So tonight was the final show - the big assessment. Naturally I was quite nervous(which was odd since I'm only usually nervous after I perform) but I managed to keep my lunch down and get on stage okay.
I just watched back some video of the performance, and managed to get only a few seconds in before pressing 'stop' and saying "I feel sick" to no-one. Which is probably not a good sign of how the whole thing went, let's be fair.
My first joke... didn't get any laughs from the audience at all, except for the people from class standing off in the corner. After that I had a little trouble working the slideshow I'd prepared(I'm going to put that down to not being able to practice with the equipment) and I also completely blanked on my set.
I'd spent hours learning the set, going over it again and again, even loading it onto my iPod and listening to it whilst I walked to the shops, but once I got onstage it completely left my mind, and I had to use the notepaper wrapped around my wrist to prompt my memory, in addition to ad-lbbing lines about the slides on screen.
Luckily, the slides went down well with the crowd. My "Attractiveness of Britney Spears vs. Time" got a fairly big laugh, that started to turn to clapping before I ruined it by speaking again too soon. Then the slide of Krusty the Klown's jubilant reaction to a dying child got 7 seconds of laughter and applause - something I am ridiculously proud of, because I read somewhere that getting 7 seconds of laughter is the hardest thing in the world.
I dealt with some heckles fairly well, too. The crowd had been getting increasingly inebriated, and there was a small section of people by the bar who wouldn't shut the hell up, so I threatened to take one of my fake boobs out and throw it at them, an ad-libbed warning that got some applause from a bunch of people at the back of the room. Admittedly it didn't shut the people at the bar up, but I got the rest of the crowd on my side a little more.
Watching the rest of the tape back(yep, I managed eventually), I think I need to be more confident on stage. A couple of times I make it a little too blatant that I'm desperately seeking the audience's approval(at one point coming out with a painfully plaintive "Thank you" that seems to stretch on to infinity). I also need to work on interacting with the crowd a little better - when one gentleman told me he would still like to have sex with Ms. Spears, all I could think to say was "for shame", which was not funny in the slightest.
The big hit of the set was clearly the slideshow stuff. I realise that I'm very lucky to have the multimedia equipment available for the sets here at uni, and in the real world it'll just be me and a microphone, so I am working on distilling some of the more basic stuff (charts and graphs, simple pictures) onto an A-board, which is easier to carry around from gig-to-gig than a projector and screen.
Above all, I need to work on the confidence thing. I'm a small, thin whisper of a human being, and I need to become 'larger' than that if I'm to get any respect from the crowd. I think I need to be more aloof, and not react at all to the audiences reaction, at least for a while, to try and find a happy medium.
The past few days I haven't been feeling my funniest. I've been a little depressed, for various reasons, and knew that even if I went on stage with the funniest jokes in the world I'd screw it up somehow. Since I am still committed to doing a new set every-time I'm in front of the class, however, I had to do some new stuff. I decided to take a risk with some prose and a poem, and see how it went.
The poem, "Lessons to live by", I had written only a few nights before. I had simply liked the line "Eat when you're hungry, sleep when you're tired" and tried my hardest to spin it out into a decent-length poem, finishing by revealing that the increasingly-bizzarre lessons were tailor-made for Tom Cruise, an easy target. There were few actually funny lines, save for the Cruise-reveal, and the poem failed miserably.
As did the story "Captain Deluge". I had posted it on my website weeks ago, and it had gotten an okay response from my regular readers. It was too long for stand-up, however, and again the jokes were few. The laughs that were present required a pretty good knowledge of the super-hero genre, as well as what on Earth a Cessna was. Luke Gray told me that the story, while good, was not what people were expecting of a comedy set, and most of the audience got bored and started looking around at other things.
I need to either insert some real jokes into this stuff, or not do it at all. I'm a decent writer, but read aloud this stuff sucks without much-needed laugh-lines.
The one line from today that did get a good response was "If I was an X-Man I'd be Cyclops... he's the best". I can't work out if people laughed because of the ludicrous idea of Cyclops being the best X-Man(Wolverine, definitely) or because the joke set-up a punchline that never came. When an entire roomful of people all take lessons in violating expectations, they start expecting the violation itself, so when it doesn't come ("...he's the best") that expectation of violation is itself violated.
I don't know if I've explained that right.
Anyway, I knew from the start that today would be a write-off. I'm just glad I escaped alive.
