Alison Pilling, @AnarchicAli, with the second in her occasional series about learning to become a stand up comedian.
It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens. Woody Allen.
Allen is best known as a film director but has a great history of stand-up comedy, long before his most famous act of dying publicly by marrying his adoptive step-daughter. The things people will do for a laugh, eh? But he’s right because the last thing you want is to die on your arse in front of a crowd because you are most definitely there when that happens.
A few weeks ago, I wrote here about my first attempts to get into stand-up. In the warm supportive arms of the BettaKultcha crowd, I have had chance to do a couple of ‘turns’ with the help of twenty slides and pre-act hype from the lovely Ivor Tymchak. But I decided that if I was serious about this, I was going to have to step out of my comfort zone and do something that scares me to death.
So… move to Deathcon One… I have had two very different experiences. Firstly I moved to the dark side of the BettaKultcha world by taking on the random slide challenge; and secondly I did my first ten minute slot at the Tuesday night Verve Club comedy show. Verve is designed for both newcomers and experienced comics trying out new stuff, so it’s a great place as an act but also interesting as an observer. I’ve also been a slightly analytical audience member (Note to self: ‘slightly’ you nerd???) at two other gigs in that time so plenty of food for thought.
I have come to the conclusion that you can approach a comic act in two ways and the best people mix up both. On the one hand, memorise your act to death so you can say it in your sleep and then practise even more to make it sound casual; but on the other hand, blag it and hope your wits and a bit of help from the audience carry you through!
The random slide challenge falls into the latter category. An anonymous person puts together ten slides. You see them for the first time and talk about them immediately, preferably in an amusing way, in two and a half minutes flat. Although this is very specific to BettaKultcha, it does capture the essence of pure stand up…. ‘Here’s some material to give you ideas. Make what you can of it!’
At most gigs the equivalent stimulus to a set of slides you’ve never seen is to ask your audience members what they do for a living. I was recently at a gig in Chapel Allerton when local comic, Silky, asked the front table this question. When the answer was ‘we work for a company that makes medical lubricant’, the evening’s humour was sorted. Having a laugh was as certain as backing the favourite in a one-horse race. My random slides, on the other hand, were like backing that tin of dog meat that I managed to draw in the workplace Grand National sweepstake – no amount of encouragement was going to turn that into a thoroughbred performance. There are two approaches anyway…. (a) have a rough plan and try to force the random material/slides/audience participants into it, or (b) pray that the first slide/interviewee gives you inspiration. In my case I started with a bit of a plan but it rapidly turned into that tin of dog meat. Inspiration just about carried me through to slide five but slides six and seven began to sound desperate. On slide nine I prayed out loud that there were no more slides, so when slide ten came up I got the biggest laugh. Lesson One: if they’re laughing at you, it doesn’t matter, because they’re still laughing.
I recently read an article in which Nick Revell said ‘Comedian stops, audience laughs, it’s a joke. Comedian stops, audience doesn’t laugh, not a joke.‘ I think this pretty much says it all. The audience decides what’s funny. If you just tell jokes that amuse you, save yourself the trouble of being nervous and having to learn it, and just talk to a mirror. The interesting bit, however, is finding stuff that gets other people, which weirdly is often not what cracks you up.
This seems to be something that loads of new comics don’t get. If you want to check out raw local talent, downstairs at Verve on Tuesday nights is a great place to start. Don’t expect perfection as it’s where people go to practice, but it’s a really good place to see work in progress. The acts that make me cringe are those who are disappointed with the audience! If you think it’s the audience’s fault that they’re not getting your material, you’re kind of missing the point. If Rihanna whinged that her latest single didn’t reach the top because the audience were musical morons, we’d rightly think it said more about her than them.
Anyway Verve is where I made my debut. I decided in advance that since it was a mostly youngish male audience, I needed some unpretentious stuff (sorry men, but you know…). But I’m not a young lass any more so I needed to play to my ‘mature’ strengths. Post-divorce shagging it was then… Thanks to a ‘friend’ of mine, who recorded the whole thing on his phone, I’ve had the opportunity to watch myself over and over again. And for the record, watching it three times is more than enough before you slap yourself round the head with the phone charger (is that what post-ironic means?) but anyway…
It was ok. That’s it. It was just ok. Fine. Nowt special.
Plus points: Material mostly ok; people laughed here and there; I didn’t forget anything or freeze up; no-one heckled me. No-one died.
Minus points: Visual jokes are difficult to get across – need to make sure I can communicate what’s in my head. I talk too fast so people miss some of the jokes.
So for me that’s Lesson Two. If you have a good joke, milk it. Make a point of it and don’t let your nervousness mean that you rush on to the next thing before people have had chance to think about it and, who knows, maybe even enjoy it!
Post-script: Some time later, I was praising myself that I had felt able to do some slightly risqué stuff about post-divorce life until my 19 year old son said ‘how did your stand up comedy go? Can I see the video?’
Errrr… No