Gig 102: Comedy Night @ The Beech Inn, Chorlton – 12th March 2013

March 16, 2013 Leave a comment

The Bob Blackman Appreciation SocietyI know I mention the following every month, so I’m just going to deal with it as quickly as possible:

Before the gig, I prepared a few bits of new material.  These were some new jokes, my monthly report (read it here) and the latest chapter of The Donnie Hotlips story (a fictitious biography of one of the night’s regulars – read it here).

OK, now I can get on with the actual write up.

The biggest drama that Tuesday night faced was that Andy, who provides the microphone and amp for the show, hadn’t shown up by the scheduled start time.  He got there 20 minutes late, and so we started 20 minutes late.  Yeah, I know, it doesn’t really qualify as a drama, so I’m not going to act like it was one (yes, I’m talking to you, Dave Turquoise).  It may not have been dramatic, but it did affect the way I started the gig.  As we were already running late, and because we had to fit in 4 acts as well as my monthly report, I put in lots of energy and urgency to make sure the audience were warmed up as soon as possible.

At this point in a post, I’d usually drone on about what happened to me and what I did or didn’t learn from the experience.  You can breathe a sigh of relief as I’m not going to do that.  Sometimes, it’s just a good gig and you have to enjoy it on that level.  All the acts were really strong this month, and the night seemed to keep building as it went on.  The night was topped off by headline act The Bob Blackman Appreciation Society (Johnny Sorrow and Richard Swan), who were amazing.  I couldn’t possibly describe their act, so I just suggest that you go and see them if you get the chance to.

Nights like this are what being involved in comedy is all about.

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Gig 99a: The Marmite Files on All FM, Manchester – 24th February 2013

February 26, 2013 1 Comment

Marmite and Vegemite have a distinctive dark c...

After appearing on their show Marmite Junction back in September (Gig 75a), I was asked to appear on Sam Smith and Andrew Faraday’s radio comedy panel show, The Marmite Files.

We were given the show format and what games we’d  be playing a few days beforehand in order to prepare (don’t worry, it’s not the BBC, so it’s allowed) and I spent a bit of time over the weekend coming up with some (hopefully) usable answers.  The rounds included:

Poem, Prose, Rant or Song(PPRS): Each panellist had 2 – 4 minutes to perform a poem, piece of prose, rant or song of our own creation, all with the title “My Dream House”.  You can read my effort, here.

Gorton Bugle Headlines: What stories, real, sensationalist or otherwise, have been gracing the pages of Gorton’s premier rag this month?  My answers included:  GORTON MAN IS OWN FATHER, WILL.I.AM VOTED GORTON’S FAVOURITE DISH and ELASTIC BAND BALL  MAYOR ARRESTED FOR FRAUD.

Platitudes. Pass on some of the sayings and advice that you were given when you were young. My answers included: No man is from Ireland, There’s no U in Them, and A stitch in time securely fixes it to the backing fabric.

The show was broadcast live from Levenshulme’s All FM between 8 and 9.  This is a factual statement but a terrible bit of writing.  The contestants were co-host Sam, Peter Shillito and me, whilst Andrew acted as the quizmaster.  I didn’t get off to a great start as I was terrible at the witty badinage (I’m not going to say ‘banter’, OK??) at the start of the show.  And by ‘terrible’, I mean that I didn’t really say anything at all, and so techincally didn’t partake in the repartee.  

The next thing to go wrong was my intro.  We were asked to introduce ourselves by explaining what we’d given up for lent.  I had prepared a hilariously obvious “I’m going to give up giving up stuff for lent” piece.  I realised that there was a good chance that someone else would go for this, so my backup was ”I’m going to give up giving up giving up stuff for lent”.  Unfortunately, Peter went for my backup plan as his first option and so I was stuffed.  Thinking on my feet, I came up with a classic answer: broccoli. My reasoning was that since the other two had given elaborate answers, I should stick with something simple. It wasn’t exactly a high comedic watermark.

With the opening out of the way, we got down to the games and I was able to start having fun.  I went particularly mental with the round Films for Fishmongers (fish-pun based film titles), coming up with the following 23 films: Hook, Kiss Me Skate, Any of the eel-ing comedies, Angelfish Heart, The Boston Angler, GoldfishFinger, Salmonster’s Inc, She’s Trout of my League, The herRing, Boat Trip (starring Barracuda Gooding Jr), Avengers Bassemble, Breamgirls, The World According to Carp, Mackerel and Me, Beverly Hills Cod (with lead character Axel Coley), Ray, Gray Mullet to the Head, What’s Shovelnose Sturgeon Got To Do With It (the life story of Tuna Turner), Good Night and Good Snook, He’s Just Not That Sprat Into You, Giant (Squid) starring James Sardine, The Perch of Being A Wallflower and Stickleback to the Future.

