Gig 88: Bad Language @ The Castle Hotel, Manchester – 28th November 2012

December 3, 2012 1 Comment

Having had fun previously at Bad Language – the spoken word type night –  I managed to get an open spot at their 2nd birthday gig, which, coincidentally, was on the same day as my actual human birthday.   As it was going to be a busy night, I was asked to make sure that I stuck to 4 minutes for my spot, and I thought the easiest way of achieving this would be to do a few short stories. After plundering The World of Sherby57, I found myself with 7 stories that I felt would be good to try.  Each of these would take between 1 and 3 minutes to perform, giving me enough material to be able to pick and choose on the night.  I reviewed each of the stories, made amendments where necessary and was all set.

As it was my birthday, my beloved and myself thought it would be rather pleasant to go for a meal beforehand.  Bad Language starts at 7:30, so we booked a table for 6:15 at the nearby The Northern Quarter Restaurant.  Rather naively, we set off at 5:30, and didn’t take into account the rush hour traffic, meaning that, by the time we had parked, we arrived at the restaurant at 6:40.  This still gave us enough time to eat, so we were all set.

Or it would have been if a party of 20 pensioners hadn’t ordered just before us.  Old people.  They suck, don’t they? Always clogging the place up and that.  ”Oh, let’s go to the post office between 12 and 2,” said the pensioner. “People with proper jobs won’t be annoyed by us at all.”  WRONG! YOU’RE WRONG MR/MRS BIDDY.  STOP DOING THAT.

Anyway, I don’t know if they were all actually pensioners, but, you know, my point still stands.  I became increasingly anxious as the clock drew closer to half past seven.  I’d say that I’m generally quite a laid back person, but I like to be in charge of my own destiny, and it was driving me potty that I was going to be made late through something out of my control.  In other circumstances, the delay wouldn’t have been an issue.  We weren’t there for that long, it was clear that the problem was due to exceptional demand, rather than any incompetence by the chef, the staff couldn’t have been any more helpful and friendly and the food was delicious when it did arrive.  But, I was going to be late for a gig, so I was rather melodramatically freaking out.  It didn’t help that I’d already had to cancel a gig this week (NOT Gig 88); the thought of it happening a second time in three days was enough to make me have a near breakdown.  That said, the meal was really delicious, so it’s handy to know that I’m able to postpone mental episodes in the face of fit food.

We managed to get to The Castle for about quarter past eight, and, fortunately, the first act was still on.  The running order had also been switched around to accommodate my tardiness, so I actually had plenty of time to sit back and enjoy the show.  Well, technically, I was stood up, but you know what I mean.  During the first interval, I had to go and move the car – the car park shut at 10pm and I was due to go on later than that – so that was a whole other faff I could do without.

I was on second to last, and, as it turned out, I only had time to do two stories: So Unfair – A Thundercats Fanfiction and The Band.   So Unfair went down really well.  It was the story that I liked most, but it got an even better reaction than I had anticipated.  I wasn’t entirely happy with my performance; I was tripping over my words far more than I should have.  Luckily, the audience enjoyed it enough for this not to be an issue.

The Band felt more of a struggle.  It’s a story that revolves around one bit of wordplay, so the reveal of this is pretty much the only joke in it.  This made me much more self-conscious of my word trippery and I was desperate to get to the end.  I was so fed up with it that I actually cut it a bit short and just made a feature of me getting fed up with it (a la Gig 64). It’s a handy trick to have up my metaphorical sleeve.

So, the lesson learned from the night was: don’t worry about things you can’t control, it will probably be alright anyway.  Obviously, I won’t pay heed to this lesson next time something like this happens.  C’est la vie.

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Gig 78: Bad Language @ The Castle Hotel, Manchester – 26th September 2012

October 3, 2012 Leave a comment

I had a lot of fun performing at the previous Bad Language (Gig 75), so I asked for an open spot at September’s event, and I got one.  I had a think about what material I’d do and settled on reading a story that would last the entire 4-minutes(ish) slot.  This would be the longest story that I’d ever performed and I was eager to see how it would work (or not). I had a whole back catalogue of my amazing romance stories from TWoS57 that I wanted to choose from, and settled on Smell Engineer.  I had a go at editing the piece and did a fair amount of rewriting, generally changing or adding individual lines to make them scan better or to make them funnier.  I felt happy enough with the changes I’d made and looked forward to the gig.

I was the first act on.  It felt like it started quite slowly, but eventually there seemed to be laughs.  Although, at 1150 words, it wasn’t exactly an epic, it was certainly much longer than other stories I’ve previously performed (I’d guess the next longest would be around half this), and it was surprising how much extra story this actually required.  The other pieces have tended to be much punchier, and this longer piece had sections where I couldn’t (or hadn’t – not sure which) cram jokes.  It was quite difficult to gauge the audiences reaction, but a few people told me afterwards that they’d liked it, so it wasn’t a complete failure.

From my point of view, I definitely wasn’t satisfied with it and the longer format seem to expose the weaknesses in my writing more.  There were whole sections of the story that I was embarrassed by, and which I should have completely rewritten.  Although parts of the story worked as intended, all I could focus on were the parts that didn’t.  I think I’ve got away with bad writing in some of my shorter stories as it’s been disguised by jokes.  It became abundantly clear that the blog posts are great as starting points but they should definitely just be first drafts.

