Gig 11: Magical Animals @ Sandbar, Manchester – 12th September 2011

With the summer holidays interfering and a distinct lack of organisation, it had been almost a month from my previous gig until last night’s Magical Animals.  This is way too long between performances, which is something that I will, hopefully, manage to avoid in the future (although, knowing how crap I am, there is a good chance it will happen again). The main concern with a month’s absence is that I would be really rusty and so nerves would take over.

You may remember that I performed at Magical Animals – the spoken word\poetry night – a couple of months ago (see here for details), and that I used the 4 minute spot to try out some “short plays”. The beauty of it not being primarily a comedy night (although with some comedians performing) is the opportunity to try out material that you might think twice about trying in a “standard” stand up gig. I’ve actually used a couple of the “plays” that I did at the last M.A. in my “straight” stand up set, so I thought I’d try a few more.

One of the plays was an unused one from last time (which were all from The World Of Sherby57), but I also did a couple more that were brand new. They were all written pretty quickly, but I was happy with the basic idea in each. Because it’s perfectly acceptable to read your material in this sort of gig, I did surprisingly little practice. I’d like to think that I didn’t over-rehearse or tweak the material as I was feeling comfortable and wanted to give the performance space to breathe. In reality, laziness probably had a major part to play.

I was a little nervous before I got to the venue, but the atmosphere was relaxed and I felt good as I took to the stage. I accidentally stumbled over the opening line of my first play, but was able to come up with a quick ad-lib which got my bigegst laugh. I really enjoyed the performance and felt that the audience went with it too.

Afterwards I had some feedback which wasn’t negative but didn’t perhaps match up to how well it had gone in my head. Oooh, perception. It’s a right bitch.  I suppose the fact that it went OK at all is pretty good considering I didn’t exactly slave over the material and did very little preparation. I really enjoy doing the plays (I know it’s ridiculous to keep calling them plays but I don’t know what else to call them) and I’d like to try developing them as a character act. The more I do them then the more I can pick and choose which ones work and hopefully hone it into a much tighter set.

The main thing I took from last night is that I was really relaxed while performing and actually enjoyed it. Hopefully I can carry this over to my next performance, which is likely to be the much scarier straight stand up.

Related articles

• Gig 8: Comedy Balloon, The Ape and Apple, Manchester – 20th July 2011 (poursomegravyonme.co.uk)
• Gig 8a: On The Funny Side @ Pulse, Manchester – 28th July 2011 (poursomegravyonme.co.uk)
• Gig 9: Comedy Knight @ Mello Mello, Liverpool – 1st August 2011 (poursomegravyonme.co.uk)
• Gig 7: On The Funny Side @ Pulse, Manchester – 14th July 2011 (poursomegravyonme.co.uk)
• Gig 5: Comedy Night @ The Lounge, Warrington – 21st June 2011 (poursomegravyonme.co.uk)