The hour flew by and I was eventually crowned the winner, although a) winning doesn’t really matter in these sort of shows and b) there was no crown.  It was really useful to practice a different type of writing and style of performance and it’s a format I’d like to try again in order to improve my  persiflage skills (I told you, I’m not going to say ‘banter’).  Anyway, I expect Radio 4 will be ringing me any day now.

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Gig 99: Open For Laughs @ Bar 1:22, Huddersfield – 21st February 2013

February 23, 2013 1 Comment

As Peter Marshall – Open For Laughs’ regular compere – was unavailable, the call went out for a replacement.  I was keen to try my hand at MCing somewhere other than The Beech Inn, so I answered that call like a man picking up a phone and answering a call in which he was asked to be the replacement compere at a comedy night.  And that man was me.  The replacement MC.

Although I’ve become more comfortable in improvising as MC, I still wanted to make sure I had a few things to fall back on.  I pulled together some “joke book” jokes and also some “contingency questions”, stupid questions to ask the audience.  As I write a “monthly report” for the Beech, I wanted to do something similar, so settled on writing some local material.  I basically looked through Huddersfield’s Wikipedia page and tried to think of some stupid jokes from that.  It proved more difficult than I anticipated, but I thought I’d be able to make the lameness of some of the jokes into a positive attribute of the report.

There were 8 acts on the night, so we simply split the night into two sections of 4.  As the start time approached, it was clear that we wouldn’t have much of an audience.  In the end there were 5 non-performing audience members, but with the 8 acts also in attendance the room was busy enough for us to go  ahead.  To be honest, it was touch and go as to whether or not I would count this as an “official” gig, but there were enough people there for it to feel like a real gig, so I had to treat it like one and so it counts.

There were some good things about my performance, but also some things that I need to work on.  On the plus side, I had fun and I felt totally comfortable being on stage not knowing what I was going to say next.

On a more self critical note, as I’ve mentioned when writing about MCing at The Beech (see Gig 98), I do like things to be a bit shambolic, but as this involves me doing things that can fall (intentionally) a bit flat, it inevitably leads to the audience’s mood going up and down.  I need to make sure I bring the acts on – especially the first act – when I’m on an upswing.  Also, I think that when you start introducing an act, you can’t faff about too much and go back into shtick, as it can kill the audience’s anticipation.  I did that a bit when bringing on – I think – the second act.  The other thing of note was when doing my “Huddersfield Report” at the start of the second half.  Some of the jokes were so lame that I should have just cut them, but I ploughed on anyway.  This took away from the gags that did get a laugh.  Just because you’ve written some material, it doesn’t mean that you have to do it.

Anyway, it’s hard to properly gauge how it went due to the size of the audience, but I had fun and was able to learn a few things, so it was a good night.

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Gig 93: Comedy Night @ The Beech Inn, Chorlton – 15th January 2013

January 19, 2013 1 Comment

Finally, my first gig of the year.

It had been three and a half weeks since my previous spot (Gig 92) and I was more than ready to get back on the metaphorical comedy horse.  In fairness, I had needed a rest, not from performing but from a busy schedule in general.  The only downside of taking a break is that it’s too easy to become lethargic, and I certainly had gotten très lethargic.  If anything was going to shake me back into action, it would be MCing at The Beech.

I don’t generally suffer from nerves before gigs, but I’m still plagued with trepidation in the build up to  compering a show.  With a normal spot, you get up, do your stuff and then that’s it.  If it goes badly then you know exactly how long you’ve got to go before you can skulk off home with your tail between your legs.  If things go badly as an MC then you know you have to get straight back on stage as soon as the next act has finished.  Ultimately it’s your responsibility to make sure that the night runs smoothly, and that the audience is in the right frame of mind to welcome the comics on stage.  Oh, and you have to make the majority of it up off the top of your head, whilst constantly keeping on top of what’s happening in the room.

I make it sound like a nightmare, but it’s actually really enjoyable, largely because, so far, my worries have been all academic.  Although there have been a few sections that haven’t been amazing, they haven’t been so bad that I wasn’t able to rescue it.

My preparation for these nights has boiled down to 4 areas:

1) A chapter of “The Donnie Hotlips Story” – a fictionalised biography of one of the Beech’s regulars (read this month’s, here)

2) My monthly report – me reading this is usually the first “act” in the second section of the night (read this month’s, here)

3) Some “joke book” jokes – just something I can fall back on. I’d only written 1 new one this month, so used a few old ones.

4) Contingency questions – stupid emergency questions if audience interaction isn’t going well. I didn’t use them last month, but thought it was worth having them (as it turned out, I didn’t use them this month, either).

And that was that.

I had to pick up three friends on the way to the gig – who were coming along to watch –  and I didn’t really speak on the drive over as I was pre-occupied with nerves.  I felt a bit better once we were at the Beech, probably because I had to concentrate on getting things ready to go.  There was already a decent sized audience when we arrived, and there were a few regular faces, so this helped get me in the right frame of mind.

