Gig 36: Crack Up Comedy @ The Nip and Tipple, Whalley Range, Manchester – 19th February 2012

February 20, 2012 Leave a Comment

You may remember from my diary entry for Gig 33 that I originally created the character of Den Kodd in preparation for a gig that I later found out that I wasn’t going to be performing at. Well, even later still, I found out that I would be performing at it after all, and that’s what I did last night.  Hooray.

Due to a last minute change, I was asked the day before if I could do it and I jumped at the chance.  I hadn’t been feeling too well all weekend – just a cold, in case you’re worried – so didn’t feel like preparing too much.  I re-jigged the running order of the gags, and swapped a new one in for one that didn’t work last time.  I had a quick run through in the afternoon and that was that.

In terms of my performance, there wasn’t that much to talk about, and, in many ways, that’s something worth talking about.  It all felt incredibly easy.  I had no nerves, was looking forward to it, enjoyed the performance and was able to enjoy the other acts.  It’s probably the performance that I’ve been most relaxed over.  Although it didn’t go down quite as well as at SAS, I still got plenty of laughs, and didn’t feel out of place.  There’s things that I would improve upon, but it was only my second time doing that character.  It seems telling that I enjoy myself most at those nights where it’s a bit different and that straight stand up isn’t all that’s on offer.  I think it’s going to take me a while to process what to do with that information, and how I could use it to my advantage as a performer.

I don’t usually talk about the other acts in my diary posts, but it was an honour to be part of such a great bill.  It was the first of a new monthly comedy night at The Nip & Tipple, and although the audience was small, it was appreciative and the room was great.  It was a cracking line-up of character comedy: Peter Slater (from the amazing SAS Comedy) MCed as Bernard Bananas, with Rod Shepherd: Conspiracy Theorist and me\Den Kodd\Terry in the first half.  The second half was an extended set by Spanish lothario, Wilfredo, who I had seen in Edinburgh.  It’s the first time that he’d performed in the North of England, so I don’t think the audience knew what to expect but they were easily won over by his questionable charms (definitely go and see him if you get the chance to – he’s a great act).  Hopefully word of mouth will spread about the night and will help establish it as a great night for local comedy.  If you’re a lover of comedy and you’re in the area, then you owe it to yourself to make this night work.

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Gig 30: Buzzin’ @ De Bees Music Bar, Winsford – 29th January 2012

January 30, 2012 6 Comments

I’ve had a string of really successful gigs recently, so I knew that I was well overdue to die on my arse. And, boy, did I ever die on my arse last night. Obviously, this isn’t the greatest thing to happen, but it should, at least, make for a slightly more interesting blog post.

Preparation for the gig was fairly relaxed as I was largely performing tried and tested material, which I know like the back of my hand (or so I thought). There were a few tweaks to a couple of bits, but overall I was pretty confident with the set list, which was:

1. “I’m sat at a desk..” Previously only performed at Gig 25.
2. My “this really shifty looking bloke came up to me and pointed at my wrist…” bit (previously know as “the joke that unjusticely got me gonged off at Beat The Frog” (Gig 12))
3. The “Can’t Fight The Moonlight” bit.
4. The “Arnie\Controversial-Incomplete Joke” bits that have been in pretty much all my straight stand up sets.  There was a bit of a change to the ending of the “incomplete” part, inspired by last week’s tweaked version for Beat The Frog (Gig 29).
5. New joke “So she lost her job…” Although this was new I’d tried it out on a couple of people and felt confident that it would get some kind of laugh.
6.. My “Personal” bit, plus a bit of “Personal Bit 2″ from Gig 27.  On doing a timed run through, I needed a couple of extra minutes and decided that the first part of “Personal Bit 2″ would fit nicely.  There are a few points in it where there are quite natural breaks, so I could always drop bits depending on how time was running.
7. Short play “One Day in Liverpool.”  This has worked really well in Gig 26 and Gig 28, so I thought I’d give it a whirl in a straight set.  It seemed a nice way to finish.