Today we were visited by Richard Coughlan, a comedian I knew of through 'Cookd and Bombd' a website/messageboard that initially focused on Chris Morris and Peter Cook, but soon branched out to cover most British comedy(and it's decline). Coughlan posts there often under the name 'Chers Penis' and I've been a fan of his contributions for a while now, so meeting him in real life was a surreal experience.
Everyone performed onstage in front of him, waiting to be judged(after a little Q&A session so everyone could get to know him and realise that he was the real deal) and commented upon. I had chosen today to talk frankly about my trans-gender issues, which, in retrospect, was a mistake. It was way too personal and I was greeted by a stunned silence more often than laughter. Luke Gray afterwards told me that it was like I was 'coming out' on stage, and people "didn't know whether to laugh or not". A fair assessment, given that there were very few joke-jokes in the act. No gags, as such, it was more me saying "see how utterly ridiculous my life is?"
There are only two things from Coughlan's Comments(tv show in the making there) that I can remember distinctly - first that there is another trans comedian on the circuit(there goes my claim to originality!) but more importantly that I needed to work on retaining crowd control during my act. So true that it's not even funny.
My first line was "the unicycle got nicked", which I had hoped would get an 'aaaaw' but instead got a few chuckles and Charlie Cox saying "and it wasn't me!". I should've quickly shut Charlie down(if he thinks it's okay to say something once, he'll keep on saying things) with something like "Calm down, Charlie boy, you'll get your turn" but instead I responded by saying "It wasn't, I checked" which only endorsed his comment and gave him license to continue.
From there it got worse. I stupidly threw out one of my fake breasts to the audience to get a response on "it doesn't feel real, does it?" and the whole thing de-volved into show and tell, with everyone in the audience trying to touch my tit(and not in the good way). When I asked for it to be passed back, someone threw it across the room, and my plaintive cry of "come on, I've got to wear that!" made me look like a child.
I really do have to work on my crowd control - perhaps by listening to some Jimmy Pardo stuff(his entire set consists of working the crowd) and watching some sets on RooftopComedy.com(there are long videos of open-mic sets - where hecklers are a recurring feature) and getting some pointers. The most helpful thing would be to go out and do some actual gigs, but I have nothing even approaching a set right now, so that would not be wise.
Today we watched back the tape of the performances from last week. Unfortunately a sound problem meant that the second act - the part I was in - was unwatchable. I was a little disappointed at this, since I couldn't remember much of my set at all, and was look ing forward to being able to see it from the perspective of an audience member. I also wanted the people in my group(who hadn't been able to see it on the night as they were backstage) to see it as I thought there had been some genuinely funny parts that I wanted them to see(and complement me on, naturally.)
Still, I received feedback from Chris(from notes he had jotted down on the night), and the only really important bit I can remember was the comment about the unicycle stuff at the beginning - I recall him saying "You should've taken the unicycle up". I've now stripped all the stuff that requires the unicycle from my act(out of necessity) so that's not a problem anymore.
We also had a brief discussion where it seemed that Chris was advocating plagiarism. I raised the point that one of my classmates often stole routines, lines and jokes from other comedians such as Jack Dee and Lee Evans, and Chris said that that was okay and that these things will happen. It seems that I hadn't explained adequately - perhaps I should have used the word 'verbatim' - and Ian Tomey has since told me that if I spot anymore plagiarism I should tell Chris(with some evidence?) and it'll be dealt with.
I cannot stand people stealing jokes - although in the UK comedy scene it seems to be something that, if not encouraged, then at least accepted as a part of the scene. More established comics will steal from younger, newer acts, and when you climb the ladder you can do the same. Once again, my American sensibilities clash with this idea. Over in the states there was outrage among the comedy community when Dane Cook was caught stealing from Louis C.K., and similarly when Carlso Mencia was caught taking jokes from... well, too many comedians to mention.
I understand that there's really not much I can do other than attempt to produce wholly original material, and let everyone else do what they want. Being a tattle-tale is somewhat childish, and I've simply gotta wait for karma to catch up and deal with it. Besides, so many people in our class caught the guy doing Lee Evans stuff, so there's no chance he'll get famous continuing that way - Evans is too well known for that to work in a club scenario.
Today was the big day. The practice in front of a real audience. Not my first time in front of such a crowd, but still nerve wracking. Before when I've made a large group of people laugh it's been by accident, ad libbing during some silly presentation in a year 11 assembly. If no-one laughed today, they'd be judging my sense of humour negatively. Jokes I'd laboured over were up in front of the firing squad.