And after that build up, all I can really say is that it seemed to go pretty well.  I made a point of remembering to mention the ground rules and format of the evening, because I forgot to last month.  Erm, yeah.  That’s definitely all I have to tell you. It was a lot of fun and the audience seemed to have a good time.

It’s quite difficult to really know how I’m getting on with MCing.  Although it generally feels like it’s going well from the perspective of being funny, I’m not sure how well I’m doing in my primary duties of keeping the night ticking over and making sure that the audience are primed for the actual acts.  Hopefully I’ll get a better grasp of this as time goes on.

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Gig 86: Open For Laughs @ Bar 1:22, Huddersfield – 15th November 2012

November 18, 2012 3 Comments

This is my final post about this week, for the full picture, please read: Gig 83, Gig 84 and Gig 85.

Sunday 18th 16:13

Phew, let’s get this final entry out of the way.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I decided to prepare my set list for Open for Laughs on my dinner break on the day of the gig.  Since I’d decided to only blog about all this after the event, this actually gave me plenty of time to read through my notes and cobble together what I’d be doing.  As the “On the bus” stuff was around 5 minutes long – and would be based on reading out tweets – it meant that I felt pretty confident in practicing the rest of the set on my drive home, and the drive over to Huddersfield.  I also made sure that I had the set list written onto an index card (which I blu-tack to my dashboard), all my joke book jokes were written out and I’d printed out the other bits I needed.

By the time I got home from work, I was confident in my set, but also really tired.  I planned on asking for an early spot and shooting off home during the interval.  However, on arrival at the venue, I found out that half the acts had to get an early train and that I’d be on last.  Luckily, the drive over, combined with getting myself up for the gig, had woken me up enough to not be a danger to myself on the drive home.  I was also relaxed and looking forward to performing for what was a small but friendly audience.

The gig started out with a revelation from the audience about one of the other acts (I won’t mention what it was out of discretion), which created an air of awkwardness that took some time to shift.  The act in question handled the situation as best he could under the circumstances and thankfully the gig moved on.

I was relaxed about performing beforehand, I think because the pressure of the last few days was off, and it was a nice opportunity to try out some new stuff.  I wanted to use this sense of calm to really try and be in the moment whilst I was on stage.  With this already in mind, I decided to make a significant change to my set, just minutes before going on.  The act before me – who was doing a 5-minute spot – came on pretending to be midway through a phone call.  Something about this entrance struck me as being too close to my out-of-breath ‘I’ve only just got here’ shtick that I usually open with.  I instinctively felt I should change it and I realised that I simply drop the conceit and do my opening joke without it.  Despite it being a last minute change, it actually only reinforced the relaxed attitude I already had.  In this frame of mind, I decided to come on singing my new ‘personalised theme tune’, just to see how it felt.

As I found myself questioning my whole approach, I remembered a conversation I’d had with a friend (hello again, Tim) about the process of having a piece of material which is a response to an anticipated audience response, e.g. doing a joke that elicits a groan from the audience, and you having a response that references the groan.  The discussion was about how a rookie mistake is to do the prepared bit even if the audience don’t react in the anticipated way.  Now, this ‘mistake’ is something that I do when I segue from my opener to my ‘joke book’ bit, and I also do it during the ‘joke book’ itself.  In my defence, I do know that the audience aren’t generally reacting in the way that I pretend they are, but this is on purpose as a stylistic choice.  However, I did think it would be interesting to see what happened was I to actually try and deal with the actual reaction and that’s what I decided to do.

Here’s my set list and what happened:

Personalised Theme Tune – This was just me singing a popular chart hit, but replacing the words with my name.  I also picked up a tea light from the table and held it aloft like I was at one of them pop concerts.  It’s hardly a ground-breaking bit of comedy, but it felt a nice impromptu, relaxed way to start.

Revolutionary Era France – I decided to give this a go in place of my usual opening gag, “This really shifty looking bloke came up to me…”, as they’re pretty similar in structure (ridiculous shaggy dog story with pun-based punchline), and it’s been a while since I’ve done it.  It’s actually one of the earliest bits of material of straight stand up that I had, but haven’t done it since Gig 49, at which I was trying it out as a one off because I hadn’t done it for a while.   I was interested to see if my greater experience in performing would make it work better, and, thankfully, it did seem to help.  I got plenty of laughs from the set up, and the punchline was suitably lame.  Usually, I would pretend the audience didn’t get the joke and use this as a convoluted way of going into the joke book section.  As the audience had clearly enjoyed the joke and got it, I just acknowledged this and said that I’d now do some jokes.  It wasn’t the slickest thing I’ve ever done, but it was genuine.

Joke book – 3 new jokes, 1 relatively recent one, and one long standing one.  I finished on the regular “Arnie Fancy Dress” joke, because I realised I could tie in another new bit to it…

My new catchphrase – I thought of a stupid catchphrase based on one of Arnie’s and this went down well at last month’s Magical Animals.  Tying it into an Arnie joke helped it to make more sense and to justify its inclusion.