I got a bit nervous on the afternoon of the gig – I think because it was a gig I’d never done before and there was the element of the unknown. I’d calmed down by the time it came to perform, though, and was really looking forward to it.  There wasn’t a huge audience, but the first three bits went down OK – not great – but I felt it was fine given the audience size.  I then got to the Arnie stuff, which isn’t my cleverest but of material, but generally gets a decent laugh, and it got no reaction whatsoever.  It was certainly disconcerting.  Although it’s amazing your stuff goes down a storm, it’s still perfectly fine when you get muted laughter, but nothing at all is a nightmare.  It makes you realise how much the material relies on some response from the crowd and that without it your rhythm and timing become completely shot.

I ploughed on with the tweaked “incomplete joke”, but I really didn’t get any reaction from this point onwards.  The nadir of the set came early on into the “personal bit”.  As I was starting off, someone on the front row’s phone fell out of his pocket and onto the floor.  I instictively felt like I should reference it, which I did, but it threw my timing and, combined with the blank faces, I think I made a bit of a hash of the subsequent bit.  Directly following on from this is a part where I start explaining my feelings on something and this builds up into something of a rant, but, by this stage, I was sufficiently put off that it didn’t really flow as it should.  The punchline to that rant, is actually the start of the next bit and that also got no reaction.  It was at this point that I forgot what to say next.

Now, I’ve done this section on stage a number of times and probably at least a hundred times in practice.  I could probably do it in my sleep, but on this occasion it completely disappeared.  The fact that I conscious of how well I knew the bit, somehow made things worse, and less likely that I would remember. I was genuinely panicking but then I kept repeating the line to stall and because it was the thing to do that made me laugh most.  It perhaps wasn’t the best way to react but I kind of liked the honesty and lack of slickness of it.  My mind was also reeling at this point; I couldn’t decide whether to ditch the thread and try and just do something else or whether to try and stick with it.  The decision was made more difficult because the personal bit all flows, so it’s not like I could skip to a later section of it and it still make sense. In hindsight, I should have perhaps just said that I knew it wasn’t working and then dived into my joke book (which I had in my pocket as a security blanket).  But, I didn’t.  Eventually the line came back to me, but the performance was all very half-hearted from then on.  ”Luckily”, I had used so much time up in forgetting that I didn’t have time to try any of “personal bit 2″.  I ended with the play (to little reaction) and was pleased to get off.

When I died in my first handful of gigs, it was soul-destroying. Now that I have slightly more experience and have done a number of successful gigs, it’s still horrible but I’m able to deal with it relatively easily. I think it does dent the confidence a bit, but it’s also a really good leaning experience. It also highlights how much I still have to learn, particularly in how to deal better with cocking up and having different material to fall back on.  The question that always strikes me in this situation is how can material that has worked so well on other occasions fail so badly? (truly baffling)

It struck me last night that the audience members will have left the gig thinking that I’m awful, and they probably would not be able to believe that the same material has worked really well in front of other audiences.  It’s all a very strange business.

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Gig 28: Spotlight @ The Storey, Lancaster – 20th January 2012

January 23, 2012 5 Comments

 

 

 

Ste Price was born in 1975. Yes, I know, it’s really hard to believe that he’s that old, but he is. Get over it.

 

Despite showing a flair for acting daft at an early age (he once pretended to be a Russian on the play area of a Hoseasons’ holiday park, aged 9).  It wasn’t until 2011 that he decided to perform in any sort of official capacity.  Since that decision (the one about performing in some form of official capacity), he has tried his hand (and the rest of his body) at stand up, character comedy, improv, poetry, short plays and erotic fiction.  There’s literally no limit to the number of ways that he can adequately convey material.

 

He is very much looking forward to performing some jumble of the above at the January’s Spotlight.

 

P.S. ‘He’ is really ‘me’.  It’s ‘me’ writing this, but I’m pretending to be, like, a journalist or something.

After performing at the open-mic at November’s Spotlight (Gig 20), I was kindly asked to return for a guest spot.  As the evening isn’t a comedy night – it encompasses any performed writing and music – it was the perfect opportunity to try some material that was a bit different.  Primarily, I took some of the blog posts from The World of Sherby57 and decided to see if they would work in front of an audience.

My set list was:

1) A joke (“stretched cat”) following by the return of the Joke Book.  I mixed this bit up by numbering each joke in the book and asking the audience for a number to randomise which joke they got.

