Summing Up
As part of my course I've had to write a 1000-word essay on how this semester has gone, and my abilities as a writer and performer. Since I haven't posted anything here in a while, I thought it would be good to put that up.
New posts will resume tomorrow.
I don't think it outside the remit of this assignment to start by saying that, although I keep a ‘daily’ diary of my exploits, one of my biggest weakness as a writer is dealing with introspection and self-evaluation. I tend to find myself either sounding maniacally arrogant or suicidally self-pitying, and as I work on these types of tasks I find my self hatred increases exponentially, until I must walk away from the computer, or - in the worst cases - delete the offending work entirely.
On that subject, I officially name this "Draft 17".
So, onto the afore-mentioned and oft-dreaded self-eval(that was a lot of hyphens for one sentence.) As demonstrated aptly by everything I've written so far, I can be a little too personal and revealing - in both my written work and performance. A quick explanation would be that I wasn't always like this - I was content to keep myself to myself until I stayed with a family of hippies in New Mexico this past summer, and was taught to be honest about my feelings and reasons for doing... anything I do, I suppose.
I'm still coming to grips with how much of myself to reveal, both on-stage and on-page, and I'd say that that is my biggest weakness at this point in time. Performing stand-up in front of class has often-time been a chilly affair, as the audience has confessed to being "weirded-out"(to use a verb that isn't a verb) by the level of intimacy. Deep, personal confessions such as those I've brought to bear before my colleagues do not have a rightful place in a 5-minute set; they are something to be earned over time. I do myself and my audience a disservice when I forget that.
My other main weakness is my lack of diversity in writing style. While I am proud of the fact that I can write well in any format - prose, poetry, dialogue, etc. - I find that everything I put out has a similar cadence. Usually, my output consists of wry, mildly comic, self-deprecating, articulate-yet-loquacious, long sentences that thoroughly abuse the English language's wonderful punctuative symbols - the hyphen, the parenthesis, the ellipsis.
I am in two minds about my inability to move outside of this particular way of expression. Whilst it is, obviously, advantageous to be able to write in as many different styles as possible, there is a certain charm to be found in picking an idiosyncrasy in writing and sticking with it- turning a foible into a defining, recognisable characteristic.
This ambivalence is easily resolved. In my personal writings I shall happily stick to this not-so-tough-on-the-full-stop-key-by-boy-that-hyphen-slash-equals-button-must-get-a-little-worn-out method of getting my thoughts on paper(or screen), whereas in my university work I will attempt to branch out to other styles(maybe short, sharp sentences? The horror!), perhaps by teaming up with others in my class to write on an extra-curricular basis, allowing their own styles to influence mine.
I lightly broached the topic of my performance earlier, remarking on the "chilly" atmosphere in the room when I spoke of my personal life too frankly. I daren't say that that is the only problem with my performance 'talents', however. When we were visited and judged by Richard Coughlan, he remarked on my inability to stay in control - that particular instance saw me being heckled, my props thrown across the room by the audience and me helpless to respond, throwing back a feeble "It's not like I'm the one on stage, is it?" when asked a question by an audience member.
While I am unsure of how a cold crowd would react to my particularly... individual act, I can take a very much needed lesson from how this performance went - audiences are not my friends. They are not there to listen unconditionally, and any chance to one-up the guy on stage will be taken mercilessly. I need to stop looking like I need their approval, stop showing signs of weakness. Stop commenting on those weaknesses whilst I'm on stage ("I was going to bring my unicycle, but I'm not allowed") that make me look vulnerable.
I also need to work more actual gags into my set. I have grown up influenced perhaps too much by American stand-ups with an anecdotal approach to comedy. Jen Kirkman, Paul F. Thompkins and Bill Cosby, for example. All are gifted storytellers, but the patience present in their audiences has been built up over the years by slowly evolving from joke-jokes to the comedic monologues they perform now. I need to bear this in mind when I write my material.
I have traditionally shied away from doing standard gags, because of this emphasis on watching the American story-tellers, but also because I held a sense of mystery of how a gag is written. It's like double acts. I can watch a double act perform stand-up(like The Sklar Bros, Hard 'n' Phirm, or Reno 911) and laugh uproariously, but I cannot work out how it's done. I'm sure it's obvious to others, but no matter how many times I ask Mr. Daniels to do it again, I can't see how he manages to saw Debee McGee in half and then parade her around unharmed. It used to be the same for jokes - I couldn't work it out.
The lessons with Matthew Willetts have greatly helped with this, however. The first thing we were taught on this course was how to write a gag, the basics of jokes. Armed with this knowledge, and aware of my current limitations as a story-teller, I will move more towards just telling good gags on stage.
This piece has come across more than a little self-pitying, and that is not the way it was intended - it is simply my writing style taking hold again, against my best intentions. I am quite happy with my writing and performance abilities, especially safe in the knowledge that I have the vast majority of this course left to experience and learn from. I'm already doing better than I was an hour ago - I've managed to make it to the end of this assignment. A quick spell check and it'll be done. I guess the 17th draft is the charm.