Stand Up Comedy Poem – As performed last month at Magical Animals (Gig 80) and The Beech (Gig 81).  I really like this and it went pretty well. It was positioned here in the set for a reason you’ll find out shortly.

Moves Like… – A singing bit also from Gigs 80 & 81. Very silly and a nice filler.

US Style Stand Up – Again from Gigs 80 & 81.  I really like this bit and it seems to go down really well, even though it seems a bit too niche.

(Flying without Wings) – I didn’t do this new bit.

Non-Impressions – I’ve done a couple of non-impressions (where I don’t do the celebrity’s voice, but I say something that I think they might say) over the last couple of months, and I combined them here.  The first one (a popular TV chef) worked quite well, but more because of my explanation of it, than the thing itself.  The second (an eccentric pop star) didn’t work, as it didn’t at this month’s Beech gig.

Vietnamese Tourist Jingle – I’m pretty sure I didn’t do this new bit.

(80’s Corner) – This was always going to be a maybe, but I decided not to bother as there were too many young people in the audience.

On the bus – I’d already done this twice this week, and had liked it as a piece.  Tonight’s rendition was notable as it contains a callback to the Stand Up Comedy Poem I’d performed earlier on.  I don’t usually do callbacks, so it really felt like it added an extra element to my set.  Overall the section felt like it went on a bit too long and that it let the audience get a little too flat.   It’s based on genuine tweets that I’ve made, and I think I should probably try and re-write some of them to gag it up a bit (and then I can obviously make reference to the bits that aren’t real, because, you know, I like doing that sort of thing).  I noticed that I’d already done 12 minutes (of an 10-minute spot) at this stage, so I quickly wrapped up with…

Supermarket Poem – Not an explosive finale, but it works.

And that was me done.  Overall, it went really well and I had a lot of fun with it.  The Bus bit didn’t quite work, but it gave me plenty to think about. I was incredibly relaxed in performing and just took my time, and this felt like the most positive aspect. On top of this, I now have a bunch of extra material that I can use, and that’s never a bad thing.

The other notable aspect about this particular set was the realisation of how much of it was about comedy.  I know that I often do stuff that refers to some of the tropes of stand up, but looking back it was staggering just how often I use that idea.  I don’t know yet whether this is a good or a bad thing (or whether it’s actually neither good nor bad).

After a good night’s work, I drove home happy, looking forward to going to sleep and not worrying about what I’d have to do tomorrow.

Jerry Springer-style Final Thoughts

So, after writing the four mega-posts this week, I should probably try and reach some conclusions.

I love having my blogs as a creative outlet.  I’m also really glad that I decided to keep a gig diary when I started to perform comedy.  It’s an invaluable record of what I’ve done, what material I’ve used, where I’ve performed, and, hopefully, some of the things that I’ve learned.  I also hope that from time to time, other fledgling comics, or those with an interest in comedy, will read the posts and take away something that is useful for them.  If anything, writing the diary posts forces me to think about and organise my thoughts on what has happened, and this probably helps me glean more from the experiences than if I didn’t do the diary.

That said, choosing to write, what is now rapidly approaching, 8000 words during and about a week where I was already worrying about having too much on my plate was an act of madness.  It’s fine now that it’s all over and I have an excellent record of what happened, but it was too much to take on and the week became so much easier when I decided not to complete up-to-date entries.  Combining a full time job with being out every night, writing new material and, effectively, writing a lengthy essay, takes a lot of mental energy (the scientific part of my mind has just questioned the phrase ‘mental energy’, but I’m sticking with it because, frankly, I’ve expended too much mental energy this week to think of an alternative).

I do wonder how much easier the week would have been if it had been 4 regular 10-minute spots.  I wouldn’t have had the stress of writing an entirely new act for one of the nights, I wouldn’t have been so on edge about trying to be a competent MC, and I wouldn’t have found so much to write about them.  I’m sure it still would have been pretty tiring, but much more manageable.  That said, I do like doing different things, and think it’s the best way to learn, so you can’t have your ball and eat it. Or something like that.

What have I learned?  Well, firstly, that I was able to do it.  Secondly, if you stop worrying and thinking about it all as much, it becomes easier.  Another valuable lesson from earlier in the week was that if you have a new bit of material and it doesn’t feel right, then it isn’t going to work.  You either have to find a way to make it feel right or not bother doing it.  I’m sure I’ve learned other stuff, but it’s too late for me to trawl back through and work out what.

Some of you may remember my infamously pedantic post about gong shows (see here if you don’t, and make sure you read all the comments too), which was described as ‘frighteningly analytical’.  I totally understand why someone would form that opinion, but it doesn’t really reflect how I felt about the subject.  The process of writing about something forces you to look at it at a level of detail that you otherwise wouldn’t.  My point is this: Don’t worry, I’ve not gone completely mad.

And that’s finally it.  I’ve only got one gig next week, and it’s straight stand up, so it should be pretty easy to prepare for (famous last words).  See you soon.