2) 2 Poems:  A limerick and a political piece.

3) An “essay” called “Times and Trains – An Essay”

4) An “essay” describing my sense of humour.

5) An extract from my, allegedly, upcoming autobiography.

6) A short play: “One Day in Liverpool”.  This was performed as per Gig 26.

Because I was covering a variety of different types of writing, I tied the act together under the mock-pretentious banner of “An Odyssey\Journey Through The Arts”, and this allowed me to assume a strong on-stage persona.

Only my opening gag and the play were performed off-paper meaning there wasn’t that much for me to remember.  Combined with the audience not being there for comedy, this seemed to take a lot of pressure off and I could really get into the material and mess around with it.  A lot of the laughs I got came from completely off-the-cuff asides, and this is something I’ve really wanting to do more of (as I said in my write up of Gig 25).

I was really pleased with how it all went – apart from the essay about my sense of humour, which got nothing – and it was probably the most confident and relaxed that I’ve been on stage.  I know need to think of a way for me to translate this freedom onto my straight stand up sets, as I think it would really mark a big improvement in my performances.

Hopefully I’ll be asked to perform at Spotlight again soon as my mind is reeling with what sort of nonsense I can try next.

You can find out more about Spotlight, here.

 

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Gig 17: University of Salford’s Student Union – 18th October 2011

October 19, 2011 4 Comments

The Peel Building, on the University of Salfor...

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The last time that I had to perform in front of “the youth” it came as a surprise (Gig 9), but I had full, prior knowledge that this was a student gig (at Salford University’s student union bar), and so I prepared accordingly. This essentially involved me removing any traces of 1980s references and seeing what was left.

As I’d had a pretty busy week, I didn’t have time to throw in anything new, so it was going to be cobbled together from previous bits I’d performed. My initial stab at a set list was:

1.  Opening joke that I first tried at my last straight stand up gig (Gig 14).
2. “The Joke Book” – I used the basic device of my Dragons’ Den bit from Gig 14, but instead of those jokes I used my bad pun notebook, which I used a lot in my early gigs and which I really like. I like the way that, because I read the jokes from a book, I’m able to play around and improvise, and basically try to tailor the section (and which jokes I do) to the audience. I usually do 3 or 4 one-liners from the book.

3.  The joke that got me gonged off from BTF, but in no way should have (in my opinion).
4.  One of my new celebrity nonsense bits from Gig 14. The other was dropped because it referenced Frank Spencer.
6.  Two bits that have become mainstays of my straight sets. The third bit that I usually do after them was dropped because it was an 80′s reference.
7.  My “personal” stand up bit, last performed at Gig 9.
8.  One of the short stories that I performed at Magical Animals (Gig 16).
9.  An “anecdote”, which is my usual closer.

I settled on this on Saturday morning, basically so I had chance to practice whilst driving about. I figured it might run a bit long, so I knew I needed to do a timed run through to make sure it stuck as close to 10 minutes as possible, but I basically knew what I’d be doing.

I’ve had a really busy week, so didn’t have chance to time myself until the evening of the gig. As I suspected, it overran. By the time I got to the end of point 8 - the short story – I’d done around 10:30.  The bit that I wanted to perform least (and therefore drop) was the closer – which doesn’t instil confidence in the bit. I think I’ve stuck with it as my finisher because it felt more like a conclusion that my other stuff. With that out of the way, I realised that I couldn’t finish with my short story, so I’d have to re-jig the order. I decided to go with:

1. Opening joke.
2. “The Joke Book”
3. The joke that got me gonged off from BTF.
4. One of my new celebrity nonsense bits.
6. 2 bits that have become mainstays of my straight sets.
7. One of the short stories that I performed at Magical Animals.
8. My “personal” stand up bit.

I decided to close with my “personal” stuff because a) it was the only block of related material I had, and b) the last line of it got a big laugh from the youngsters at Gig 9. As with my last minute enforced changes for Gig 15, I felt really happy with how the restructuring felt. It was time to go to the gig (luckily with a 30 minute drive which would enable me to make sure the new order was locked in).

