Comedy Troop" and are apparently putting on a show soon. The thing is, they remind me of some sort of drama school graduates who all think they are each the most hilarious people on earth. They have created a very exclusive group within the workshop where they sit together and talk through everyone elses time on stage, but when one of them go up, they cheer, whistle and laugh. Not a normal chuckle either. I'm talking proper over the top belly laughs like some terrible movie villain. Which brings me to my next gripe with the "Comedy Troop". We only have about an hour or so of time for everyone to get up on stage and try new things. It isn't long really and most people are courteous enough to only run over a couple of gags to see what people think. But these guys get up one by one and do a full 5-10 minutes each. Look, I don't have anything against these guys. They're probably very nice people and they are funny, some of them. The thing is, I get really wound up listening to 45 minutes of fake belly laughs and verbally patting each other on the back. To be honest their show can't come soon enough so they can crawl back into whatever trendy coffee shop they came out of.
 |
| The terribly pixelated poster for comedy at Syn (Apologies) |
To make things worse, I was on 9th. Or second to last. Or if you want to be as intelligent as me, I was the penultimate act. So I had to sit and watch nine comedians perform to silence and wait for my turn to do the same. And I need to stress, when you're on stage with a spotlight shining in your eyes, you can't see a thing past the light and when you don't hear anything, you just want to duck down, squint and cover the light from your eyes with your hand just to check there are people still in the fucking room. So, when it was my turn, I got up, started my routine, and to my delight the audience did actually laugh a bit. Not so much laughs more of a titter. Even that might be exaggerating but I guess it's better than nothing. The problem with this gig though was that I decided to ad-lib a few jokes at the end of some of my other jokes. And even when the ad-libs were funny, I would spend the next five seconds pondering how good my added on joke was, then forget what I was saying next, spending another five seconds looking like a bunny in the headlights while I tried to pick up where I was. Some of my ad-libs were also horrendous. To which I made the mistake of doing more ad-libs to dig myself out of a whole. The primary example of this being this; One of my jokes begins with me saying how I am not very well endowed. My ad-lib was to say that I blame my Dad. However, seeing as I attended school, I know that male genetic traits are equally as likely to come from the mother's side as the father's. This all went through my head, and I didn't want to seem ignorant, so I followed that up with "Or my Mum's side". Suddenly, I realised saying I got my small penis from my Mum may make her out to be some sort of transvestite, or maybe the audience might think my Mum has a particularly large clitoris or something. Neither of which I wanted to portray. So, having all this running through my head, while on stage, my final come back was "I hope I didn't get my small cock from my Mum". This all left me not only looking like a bell-end, but a bit confused as to what I was supposed to say next. I did, however, pull myself through the gig and I'm pleased to say that not only have I experienced my first difficult audience, I have fucked up my routine for the first time. Although I don't think many people noticed the fuck up. I did though.
I have also video recorded my last two gigs (I will put them on here as soon as I can) so I can actually look back and see what went well and what doesn't go so well. It's funny, the mind manages to do a really good job of blocking out horrible moments in your life. Like when you're stood on stage in front of 250 people and not a single person laughs at your joke. Luckily for me, I have video evidence to help me never forget! I really thought that I had nailed my routine at the Comic's Lounge a couple of weeks ago. On reflection, I made a couple of errors, missed out parts from the script, and talked over punchlines. On top of that, some jokes didn't get a laugh. It's good to be able to look back and see where you can improve. In contrast, I felt my gig on Tuesday was a disaster and had totally cocked it up and rushed through the whole thing in about 2 and a half minutes. But having watched the video, it lasted a respectable four and a half minutes, and people didn't noticed my wierd ramblings too much, they actually laughed at them as though they were a part of the performance. The laughs weren't very loud though, I mean, how loud can 7 people be? So watching it back makes it feel like nobody was laughing, but I was just pleased to hear something other than crickets and far off church bells in the background.
Next up for me then? I have another gig booked in at Comic's Lounge on the 15th February, there is a stand-up comedy competition running at Syn which I want to get myself involved in. There are also another few venues I am going to start exploring and getting gigs at such as the Exford, Deathstar, Spleen and MIB. They all sound like delightful places to be and I can't wait to perform there. I am also officially allowing my girlfriend to come and watch me at the Lounge too. And if that goes well, I may invite other friends along to watch me strike comedy gold as well. So.......
Stay safe, don't do drugs, look both ways when crossing the road, wipe back to front and genrally take care.
Sean
n.b If you're reading this and are not yet following my blog, please do so. It makes me feel popular and successful so please feed my ego. Thank you.
No comments:
Post a Comment