Learning to Stand Up Part 1

Guest blog by @AnarchicAli

I was chatting to Phil Kirby the other day. You may remember Phil from such blogs as ‘Madame Butterfly – a novice review’, and ‘There’s more to life than books (but not much)’. Anyway, ‘stand-up comedy?’ he said. ‘Why would you want to do that? I’d hate to do that and it’s very competitive.’ Well I don’t know if I can do it, I only know I want to. And so began the idea for this blog – Learning to Stand Up. This is the first in hopefully a series of articles on getting into the comedy scene as a performer. Every comic goes through bad times so how better to deal with this than to share every moment of my embarrassment with you, lovely CV readers?

To answer Phil’s question though, my mate Peg comes from a family of Bohemians – they sing, act, do street theatre and drama workshops, work in the film industry, play a variety of instruments, and their family parties always end in someone getting out a guitar and singing half the night. Absolutely bloody awful. Because I can’t sing and I’m pretty poor at stringing together more than two or three chords . It took a public display of non-singing for me to find this out but I’ll share that with you another time….! My family are reasonably musical but our parties are more likely to involve arguing the toss about the future of the NHS before breaking off to discuss how long my liver will last if I open another bottle of wine. Quite different.

But I know I’ve got this creative streak somewhere that needs an outlet. If you saw any of Omid Djalili’s No Agenda tour, I feel like the bit where he explains that he was the second funniest person at work! Cos I’m the person who often ends up doing leaving speeches for people in my workplace and my natural reaction is to spend ages planning it so that I can get as many laughs in there as possible. It usually works, but I’m not sure this proves anything because you know your audience and everyone goes to those events expecting to laugh and be generous.

I also acted as compere at Peg’s big 40th birthday and most recently at her wedding, where I was ‘best woman’. ‘Ali’, she said, ‘everyone else who has a speech to do is really nervous, so you’re going to have to be funny.’ No pressure there then… though to be fair, less daunting than the prospect of being turned to at one of her family parties and asked to sing a Pulp classic. I found it fascinating to try working out how to deliver a line that got the right mix of cynicism, humour, pathos and self-deprecation. Being practically the only divorcee at the wedding gave me a shot at most of those though! Getting bursts of spontaneous laughter is a real buzz because you know it’s not because people are indulging you, but because they actually can’t help themselves. And to my satisfaction I got several such moments. I met lots of people after the wedding who were very complimentary and asked if I’d ever done stand-up and it started a train of thought.

Anyway two years passed…. because what stops people performing, being creative, playful as Emma describes it, is often just day to day life. Having two teenage boys means my house is often clutter and chaos, then there’s the full-time job, and a garden that keeps trying to revert to wilderness. But there’s another reason I’m dragging my feet to get out there and give it a go. Apologies if you have managed to avoid seeing any of the eight series of X Factor, but I have this horror-filled image in my head of those agonising auditions. Friends and family have persuaded some poor deluded wannabe that she can sing for years, and this sets off a number of events that culminate in said family standing backstage with Dermot O’Leary witnessing the train crash that is the public humiliation of their darling girl in front of millions…. Like those dreams when you’re running around in the buff being watched by your boss, your mother, the bloke you fancy in the Sales department and Piers Morgan, and there’s nothing you can do about it (no amount of psychoanalysis is going to cast any light on that one, to be fair).

A few months ago, an opportunity arose though, when I came across BettaKultcha. My natural reaction was, of course, to think how on earth did anyone come up with that as a name? As much as I now love it, it’s very difficult to get past the Lite Nite, Tastee Freez, Skoolz Out vibe (sic), like the groovy uncle at the party trying to be down with the kids, brap brap! For etymology aficionados, however, it is derived from the Japanese idea of Pecha Kucha (meaning chatting): five minutes, twenty powerpoint slides, talk about whatever floats your boat.

It’s not intended to be stand-up comedy but what it does is provide a really safe, supportive atmosphere for you to have your five minutes of fame or torture depending on your point of view.

I spent a lot of time trying to imagine what would be a good subject but as soon as I thought about my experience of speed dating, I knew the presentation would write itself! Being a lady of a certain age, it’s not always that easy to meet men post-divorce who don’t fall into one of three categories – married, gay or emotionally dysfunctional. There are even a few guys who manage to do all three. For quite a long time, I was perfectly content being busy and single, but it was when I found a packet of unopened condoms in my drawer that were two years past their sell-by date (and if I’m honest, the manufacturers give you a good while to use them), that I thought maybe I should make more of an effort! And for a few misguided months, my friends persuaded me that the right place to look for blokes was in two-minute bursts downstairs at La Tasca.

Rather than tell you the whole story, you can find it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzBnxNdkcxw but from a comedy perspective there’s nothing like having a load of great stories to tell to get you started. From the geeky designer of car seats and dashboards, to getting wasted and being unable to remember anyone’s name, getting a marriage proposal from a Lebanese refugee desperate for British citizenship, and meeting countless mountain-bike-riding IT developers completely unable to find any small talk. It’s very flattering, though, to witness someone become overcome with emotion when he finally meets a woman who knows one end of a Sturmey Archer gear from the other (I never claimed I wasn’t nerdy too).
But back to BettaKultcha, what surprised me most was that the biggest laughs were for the obvious things, stuff that everyone can relate to without being too clever about it. BK is also great for teaching you the importance of timing because it’s crucial to get your punchline to match exactly the moment a particular slide appears on the screen. I was ridiculously nervous before I went on but once you’re up there with the lights on you, there’s nothing you can do but tell it how you planned it, and the best thing about comedy as an art form is that you get (if you’re lucky) immediate and positive feedback from your audience.

So what’s next? BettaKultcha is about the pictures, your manner and approach, and what you say about them. But how easy is it to paint a picture with your words alone without the support of a bunch of slides? And what if you have an audience that isn’t prepared to let you get through your five minutes without a bit of immediate and unpositive feedback? On the other hand it lends itself to digression and diversion, taking your own time to explore your topic, and if there’s one thing I know I can do, it’s talk for hours about almost nothing. And so open mic night, here I come….