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Gig 84: Comedy Night @ The Beech Inn, Chorlton – 13th November 2012

November 14, 2012 5 Comments

This is the second in a series of posts about gigs this week.  For it to make sense, you should read the first entry: Gig 83

Tuesday 13th 13:26

I’ve just published my post for last night.  On the face of it, I’ve written 2800 words about a 4-minute spot, which, of course, doesn’t tell the whole story, but it does make me feel like I’ve gone a bit insane.

The only other thing to note about last night is that it took me ages to get to sleep when I went to bed.   I can understand being full of adrenalin when you’ve done a big gig, but Magical Animals is a regular, low key night, so that can’t be the reason. It seems like performing starts a certain bit of my brain going and it’s a bugger to switch it off.  Hopefully this phenomenon won’t have too much of a cumulative effect on me as the week wears on.

With Magical Animals out of the way, I’m going to spend this dinner hour thinking about tonight’s MCing gig at The Beech Inn.  I’ve just had a final read through of my monthly report – which I’m definitely going to do as one of the acts has pulled out – and I’ve decided not to make any more changes.  I’ve published the report in its entirety – here – so you can have a read of it.  Bear in mind that it’s written to be performed, and I will adlib a lot around it to get extra laughs (hopefully).

Before I forget, I’m just going to do some last minute plugging of tonight on Facebook and Twitter.

Done.

I need to have a last look through my notes and make sure I know what I’m doing.  Following on from my experience in Gig 82 – where I knew I needed to do more audience interaction but bottled it – I want to try and get the audience involved tonight, just to get more used to it.  I don’t want to rely purely on “What’s your name? Where are you from? What do you do for a living?” so I’ve been trying to think of ways to talk to the audience using the material I’ve got prepared.  Last month (Gig 81) I also had some “contingency questions” – stupid questions to ask when the normal ‘banter’ isn’t working – and I need to write a few more for tonight.

Right, that’s my time up; I need to get back to work.

Tuesday 18:49

I’m at home now.  I’ve scribbled down 5 contingency questions into my notebook and got the rest of my stuff ready, or as ready as it’s going to get. I’ve got to leave in a few minutes.

The main reason I’m giving you and update is that I’ve become increasingly nervous during the afternoon and/or I’ve still got an upset stomach. This will only be my second time MCing and it’s still pretty scary, even though I had a lot of fun last month. I’m looking forward to it, though.

Wednesday 14th  00:12 and 13:10

I typed up some garbled notes when I got home last night and now I have to make them make some sense over my dinner break, which is why the title says 00:12 and 13:10.

My longest serving friend, Si, came with me last night.  Having him in the car with me was a welcome distraction, and it took some pressure off the gig as there was going to be at least one person who found me funny.  I had calmed down a lot by the time I got there, but I was still pretty on edge waiting for the start.

The format was the same as last month:

Me for 10-15 minutes.

2 x 10 spots.

Break

Me doing monthly report.

1 x 10 spot.

Break

Headliner.

As the evening had an American headliner – the excellent Kate McCabe – I thought I could tie this into my US election stuff.   I came on doing an ‘American accent’ and told the audience that this was a US election special, then admitted I was just pretending there was a theme, but that I had written some topical material anyway.

This bit went terribly.   The election stuff didn’t feel at all right – which I knew beforehand – so I ended up pulling out of doing it properly halfway through and it all became a bit awkward for a while.  Really, I should have tried the bits I didn’t feel comfortable with at Magical AnimaIs the night before where I could have got away with it going badly.  I immediately knew that I wouldn’t be doing the “a funny thing my girlfriend said” bit.

As well as doing material that I didn’t feel was ‘me’, there was an issue in the approach I took.  Since I always start my normal sets going straight into material in a very constructed way – and I don’t do the ’hello how are we?’ section – I’ve naturally gone with this technique with MCing.  It’s not the right thing to do.  I really should just have been myself and relaxed into it, and not worried so much about getting gags in right away.

I tried to pull things back by going to the joke book, but this wasn’t the right thing to do.  The jokes are intentionally a bit ropey, so it’s not a great thing to try when the audience are unsure of you (another lesson learned).  I tried a couple of the contingency questions and a couple of the miscellaneous bits with mixed results.

I also had to do the admin for the evening.  I started by explaining the format of the show, which I made a meal of.  Then I should have done the ground rules – turn off your phone, no talking while the acts are on – which I forgot to do and only remembered when I saw a lad sending a text message.

I wasn’t completely dying, but it was a struggle and not going how I would have hoped.  I went into On the Bus, which went OK, not brilliantly, but because it was a bit of a longer bit, it seemed to steady the ship a bit (at least in my own mind).  I had been too scattershot up to this point, so that even when I had tried to directly engage the audience I hadn’t given it space to breathe.

At some point during that first section there was also ‘the boots incident’.  One of the regulars is a lady that usually stands near the bar and I had noticed that she always wears work boots.  I had this in mind as it was a talking point I could possibly use.  At some point I referenced her, and because of how I was thinking I called her ‘Boots’. This came across as though I was calling her a boot. I was mortified, and it made things feel a bit iffy for a while.  I made sure that I explained that I wasn’t being funny to her during the first break.  Being horrible about someone in the audience is the last thing I’d want to do.