I hadn’t been nervous all day, but I started to get a few butterflies on the drive over. The traffic was terrible when I hit Salford, so I was running really late and had to park in a car park where I wasn’t sure If I’d be able to get off or not, so I was a bit flustered when I got to the venue (it doesn’t take a lot). I had a look in the room, which was nice large space was pretty full. I’m not great at estimating numbers of people, but there were 100-200 people in attendance (although I’m happy to be corrected on this).

I was on second in the first half, and it was clear from the response generated by MC Colin Manford and first act Mike Sheer that the audience was appreciative and friendly, which is always a bonus. Sadly, this didn’t alleviate my nerves, which really kicked in when the show started. I even got my usual “I don’t think I can remember any of my material” thing, which is the last thing you need before going on.

As tends to be the case (luckily), my nerves disappeared when I got on stage and it all seemed to go really well. Perhaps not everybody got what it was about, but I got enough laughs from a high enough percentage of the audience for me to be really pleased with how it went. I got lots of genuine laughs and I even got my first ever applause break at one point. Sadly, I can’t remember what it was for, other than the vague recollection that it was for a throwaway line that I didn’t think would get much of a reaction. Luckily, the performance was recorded, so hopefully I’ll be able to watch it back and try and make a bit more sense of what happened.

It’s been a while since I’ve felt that one of my “straight” sets has gone well, rather thank just OK – maybe even dating back to Gig 2 – so this was a massive positive. One of the things that I’ve struggled with so far is getting to grip with knowing which bits of material are working, but I do feel at least incrementally better at it. It really does just seem like you need to do as many gigs as possible.

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

September 13, 2011 4 Comments

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.

 

 

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Gig 9: Comedy Knight @ Mello Mello, Liverpool – 1st August 2011

August 2, 2011 7 Comments

So, after last week’s strange interlude of Gig 8a, I’m pleased to say that I made it to the next integer and completed Gig 9.  That’s not to say that there weren’t hiccoughs on the way, but I’ll get to that.

The set for this gig was going to be largely the same as last week, with a couple of exceptions.  Firstly, I changed my opening (again), going back to more or less my original “Picasso” opener.  After realising that I couldn’t start with a direct question, I tried to tweak last week’s opener by reframing it.  However, this just led me to completely lose faith in it.  For inspiration, I looked back at my notes for Gig 2 (so far my most successful performance, which is a little depressing) and I realised that I opened with a gag that led into the Picasso bit.  I duly decided to do this.

The other change was that I would not read the “play” from a piece of paper to see if it would aid the performance – and I went back to the play from Gig 8 as it was set in Liverpool and so played the local knowledge card.

Aside: Strangely, in my gig report from last week, I mentioned that I might stop reading the plays from paper because it didn’t seem to work, but, in the comments on the post, Dannie, “the lovely young German lady” from the audience, said that she liked that I read from the paper.  Trying to make sense of this comedy lark is a nightmare.

I had a pretty busy weekend, so didn’t have much time to practice, but at this stage I know all this shizzle pretty well.  That is until I get to the venue, of course, when I feel like I’ve forgotten it all. It’s a horrible feeling, but luckily, so far, it’s always come back to me when I step on stage.

Comedy Knight is an alternative comedy (i.e. sketches and characters, as well as stand up) night held at Mello Mello in Liverpool.  It’s a lovely studenty type venue with a proper stage to make you feel like you’re Live at the Apollo (maybe I’m exaggerating).

There were 9 acts scheduled to perform but, incredibly, 6 dropped out.  Yes, 6.  That’s two thirds.  Totally unacceptable. The three acts that were left were Matty Delaney (who I believe was performing his first gig, but I could be wrong), Me and resident sketch group Legion of Doom.  Fortunately, there was an actual audience, so we pressed on.

As I sat waiting to go on, I came to the realisation that I was probably old enough to be most of the audience’s dad.  I’m exaggerating, but only slightly.  What should have been a low pressure set, in a lovely venue with a nice audience, now became a pressure cooker of terror as I desperately reeled through the myriad of cultural references that I’d use that they’d be too young to get.  In the end, I decided to just plough on and make the occasional reference to the age inappropriateness of my material.

