Dear All,
Seven more days have past which means I must have wonderfully entertaining tales and tit-bits from within the Melbourne comedy circuit for your reading pleasure. Tales of my own personal growth and development, tales of meeting fantastic global stars of comedy and tales of amazing opportunities presenting themselves before me. Well.......no. Not really. But kind of.
I want to start by mentioning something that I completely forgot to mention last week. And when I realised I had forgot to mention it, I actually did an animated slap of my forehead and nearly found myself shouting, "D'oh!". What can possibly be so important that forgetting it required an animated slap of the forehead I hear you cry? Well, last week, wait for it, I bought a new notepad. My Bible that had been my notepad, where I scribed all of my jokes and humorous observations, where I had penned my entire set, and where I had taken note of tips and advice from established comedians had basically filled up. It's my own fault really, I shouldn't have bought such a cheap little notepad in the first place. But how was I to know that 4 months later I'd even still be doing this, let alone would have written enough to fill a notepad?
But I am still doing it, and I did fill it. So I treated myself to a brand spanking new notepad that was thicker, had hard-back covers for protection, had lines to write on, and even had the luxury of page margins. It was at this time, stood in the queue at my local supermarket, holding my shiny black notepad, that I knew I was heading up in the world. Now if that story doesn't get you salivating with excitement and anticipation over what the rest of my week could have contained, you're crazy. But fear not, some stuff did actually happen that was slightly more notable than me buying a little notepad. For instance, there was a workshop and a guest speaker. I had a gig. I nearly died on stage during my gig. I snuck out the back door of my gig so I didn't need to face anyone. And finally, I booked myself in for another gig. And it's not even the end of the week yet!
The workshop was OK. Same old stuff that I'm beginning to get the feeling I don't need to go into too much detail about. "Has anyone had gigs?", "Who wants to try new stuff?", yadda yadda yadda, bla-dee bla bla. The interesting bit of the workshop came when our guest speaker, Col Cameron, piped up. He started by telling us how he made a living in comedy. Which is essentially MC-ing at corporate gigs and functions around the country while still doing the odd stand-up gig for extra pocket money. He also runs a comedy room with another comedian, but I have no idea where that is, or whether it's actually an earner for them or just a hobby. I found it quite interesting to learn there are ways of making money in comedy without doing paid stand-up gigs or moving into television.
The other thing he mentioned, was an old exercise he did when he was just starting out at a workshop like ours. He said the woman who was running the workshop got everyone to go on stage, say their names, where they're from and why they are doing comedy. The people watching would write down the name of the person on stage, and what role they would cast them in in a film e.g "The housewife", "The good looking one" etc. It turned out that there were ten or so people that weren't happy with how the majority of people watching perceived them. These people were cast as "The ugly one", "The one with dreadlocks", "The old one" etc. They wanted to be "The funny one" or something more relevant. As it happens, they were told, they were the acts that had the bigger chance of making it in comedy, because they had some distinctive feature that audiences could remember them by. We were told that unless you had some quirky look about you, or distinctive feature, you had to be pretty damn funny to make it. Which I'm sure a lot of people found very heartening to hear. But I don't have any distinctive features, other than my ginger hair and dazzling smile, so that means I have to be extra funny which seems a bit unfair to me. I'm considering taking a hot iron to one side of my face so I can be "The horribly scarred one". Then I don't have to try as hard.
This exercise Col talked about actually had some relevance to me because for the last couple of weeks I've been talking to a couple of the other guys about how I open my set. I have always opened with a joke. Not a typical stand-up joke. Just the sort of joke that you'd tell your mates in the pub. It's not always my joke either, just a joke I've heard. I'm not stealing or plagiarising the joke from another comedian, it's just a funny joke. My theory behind it is to give the audience something to take away with them. How many times have you told a funny story to someone that didn't get laughs because you either didn't tell it right or "You had to be there"? I don't want people to come and see me and leave saying "He was funny but what was it he said again?" By me telling them a joke, they can leave having that as pub ammo and inadvertently spread my name around. Then I can be "The one that said that joke". In my head it sounds like a good plan. But I know a couple of people I've mentioned it to think it takes away some of the humour from my own jokes by having one that isn't mine there. Also, if someone happens to have heard that joke already, they will wonder whether any of my material is my own. I can definitely see both sides of the story and haven't quite made my mind up which way to go yet. But for the time being I will continue by opening with a quick joke.
As I mentioned, I had a gig at the Comic's Lounge on Tuesday night (15.02.11).........It was a disaster. Not a disaster on the scale of Titanic, Hurricane Katrina or Global Warming. But definitely a disaster on the scale of the recent floods in Australia or the Egyptian riots. I had a feeling from way before I even got to the workshop that something not good was going to happen, so I made a point of reading through my set enough times that I could do it in my sleep, blindfolded and with ear muffs on.