I brought the first act on and had chance to regroup.  It felt like I had been being too material heavy and knew I had to loosen things up. During the first act, I saw 4 women enter the room and they were stood near the back, so I realised that I had to welcome them when I came back on.  I planned to point them in the direction of an empty table and would do my short supermarket poem as they got to their seats. I would then ask them a contingency question or two to get them involved.  As I returned to the mic, people unexpectedly took the chance to go to the bar, and as it’s a small room it all went vaguely chaotic even though nobody was being actively disruptive.  I referenced the disruption, but let it ride and let people settle back down, and in a way it helped me forget about material and be more in the moment.  I managed to ask one of the ladies, Nicola, a contingency question – I asked her about speedos and she said randomly mentioned latex – which I was able to get some mileage from.  As the audience settled I eventually recited the poem – which worked – and then brought on the second act.

After the break, I decided to go back to Nicola and ask her a follow up question from the book: who her favourite Spice Girl was, as a method of ‘psychoanalysing’ her.  It was a good idea to go to back to someone who was clearly willing to play along.  I also started talking to 4 older audience members who I felt I’d struggled to connect with in the first section  and made up an alternative history for one of them: Donnie Hotlips, drummer in 1970s band ‘Angry Birds’.  This really got them involved and it felt like things were finally coming together.  This was my build up to my ‘monthly report’ which is wordy by its nature, but this opening bit had given me a good run up and I was able to tackle it in a more engaging way that I might have.  The format worked better than in previous months – the Halloween as Christmas concept seemed to go over well – but I don’t think you can underestimate the effect of having brought the audience on side.  After bringing on the other act in that section, it was pretty much all formalities for me until the end, but as I was more relaxed even the formalities felt fun. Having to do basics like getting a round of applause going and thanking people felt much easier, when it had felt so clunky last month.

And that was it. Overall, it was a brilliant learning experience and I had a lot of fun.

It occurred to me that because Si was there, I didn’t end up sitting with the other acts, and don’t know whether this was considered bad form.  Combined with this, I was definitely a bit on edge pre-show, and so wasn’t that relaxed when chatting to them.  Hopefully this didn’t come across like I was being aloof/an arsehole.

The main lesson I learned was to just relax, go with what happens on the night and trust myself to find something funny in what happens.  The reason that I originally took the approach of preparing new material was as a backup for when the audience stuff didn’t flow.  This month, I’d spent so much time making sure that I had new material that when I started the focus was making sure that I used what I had. It’s only when I stopped worrying about it when it started to work.

Now I need to think about Moviejokie.

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Gig 82: Kay Street Baptist Church Comedy Night @ Rawtenstall Cricket Club, Rawtenstall – 27th October 2012

November 1, 2012 3 Comments

So, I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking “Well, clearly he didn’t do a gig a at real baptist church.  It must be a comedy club with one of them ironic names what they have these days.”  You’re wrong.  It was a gig at a real baptist church.  And this is how it happened…

A couple of weeks ago a friend posted on Twitter that they were looking for a clean act for a 27th October.  Since my straight stand up material is largely clean, and I had a gig-shaped hole in my diary, I wanted to put myself forward for it.  My friend, however, had only ever seen me do character stuff (which is often pretty filthy), and so I didn’t want to put her in an awkward position by asking to do it.  I did feel compelled, however, to mention that I could ‘do clean’, you know, ‘for future reference’.  Following a bit of a chat and me forwarding a YouTube video to her, she offered me the spot.  Result.  This was the point that I found out that it was a comedy night arranged by a baptist church’s social committee.  Now, I might have freaked out at this revelation (no pun intended), but regular readers will know that I don’t shy away from performing at unusual gigs.  If anything, I actively look for diversity in where I perform, as I think it’s the best way of learning.

I suppose that, as an atheist with a rather strong rationalist bent, I might have felt uncomfortable in playing for a church.  However, it wasn’t stipulated that I needed to be a Christian (or perform Christian content), and I wouldn’t be doing any material that would reference my persuasions, so I was just intrigued by the challenge of trying to crack a different type of crowd.  Although I do very little material that wouldn’t be considered clean and I don’t swear too much, this has come about organically rather than through a conscious decision.  It would be an interesting challenge to do an actively clean set and, if nothing else, it would give me another string to my bow (should I succeed).  Also, it’s often a lot of fun performing for ‘non-comedy’ audiences.  I’ve had some of my best gigs at Lancaster’s Spotlight and I hoped I might be able to replicate a similar atmosphere.