The first problem of the day was that the unicycle gag I'd practiced in class(falling off on purpose, thus explaining why I would not be using it in the act) was not allowed due to health and safety regs. I tried to make up for it by just taking the seat on and acting out what would have happened, but the audience didn't really take to it. Bad reaction to the first joke - oh dear.
I brought them round with "the great reveal" - taking off my blazer to reveal that I was wearing a bra, stuffed to make it look like I had breasts. I can't remember much after that - I know I did a joke about how our performance time was cut down, so I would be cutting down my jokes, but I fumbled the delivery and it left people confused.
Some self-deprecation saved me. I offered myself to the ladies in the audience with "sure, my cock is tiny, but at least I'll spend the entire time being jealous of your tits", a switch on a Gervais gag(to my eternal shame). That garnered my biggest laugh of the night, and I thought it best to leave on a high.
My finishing line "I don't like surprises, and if someone could tell that to my bowels that would be fan-tastic" didn't even get half-way through before the audience was laughing. By virtue of my appearance the set-up ("I don't like surprises") became the punchline - the idea of someone who had just shocked the entire audience declaring such a statement was ridiculous. The original punchline turned into the tag, finishing off the set with some mainstream toilet humour.
I left the stage fuzzy, not remembering anything. Later, after I recalled the events, I reconcilled myself to the fact that I hadn't had the best set, sure, but I by no means had the worst. And I couldn't wait to do it again.
I didn't perform today.
To be fair, I didn't really wake up today. At least, not until I had missed the projected timeframe entirely, and I had to resign myself to missing my first stand-up lesson.
It's a shame, as I had written another entirely new set to perform in front of my classmates. I feel like since we are performing to each other every week, it's only fair to keep churning out new stuff - otherwise the audience is just going to get bored, and that's no fun for anyone.
It's also handy, of course, to throw every single joke you can think of at the wall and see what sticks. It's not an ideal situation, as classmates react entirely differently to how a blind audience would, but it still gives a fair approximation of how a joke will go down in the real world.
Which is why I'm very annoyed at myself for missing the lesson.
Today's only performance from me was of a monologue we had to write for a different part of the course entirely. There was not enough time in the main stand-up rehearsal periods for everyone to have a go, so only group one got to.
A somewhat nebulous explosion of the concept of 'groups' onto the scene, there. In class we usually warm up by forming two lines opposite respective partners and doing limmericks or other word plays back and forth, snaking down the line. It is a torturous affair, but one that usually serves to break the ice. After today's trip into a world where people are apparently unaware of vocabulary or diction we were told that the line we were in would be our group. There are to many of us for one show(where we will be assessed, eventually) so it had to be split.
Many minutes were un-necessarily wasted sorting out running order, backdrop, music cues. Everyone had a different opinion, most usually that their choice was best and nothing else would do. This is a different aspect to performance than I expected to encounter in stand-up comedy - the idea of working with other people. Stand-up, except in the cases of double acts, is largely about getting by on your own steam. Part of the attraction to it as a profession is the idea of being your own boss and making these decisions yourself. Instead of that, however, I had to argue about whether or not I would like our set welcomed on stage to Rammstein's "Du Hast".
So. The dreaded "second album". I had written up 750 words of blazing comedy for the set, but I abandoned it a few minutes before I got up on stage. I had dyed my hair a bright shade of pink the night before, and clearly it was drawing some comments and leaving people wondering what was up. I decided that when I got on stage I'd announce that I had junked my entire set "Because as you can probably see, last night something happened... I went to see 'Ratatouille' at Cineworld."
I was pleased with the joke, some classic 'messing with expectations' stuff. It got a decent laugh, and leaving it there and moving into the prepared material would have been a good way to say "Yes, something clearly happened last night, but we're not talking about it". I didn't do that, though, and spent the majority of my set talking about the film I saw, ad-libbing it, really.
I rambled far too much, and did the classic joke fumble of missing out information and having to go back for it later. I also talked much too fast, and tried to do some volume/aside work that probably went too quiet for the audience to hear(though the mic picked it up, so the truth probably is that it just wasn't funny). I had slightly prepared a quick bit about things about rats that the film gets right/wrong, a nice rule-of-three list that did not go down well at all. I had expected people to laugh at the idea of this animated rat uncontrollably urinating into his recipes, but it didn't fly. They did, however, laugh very much at my "It's about a rat, that's why it's called Ratatouille, and it's about food, which is why it's called Ratatouille..." which I made up on the spot.