The crowd wasn't that big this week, which was a relief to begin with. There was maybe forty or fifty people. The other thing that gave me confidence was that a few of the other people on that night were only doing there first or second gig. I know it sounds horrible, and I swear I do like the guys that went on, but I was really hoping at least one of them bombed so I would look even better. As it happens, I was the one that bombed. Funny old world isn't it. I failed on Tuesday for two reasons, the first being the fact that the punchline to my opening joke was the C-Bomb (That's C,U Next Tuesday for anyone that doesn't know). I learned the hard way that that word only works in certain audiences. Certainly not audiences mainly comprising of Mothers, Fathers and Grandparents of other comedians. I learned my lesson the hard way and won't be using that joke again. The other thing is, just an hour or so before I went on, I came up with two really good jokes to work into my routine. I knew exactly where they were going and it would make each joke that much better. It was just a case of remembering to put them in. The first one went swimmingly. I worked it in perfectly and everyone laughed. Even the second one I worked in flawlessly and it got a good reception. But while I was admiring how well my new jokes had gone down, stood on stage with the spotlights shining firmly on me, I had a total mind blank as to where my routine went next. This, of all weeks, was the first gig I'd decided I knew my set well enough to not feel the need to take my notes on stage with me. I was helpless, like a bunny in car headlights. I was silent on stage for what felt like a good 30 seconds. The crowd were equally silent except for the odd awkward cough or giggle at my despair. It even got to the point where I had to tell the audience they could talk among themselves and that this would be a good time to go to the bar because they weren't missing much. Actually, those comments did manage to get a bit of laughter and I finally managed to remember where the hell I was going and finished off my routine.
The most annoying thing about the whole situation was the fact that none of it was anybody else's fault except my own. I had no-one else to blame for my cock up, the crowd were good, there weren't any hecklers. There were no external factors in my failure. I guess it's good to get a failure under my belt though, I now know what to expect and how to deal with it. I can also learn from my mistakes and I can guarantee I won't be making them again. All new jokes get thoroughly rehearsed before performance, and all jokes containing offensive language gets chucked on the pile of all my other jokes that don't make the grade. So essentially, this gig was a useful learning curve for me and I intend to treat it as such.
If I edited out the two negative points, it was a really good gig. Like I said, the audience were good. They laughed at all my jokes at the right times and it could of been another victory under my belt. So I'm not too disheartened by the whole affair. I was at the time though. I didn't even want to go out to the bar because I didn't want to hear any ones opinions. So much so that when I left, I went out the back door. Bit childish really. I wasn't going to. I was going to wait until the last act had finished and sneak out when people had left. But I got talking to a guy called Mr.Alabama. He's an established African-American comedian in Melbourne to do a show at the Comedy Festival. He had some really constructive points for me and gave alot of advice. When I say he's African-American, I use the politically correct term. But this guy is a stereotype, and he knows it. And that's what makes him even funnier. We're stood in the green room chatting. Me, a pasty white, red haired English guy. And him, a big black guy from a ghetto in the deep South. It was ironic that he was the one who warned me off the C-Bomb when every other word that came from his mouth was either mother-fucker, bitch or pussy. He is a hilarious person though and a really nice guy. If you happen to be in Melbourne during the Comedy Festival, I'd recommend his show just to see him. I think he's playing at the Elephant and Wheelbarrow in the CBD. But I'm not sure when.
It was Alabama actually that told me to go out the back door. He can really talk and talk and as I politely as I could, I told him I had to go. To which he replied "Now you can't be going out the front with other cats on stage and shit. That shits just rude mother fucker. If you wanna leave you gone have to go out the back door". So I did. I didn't want to be rude and an incompetent comedian. So I snuck out the back, licking my wounds in a back alley of Melbourne.
The good news is that I have two more gigs coming up. The bad news is that they aren't until March. I have to try and get myself some more in the meantime because I don't want to have such a large gap between gigs. Especially as my last one didn't go so well. I want to get straight back up on the proverbial horse. I tried to pencil in some gigs at both M.I.B and The Exford Hotel but because the Comedy Festival is soon, the comedians that are doing shows here have booked warm up gigs at these places. Meaning I can't get a gig there until they've gone. Annoying. But I am going to try and scout out a couple of other venues I've heard about and see if I can get a slot there. So fingers crossed.
I've also learned that the Comic's Lounge is booked out for a private function next week so the workshop is off. At least I don't need to relive the horror of my gig I guess. So God knows what I will write about next week but I'm sure it will be just as genius as ever.
Until next time,
Sean
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