My spot was 20 minutes (I was actually offered longer, but I didn’t want to push my luck), so I set about compiling a set list.  I didn’t have too much that I had to leave out for being non-clean (other than a few ‘joke book’ jokes that could have *possibly* be seen as contentious), but dropped one or to bits for being too niche (i.e. my American-style stand up from Gig 80 & Gig 81).  Notably, I was going to perform 2 plays (Bertie’s Speech and One Day in Liverpool), my new favourite “Cliff Richard and his mate go on a hike” joke, my ‘stand up comedy as a poem’ (also from Gigs 80 & 81) and quasi-poem “You don’t like…”.  I threw in ‘the first chapter of my autobiography’ – previously only performed at Spotlight (Gig 28) – as I thought it might provide a nice change of pace.  I also thought I might dust of my ‘religious toastie’ bit – which I’m pretty sure was last performed at Gig 32 – as a nod to ‘playing the audience’.

Incredibly, it had been over 2 months since my last standard straight gig (Gig 74), and that had been only 5-minutes, so I thought it would be pretty prudent to practice.  I was also a bit concerned about accidental swears as  I once did a job interview where I apparently said shit a few times, but had no knowledge of doing so (in my defence, it was an internal interview, so I had know the interviewers for several years).  As I practiced, it became clear that the bigger issue would be accidental blaspheming, rather than swearing.  Whereas there’s some natural filter in my brain for curse words, there’s very little in the way of my blurting out God or Jesus at regular intervals (I guess largely down to my lack of religious leaning). This is where rehearsing out loud pays dividends. It’s one thing to think about material but actually speaking the words reveals all sorts of things. Thankfully, becoming conscious of my blasphemy made it easier to combat.

One thing I was pleased with in my preparation was becoming much looser with the set list. Although, I had a rough order of when I wanted to do things – having a beginning and an end – I was much freer in picking bits when they felt right, rather than sticking to a rigid list.  This is really useful when doing a longer set because you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen and it’s good to have the ability to change it on the fly.

I did a couple of timed run-throughs on the day and they went pretty well, but I still became pretty nervous as the afternoon wore on. This was caused by my recent paucity of gigs as much as it was by the somewhat unusual demographic of the audience.

As I arrived at the venue, I spotted some of the audience making their way inside and was struck by something that should not have remotely taken me by surprise: their age. With hindsight, it’s obvious that a church group would have a lot of middle-aged members, but I guess I’d become so focused on my act being clean that I hadn’t thought as much about other factors.  The situation became more complicated when I got inside the club.  The audience ranged from people in their early twenties to those in their eighties.  I realised that the issue wasn’t whether I could refrain from offending, but how I could make such a diverse range of ages laugh at the same thing.  It also didn’t help that many of my references were likely to be baffling to some of the older attendees.  I guess this is what happens when you say you want to be challenged.

The gig was in the function room of a cricket club, which probably held 100-200 people (I’m rubbish at estimating these things). The ‘stage’ was going to be the dance floor, which was way too big for the job, and the audience were sat at tables.  There was also no microphone or PA system.  I’ve performed without a mic a number of times in the past, so I wasn’t phased, but it had been in much smaller rooms, so I wasn’t sure how much of a factor this would be.  The format of the night was going to be me doing 20 minutes followed by pro comic Tony Vino, who would be doing 40 minutes.  This would be followed by a pie and peas supper.  As formats go, it was hard to argue with (anything ending with pie and peas is a winner).  One of the group’s members, Bob, was drafted in to introduce both the acts and do a short introduction.

Despite my concerns about the age range, it felt a lovely, friendly audience, who seemed up for having a good time.  I decided to modify my opening, in which I  pretend to get frustrated with the crowd for allegedly not understanding my first joke.  Instead I talked about how it was lovely to see such a range of people all out to have a good night – which it genuinely was – but how the diversity in ages made it tricky to pitch my material.  I used this to go into my usual ‘joke book’ bit in an attempt to get everyone on the same page.  Prior to starting, I had thought it might be a good idea to do some audience interaction, but the person closest to where I’d be performing was also the oldest, and the uncertainty of how to play that situation was enough to make me bottle it and just do material.

It’s difficult to say how it went.  There were laughs at a lot bits throughout (I’d guess from differing sections of the audience), but there were clearly people who were hating it.  I think I was so pre-occupied with trying to make it work, that it became difficult to gauge whether it was working or not.  I quite liked the joke book section, because, even where it didn’t quite work, it was still engaging the audience.  One bit that completely fell flat was the ‘autobiography’ that had worked so well at Spotlight.  Again, with hindsight, it should have been obvious that all ‘non-comedy’ audiences are not the same.  Doing a story with ham-fisted literary allusions is fine for Spotlight, which attracts a bunch of arty types, but it was naive for me to try this on an audience out for a fun Saturday night.  I do like to throw my short stories into my ‘straight’ sets, but I think I could have chosen a more apt piece on this occasion.  It’s also fair to say that the lack of microphone did make things trickier; having to project my voice across the room made some of my subtler asides impossible.  Final result: not amazing, but could have been a lot worse.