At the very end I did one small piece of prepared stuff(some physical comedy that obviously doesn't come across in the audio) and got a nice little laugh, which is good, as I think the rest of my written set is at the same caliber.
I am now torn between staying with the set I had prepared this week(the majority of which I didn't use) or writing something new about the journey of self-discovery I've been on recently. The former has more guaranteed laughs, but I care more about the latter. I'll work on some material and see how it goes, I guess.
The mp3 of this week's set can be found here.
Earlier was my first real performance of any 'material' in front of a crowd. Anything I've ever done before has all been by the seat of my trousers, so I'd never been concerned with "they better think this is funny stuff." That sort of thinking requires knowledge of what you're going to say, and the time to judge it beforehand.
Advice I constantly hear with regard to comedy is "write what makes you laugh". This is really difficult for three reasons, at least as far as I'm concerned. Firstly, a lot of stuff makes me laugh. It's not like there's a small sub-section of comedy that I laugh at and everything else leaves me cold. It all makes me chuckle. Also, when I'm coming up with ideas I'll rarely think of something and then burst out laughing at it. I can see where other people would laugh at it, usually, but it doesn't make me guffaw because it doesn't take me by surprise.
The biggest problem, though, is the idea that if it's generally accepted that we write what makes us laugh, then when we present that material to an audience we're not only having the material itself judged, but also our very sense of humour and the way our mind works. Unless you're a hack, what you say on stage should really be a distillation of your comedic interests - if no-one laughs then that means my comedic viewpoint, the way my brain perceives the inherent funniness of reality, is screwed up. Maybe.
But on to the performance itself. The first major exercise was to introduce yourself, tell a gag, and get off. I'm not really a gag guy. Something that is becoming apparent in this course is the idea that British comedy is all about getting to the laugh as quick as possible, and then repeating that again and again. Joke, joke, joke, joke, joke. I see myself more as an anecdotal comedian, with a sort of West Coast sensibility(like Jen Kirkman or Paul F. Thompkins). So I didn't really have many gags to tell onstage - only the stuff we've worked on in class. And only the ones we worked on the day before really stuck in my mind.
I took the stage, said 'hello' a couple of times(because I was adjusting to how the microphone dealt with my voice) and proceeded to tell my Kate Moss joke, couching it with the admission that it was from yesterday's classroom gag-writings.
I don't recall the laugh being very large. Probably due to my somewhat stilted delivery and maybe lack of confidence in delivering it(as well as my status as class whipping boy). I can't remember much of the reaction, really, because I was too busy judging myself for using an Alan Partridge "That Voice" as I said the words 'Fat Midget'. I hate the fact that I tried to rely on a silly voice to get a laugh(that didn't really come).
We received feedback from the Doc - he told me that I was okay, but that my lead-in to the Kate Moss joke(talking about how it came from yesterday's session) was reliant on the audience knowing who I am, which wouldn't always be true, obviously. I took this on board, and at the time I had only said that to cover my bases - I wanted people to know I also thought it was a bit rubbish to do a fashion joke just because that was our criteria yesterday - it was my way of pre-empting people judging me. By this point in life, I really should have learned not to worry about that. Besides, other people stole jokes, or used street jokes, so I shouldn't have worried.
We then had to go up, introduce ourselves again, do two jokes and then leave. I combined my intro and first joke("I'm Kyle and I'm the only student in this room who has apparently purposefully tried to dress as a leprechaun") which went down okay. Then I tried to condense the long tale of my engagement to a shorter form(leading to the punchline of "find out the country she's in... and then don't be in that country"). I didn't go well at all, because I fumbled it - tried to do a segué(talking about how young I look - can I still get away with that talk), took too long to get to the punch, clearly signposted said punch... Luckily I saved it a little with "come back to England, sell the engagement ring, and buy a cardigan that makes you look like a leprechaun" getting an obligatory callback chuckle.
My sign-off was "I have to go because it's my bed-time", which the Doc liked. I'm a fan of it too, but I'm also convinced I've heard it somewhere before. He said he hadn't, though, so I guess I'm okay. Can I use it again, though, without seeming like I'm crazy-desperate to grab onto anything which gets some kind of reaction?
Overall, I wish I could go back and give it another go. I can't wait until the next session, when we get to do five straight minutes. As much as it sucks, performing is also an amazing thrill, and I want to be behind that mike again.