As is becoming the norm for my self-reviews, it went “OK”.  I find it genuinely hard to judge, and if you don’t absolutely kill it, how do you rate the performance?  Some jokes got big laughs all round. Some bits got good laughs from some sections of the audience and not a lot from others.  Some bits got good laughs from audience members I wouldn’t have expected them too and not a lot from audience members I might have.  All in all, it went OK.

Oh, I should probably mention.  The opening is still a bit obtuse, but I’m sure there’s a way I can make it work.  I just don;t know what it is yet.  Thinking cap to the ready.  The short play definitely flowed better without the paper, but perhaps lost a bit of its charm.  I think the Liverpool play might have worked better from paper, but the one I did last week better without.

After I’d finished, I went into my usual bipolar mindset.  Half of me thought: “I’m shit.  I need to throw away all my material and start again.”  The other half of me thought: “He he, that was amazing.  I loved it and doing all the stuff that I think is funny. He he.”  I have issues.

When the show was over, I was approached by an audience member, who also happened to be an open mic comic, who gave me some positive feedback.  A bit of feedback makes all difference, and not in an ego stroking way.  It’s just nice to know you’re doing something right when you only think you’re doing OK.

Comedy Knight was fun, despite the dirty drop-outs and I suspect that it’s a different beast when the students are in town. I’d love to give it a go then, although perhaps in character and perhaps with some more up to date cultural references.

P.s.

I’ve just remembered the best bit.  The biggest laugh came when I used my favourite and only modern cultural reference.  It usually doesn’t work with people who have jobs.  God bless the students.

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Gig 8a: On The Funny Side @ Pulse, Manchester – 28th July 2011

July 29, 2011 8 Comments

Pre-Gig:

Well, I still don’t quite know what to make of last week’s gig; I think the main problem was that I didn’t feel like I’d learned anything from the experience and that’s really worrying. I understand that there are going to be ups and downs at this stage, but even if it doesn’t go to plan you hope that you can take something away from every gig.  Maybe I’m just asking too much and should just accept that some gigs are going to be so-so.  Anyway, with another imminent gig to prepare for I had no chance to dwell on it, which is probably a good thing.  I quickly came up with my set for this week:

1)      Another new opener – not exactly starting with a quick joke, but it gets to the point much quicker than previous attempts.

2)      Bits 2) and 3) from Gig 8, which usually more or less work.

3)      Retrying the second 3 minutes of new stuff from Gig 7 – after the first 3 minutes didn’t work so well last week.

4)      A different one of my “short plays” from Gig 6 than what I performed at Gig 8.

5)      The closing bit from Gig 5\Gig 8 which generally works.

Aside: I am self aware enough to know that these set lists are abstract in the extreme and will only make sense to me and anyone who has seen all of my gigs, i.e. Me. They’re there partly as a reminder to me about what I did, but also to illustrate how many changes I make.  It’s not like I’m going to transcribe my material is it? If I did then I’d lose even the element of surprise, which might be the only thing I have going for me.

One of the things I’ve been thinking about this week relates to my persona when performing.  I realise that I’ve not really mentioned in any of my gig reports what my style or content is when doing straight stand up. Partly that’s because I don’t know how to describe it, and partly because it’s a bit embarrassing to do so.  Much of my material is pretty daft – I’m definitely not observational or someone who talks about themself.  Because I wasn’t really sure how to present the puns\stupid wordplay, I dressed it up as a series of stupid stories and a non-specific character who tends to make (deliberate) mistakes and do bits that (intentionally) don’t quite work.  My intention has been to ride this out and hopefully eventually get from the non-specific character to an exaggerated version of myself.  I’ve been thinking about it more this week after an e-mail exchange with a fellow comic (am I allowed to use the phrase “fellow comic” yet?).

Anyway, whilst working out how to adapt bit 3) from the list above to work without the proceeding 3 minutes, I stumbled across a change in tone – adding bits with a different bit of attitude that seemed to work better and put more meat on the bones of what I had.  This change seems to have filtered through to my other material when I’ve been practicing.  Admittedly, this is quite a subtle shift and may not be apparent to any one other than me, especially when I have to perform it in public.  It’s also quite possible that my re-tooled bit 3) might fall totally flat.  So, I thought I would write about this before the gig, so that if it doesn’t go well then I will remember that it feels like a move in the right direction.