The other note I made was that the story was too long for the length of spot, so I didn’t feel I had the time to play around with it and pick it apart as much as I would have liked to.  I probably need to work out a rough ratio of story/aside and then be much stricter in my timing.

All in all, it was a useful night. I tried something new, got some laughs and learned a whole lot more.  It’s actually a bit scary that I’ve been so blasé about material in the past – performing stuff that is more or less a first draft – and I should really work harder on these prose pieces if I’m going to use them.  Some of the shorter stories have been hit and miss in the past, and maybe they just need some work.

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Gig 47: Magical Animals @ Sandbar, Manchester – 9th April 2012

April 12, 2012 Leave a comment

This was my eighth appearance at Magical Animals; my first being back in July (Gig 6) and I’ve done every one that there has been since.  I’ve enjoyed every one that I’ve been to; it’s undoubtedly Manchester’s oddest\most eccentric spoken word night.  You never know quite what you’re going to get at M.A.  Acts are given 4 minutes to whatever they want to do, be it poetry, fiction, stand up or just whatever.  Given the free-wheeling nature of the night, you can see some really weird and wonderful stuff.  You also see some things that are dreadful, but, you know, it’s dreadful in that thrilling way of people just trying whatever idea it is they’ve felt they’ve had to express (I’ve definitely fallen into this category!).

So, as I say, I’m something of a M.A. veteran these days, but this month’s event was different.  This month, I was the winner.  Yes, I was the Magical Animal (although nobody actually uses that as a term other than me).  Hopefully this will explain why there’s a photo of me sporting a rather magnificent tiara.

I decided to perform a couple of short stories that I’d had picked prior to the previous M.A. (Gig 40):  Billy’s Club and The One Second Flip Flop.  Now, if you take it at face value – I read a couple of short stories original from my blog off a piece of paper – you might not think there was much to learn from the experience.  What’s really interesting, as a performer, is how you can make the fixed words of a story come to life – in the way that you want it to – through tone of voice, performance and by throwing in asides around the story.   It’s more than just reading the story in an engaging way.  I like to subvert and change the text by throwing in asides at the audience, hopefully taking them by surprise.  Surprise is an amazing when when you’re trying to make someone laugh.

Anyway, that’s enough pontificating for one blog post.  I’m off to wear my tiara whilst parading around my kitchen.  Adios.

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Gig 20: Spotlight @ The Storey, Lancaster – 20th November 2011

November 21, 2011 4 Comments

So, I followed up last Monday’s gig at Magical Animals with another non-comedy night at Lancaster Spotlight.  The night is designed to encourage writers of all persuasions and included poetry, music, stand up and “life writing”.  I had a 5-minute open spot and decided to read out the two stories from Gig 16, plus a poem and another daft little bit.

It’s kind of strange doing these non-stand up gigs, because there feels so little pressure that I’m not sure that they actually count.  I do really enjoy the freedom of being able to try different things, though, and I feel right at home in that environment.  I’m not quite sure how this type of performance ties into developing as a stand up, but it feels natural to do something a little bit different, so I’ll stick with it and just see where it takes me.

The performance seemed to go pretty well.  I was pleased with how I actually tackled the material. I made sure that I took my time and gave the material chance to breathe (I know that sounds wanky, but I don’t know how else to express it).  I even remembered to leave pauses to give people chance to laugh, which is something I’ve often not done.

Overall it was a fun night and I look forward to doing it again.  Now I just need to find some stand up gigs to do.

(Apologies for how badly this is written. Sometimes it’s hard to squeeze this stuff out on your dinner hour)

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Gig 19: Magical Animals @ Sandbar, Manchester – 14th November 2011

November 16, 2011 1 Comment

Ornate Cuban door knocker

Image via Wikipedia

It seems hard to believe that it has been nearly 4 weeks since my last gig, so it was nice to be back behind the mic.  I’d been ill all last week, so I didn’t really have time to prepare very much.  Luckily, the night was Magical Animals, the spoken word\poetry\comedy\genreless oddness night, so I would at least be able to read from paper, and it was only 4 minutes.

I started with a few jokes from my “joke book”, which is becoming a mainstay of my performances.  I like the way that by using the book as a device, it makes it possible to tailor the bit to the gig.  This time I chose to work around the “intellectual” jokes from the book.  I like this bit the more that I do it and I’m banishing all thoughts of actually learning the gags.

Next up, I read out a short story.  I had wanted to read one from my book, as I felt it was stronger, but that one was a little too long.  The only other one I had printed out was “The Door Knocker“, which I wasn’t really happy with (follow the link and find out why).  I didn’t really have much of a choice, though, so I thought I’d give it a go.

It didn’t really work, but then I knew that it wouldn’t.  In a weird way, it was good that it didn’t work because I didn’t think it would and so it left me feeling like I at least I had some judgement. (Did that make sense to anybody but me?)

I finished with a short poem, not because it’s particularly funny, I just quite like it.

Overall, it didn’t go brilliantly, but it was just good to get back on stage.

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