Stand Up, Comedy (Part 2)

About a week before my Stand Up Comedy day course last year Herself suddenly turned to me and said, "Well, you could have asked me if I wanted to come as well"

This, it should be said, despite the fact that I had told her all about the course repeatedly and she'd had ample chance to jump on board.  I pointed this out and said, "well, the tickets are still on sale - would you like to go?"

As it happened she wasn't really feeling up to it, so decided to pass - but we did agree that we would both go on the longer version of the course from April - July that also included the chance to take part in a showcase at a local Arts Centre

Now the first problem with the course was that it was on a Monday night - and Monday's are traditionally difficult in my job as it's the day I am needed in the office for our main meeting (a meeting that could equally be held entirely remotely via the internet if it weren't for the large number of Dinosaurs that work with me) - so I had to get permission to work from a different office that was much (100 miles) closer to the course.  Having agreed this with my colleague and immediate boss you can imagine my surprise when, having paid for the course, my boss upped and left the company without telling his boss what had been agreed.

Fortunately I was able to argue that I could offer support just as easily from a remote location and could therefore complete the course.

A lot of the material was the same and many of the exercises were ones that I had already done but the structure was different - in the first hour we did group exercises, whilst in the second there was a "show and tell" section for the class members to try out the routines they were working on and get feedback from the others and the teacher.

The honest truth is that you can't really teach comedy as there is no right and wrong - but you can learn about different styles of comedy, where ideas can come from and get useful feedback.

Excercises included:

Taking a household chore and assigning one of the seven deadly sins to it - so how would your attitude to washing up be affected if you were Slothful or Envious etc

Anthrophormorphisation (probably spelt wrong) - assigning a character trait to an inanimate object.  How might a tin of tuna feel about never being used etc

Another thing we talked about was the economy of language - often taking the shortest route to a joke is the best so that people can keep track without speeding ahead

Pretty early on I started writing my routine - it developed from a single joke about my hometown to an entire routine of 40 jokes (we had a five minute slot each in the showcase, which was open to the public), many of which were inspired by the location I lived for the past ten years

I wrote and re-wrote, all the time telling Herself that maybe it would be a good idea to at least write something and that the deadline was looming increasingly closely on the horizon (she seems to thrive on waiting till the last minute)

My main fear was my memory - I was so afraid of forgetting bits that I would constantly repeat the jokes in my head or out loud if no one was around hoping that they would stick - I did decide that I would have a sheet of paper with bullet points on and that I would finish on a song

Now I've done a small amount of amateur theatre in the past and we are both members of a public speaking group - but the difference with acting is that there are other people on stage whose lines will help you to put a framework around your own - this time I would have only my memory: and each time I repeated them there would be a blank spot somewhere.

The first time I tried the routine at class there was a deafening wall of silence - clearly it needed work and re-writing - the second time (a few weeks later) things were much better.

The week of the showcase came around at last and for the first time Herself stood up and tried her routine in front of the class - total silence.  Oh dear.

The evening of the performance - I was on first, herself was third.  I wasn't even slightly nervous whilst I listened to the teacher/compare do his warm up jokes, just trying to keep hold of the jokes in my head.

I stood up, told my first joke, got a laugh - and went totally blank.  It was like my brain stepped out of my head.  It was probably only for a second but it felt like a lifetime.  I turned to the piece of paper I had left on the desk and saw the next bullet point - from there on I was fine and, although I did leave out one or two jokes, I got plenty of laughs

Fortunately Herself had rethought the way she approached her routine and she did really well, getting lots of laughs as well from a routine about how sign language can land you in trouble if you use the wrong sign (never confuse the sign for samosa with the one for vagina)

All in all it was a good evening - but looking back I don't know how I really feel about it.  Sometimes when you come off a good gig you feel like you could take on the world, and your head is buzzing with energy.  Sometimes you can come away from a gig, even the best gig in the world, feeling terribly depressed because of something tiny that went wrong - I just came away feeling empty: not really knowing if I had achieved anything or not.

I think it was good to challenge myself - recently at the public speaking group I've been aware that I am coasting and have lost interest - and am glad that I got plenty of laughs.  But still...

Anyway - here's a comedian talking about spices