I’ll be back in the next paragraph to tell you how it went.

Post gig:

So, you may have noticed that this is listed as gig “8a” and not gig 9, which is strange given the whole “pre-gig” build up that I gave it.  The reason for this will become apparent.

The venue was Bar Pulse, scene of the less than successful gig 7.  I arranged it last week, but when I spotted the line up listed on the bar’s Facebook page  - yesterday tea time  - I  wasn’t on it.  I emailed the organiser and he got back to me at 18:50 to say that I was still ok to perform.

I got to the bar about half eight and it seemed that Danny Sutcliffe –  who I assumed was the regular MC  -  was nowhere to be seen and I didn’t recognise anybody else, so I wasn’t sure who to speak to.  If I was less of an idiot, I would have sought out Rich – the organiser – and asked, but I wouldn’t be the loveable socially awkward idiot that you all know and tolerate if I were to do something like that.  So, when everyone went downstairs, I followed and assumed that I’d catch up with whoever had the running order.  Plus, you know, I had e-mail confirmation from less than two hours prior that I would be performing, so I’m not a complete moron.

This would have been a fine plan had the MC not started pretty much as soon as he got down there.  There weren’t loads of people in attendance, but there were enough to make the gig work. Only, it turned out that the bulk of the audience were a bunch of French students.  I’ve certainly not got anything against the French, but making wordplay and cultural references work is an uphill battle with an audience whose first language isn’t English.

There were a couple of acts in the first section, and when the second had finished, the break was announced by Rich because the MC had left.  I don’t know why he left or even what his name was, but it was a sign of things to come.  Anyway, as everybody filed out to get a drink, I went over to the table where I had spotted the running order…I wasn’t on it. Nightmare.

As it transpired, I needn’t have worried. Not only had most of the other names on the running order not shown up, but the audience pretty much all left.  Those who remained – me, AJ Johnston and another fledgling comic (whose name I didn’t quite catch because I’m rubbish) –  conspired to arrange the second half.  AJ would introduce the other comic – but then he had to leave- and then other comic would  introduce me.

Let’s cut to the chase, I performed for the unnamed comic, his friend – who was a lovely young German lady – and a guy who was a  random bar patron – who also happened to be German.  That is why this “gig” will forever more be known as 8a.

I could have just said that I didn’t want to do it – it really, really wouldn’t have mattered – but at worst I could view it as a kind of dress rehearsal.  In the end, it was quite a weird experience, but I did learn a few things from it so it wasn’t as completely mental as it would first seem.

Firstly, there was a lot of conversation going on.  As soon as I started, our two German cousins discovered they had a shared homeland and had a bit of a chat about it. It seemed churlish to interject under the circumstances.  There was also quite a bit of chat directed at me.  You couldn’t really categorise it as heckling because they were just making conversation.  This seriously disrupted my flow in some sections, but this is probably a good thing. I’ve not had to deal with hecklers as yet, and this was about as friendly an introduction to people derailing your set as you’re going to get.

I also learned a few things about bits of my material.  My opening line was a question – but one that I don’t want answering until I’ve done my “hilarious” spiel (I know I’m cagey about revealing material, but let’s just say that my opening was WW2 themed and two thirds of my tiny audience were German. Thanks, Fate).  Well, if you ask people a direct question then they’re going to answer.  I know, it’s obvious if you stop and think about it for a nanosecond.  If I were to use that opening again then I’d have to rephrase it so that I didn’t prompt a response until I wanted it, or to deal with the response and then interject my spiel in later so that it worked.

I also did one of my “plays” – a different one to last week, because last week’s didn’t go as well as expected.  Each “play” fits onto a side of A4 and I produce the A4 sheet when performing because I felt it fitted the character, not because I don’t know the words.  I practice my set when I’m driving and so can’t read it, so it ends up being loosely improvised around the basic structure, which actually improves it.  The weird thing is that if I perform it with the paper in hand then I end up not only reading it but becoming reliant on it.  I actually forget the bits, even though I’ve performed it loads on my own without.  The paper must go.  Or, as the audience member shouted out: “stop reading!”