After another short section by Bob (who got bigger laughs than I did with some of his jokes), it was time for Tony, who gave a masterclass on how to play the room.  He started by getting the energy up in the room by leading a series of audience cheers. With my paranoid comic’s head on, this could been seen as a damning indictment of how I’d done.  Being slightly less downbeat about it, he was getting the whole crowd (those who had liked me and those that really hadn’t) to all pull in the same direction.  Being paranoid again, I realise that this might come across as me being disgruntled with Tony for doing this (as some kind of veiled insult), but I  absolutely wasn’t.  It was the exact right thing for him to do.  He followed this up with some great audience interaction and then kept hitting them with jokes.  It’s safe to say that they went home happy.

In light of Tony’s performance, I had to ask myself what I could have done differently.  Although I’ve already said that there were bits of material than were unwisely chosen, I think it’s safe to say that my style and content was not necessarily the most natural fit.  I’ve written about this before in my overly ponderous posts about Beat The Frog, where I’ve been at a loss as how to approach the problem. This gig – without the added pressure of the gong – has given me new perspective on it.  Given that I don’t want to change my style and type of material, I need to take as many of the audience with me as possible – making them feel involved and invested in my act – and the most obvious way of doing this would be through audience interaction.

In fairness, I pretty much knew I should have done some before I went on, but, as I’ve already mentioned, I chickened out.  I even had an angle worked out – the fact that everyone in the audience would know each other, and how that would make it difficult for me – but my lack of experience in this area got the better of me.  Hopefully my recent foray into MCing will help me develop these essential skills.

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Listen to The Wangs

October 10, 2012 Leave a comment

So, yeah, I’m involved in an exciting new project called The Wangs.

Who or what are The Wangs, I hear you ask?

Thanks for asking. The Wangs are me (Ste Wang) and my partner-in-Wang, Jordy Wang. We’re a band. A brilliant, brilliant band. We’ve also got a podcast. Admittedly, there’s no episodes at the moment, but stay tuned to find out all you didn’t realise you wanted to know….about The Wangs.

You can find us on iTunes by clicking here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/thewangs/id568641686

Or if you know what you’re doing, the RSS feed for the podcast is this: http://thewangs.podbean.com/feed/
Why not “like” The Wangs on Facebook! Click here.

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Gig 74: Laughing Horse Free Comedy Selection @ Comedy Bus at The Free Sisters, Edinburgh – 16th August 2012

September 3, 2012 2 Comments

We’d gone to see Daniel Kitson’s theatre show directly before this gig.  Kitson finished at 17:05, and the Comedy Bus show started at 17:30, meaning I needed to try and get there for 17:15.   As it was going to take a few minutes to get out of the theatre and then it was a minimum of 15 minute walk between venues, we thought it was prudent to jump into a cab as quickly as possible.    Rushing out of the theatre and acquiring a taxi was achieved pretty easily, but we didn’t take into account that we were in the middle of a busy city and it was rush hour.  As we sat in traffic I became increasingly twitchy as to whether we’d get there on time.  It was really quite dramatic.

As it turned out, we arrived with about 5 minutes to spare before the show started, so I had time to get a drink and get myself sorted.  All in all, that was a crap anecdote.

It turned out that the Comedy Bus was, and you’re never going to believe this, a double-decker bus.  The performance area was the top deck (which was full), while the acts skulked around on the bottom deck waiting to go on.  It also turned out that the majority of the 6 or 7 acts were doing their own shows, so I would be on the more inexperienced end of the bill.  I had a 5-minute spot, so I decided to go with the same set as Gig 72.

Erm, it went really well. It was probably the best gig of the four I performed in Edinburgh (and annoyingly, the only one I didn’t get a video of).  So, yeah.  That’s another crap anecdote.

This was the final gig I did in Edinburgh, although I wish I had done more. Of course it helped that they’d all gone really well, and it only made me wish that I’d been up for longer and doing my own show.  Maybe next year.

 

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NOT Gig 67: SAS Comedy @ Lass O’Gowrie, Manchester – 14th July 2012

July 16, 2012 3 Comments

SAS Comedy was cancelled this month due to the lack of an audience.  Plop town.

Apart from the fact that it was frustrating to not perform (I had two things planned; one as Terry and one as myself) and annoying that my favourite gig of the month didn’t happen, it’s also indicative of a worrying trend.  In my first year of comedy, I didn’t have any gigs that didn’t happen, but this was my fourth abandonment in the first two months of my second year (preceded by NOT Gig 58, NOT Gig 59 and NOT Gig 60).

It generally seems tougher at the moment to get as many gigs.  I have just about managed to maintain at least a gig per week over that period, but that was intended to be a bare minimum.  I had expected to be closer to two per week.  I’ve renewed my efforts to scour the comedy forums for new gigs, but that hasn’t been overly successful as of yet (i.e. completely unsuccessful).  I think I’ll need to start looking further afield for gigs, but this has to be balanced against petrol costs.  It’s a slightly frustrating time,  but I just need to push through it and keep applying for more and more gigs.

 

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