When you perform in front of three people then its unlikely that they’re going to be rolling in the aisles – especially when they interupt your punchlines with questions – but I could have been the unfunniest man alive.  Under the circumstances, I’m not going to beat myself up about it.  If I was a different type of comedian then I could probably turn last night into a routine, but I’m not.  It’s a shame.  A real shame.

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Gig 8: Comedy Balloon, The Ape and Apple, Manchester – 20th July 2011

July 21, 2011 3 Comments

You may remember that last Thursday’s gig (Gig 7) didn’t go so great.  Since I knew I had a gig this week, I spent Friday trying to work out what on earth my next set was going to consist of.  There were two areas I wanted to address:

1)      My opening – which I have done in one form or other in all my straight stand-up gigs – is a little…obtuse.  I really like it but it does involve at least a minute of no laughs before the point becomes clear, and I thought it might be an idea to try something different.

2)      My initial reaction was to ditch all of the new 6 minutes that I tried last week.  This seemed a little harsh, so I decided to break it in half.  It seemed easier to judge 3 minutes of material and less of a risk.

Luckily, I had an idea for a new opening bit, so I quickly cobbled together my set:

1)      New opener.

2)      Two bits that have been in every “straight” set.

3)      A bit from earlier gigs that only got dropped from Gig 7 due to time constraints.

4)      Retrying the first 3 minutes of new stuff from Gig 7.

5)      One of my “short plays” from Gig 6.

6)      The closing bit from Gig 5.

This week’s gig (how many times can I use the “g-word” in one post???) was at Comedy Balloon – the venue for my so-far most successful show, Gig 2.  I’d rehearsed plenty and because most of the material was stuff I’ve done before, I knew it pretty well.  So, I was surprised to find that I was really nervous the day of the show.  As I’ve experienced on a couple of previous occasions, I wasn’t mentally nervous, but physically nervous; the butterflies really kicked in.  It’s a weird feeling because it feels ridiculous when you’re not consciously worried.

Anyway, by the time I had to get up and perform, the nerves had really escalated.  My mind was screaming: “what the hell are you doing this for?”  But, once you’ve been announced, you don’t have much choice but to get up there and give it a go.  Not that there was any real possibility of me not going through with it, and I do really want to perform.  It’s just weird what nerves can do to your thoughts.

So, how did it go?  Well, I got more laughs than last week and I was pleased with the performance aspect given how nervous I was.

Perhaps the main thing that I noticed was that my new opening – although different – was exactly the same kind of obtuse that the previous opening had been.  It’s only when I was performing it that I realised how much the case this was.  I had to endure the full minute of blank looks before the point of it was revealed.  I don’t know how I feel about it.  It’s not great to see those blank faces looking out at you and the temptation is to try and get some easier laughs to kick off.  There is part of me that relishes it, though.  I guess that’s why I keep coming up with that kind of material in the first place.  From an “artistic” point-of-view, I want to stick with it as it is almost a mission statement of the kind of comedy that I’d like to do.  From a practical point-of-view, you should ditch stuff that isn’t working, and I have to ask myself if the laugh I get at the end of the segment is big enough to justify the silence.  I don’t feel equipped enough at this stage to make the decision.

The 3-minutes of retried material from last week went OK, but I’m not sure there are enough laughs in it to justify the 3-minutes.  I think it might have to sit on the subs’ bench for a while until I can make more sense of it.

The “short play” didn’t go down as well as I thought it would, which was disappointing.

Overall, I came away feeling that the night hadn’t gone very well and I had a slight crisis of confidence.  This is weird, because my perception is almost that last week went better, even though I know I got more laughs this week.  Perception is a bitch, isn’t it?

Because I’ve seen a lot of non-professional comedy over the last year, I’ve noticed that you can have two acts on a night that will get broadly the same quantity and quality of laughs, but the perception will be that one act absolutely killed and the other didn’t do too well.  In short, the more I learn about comedy, the more I realise how little I actually know.

Luckily, I’m self-aware enough to realise that this is a really tough thing to do and that it takes several years and hundreds of gigs before you really have any idea of what you’re doing.  It’s natural to be full of self-doubt at this stage and that you just have to develop a thick skin and power through it.

It’s really no wonder that a lot of comics give up.  Anybody that makes it really deserves it.

P.s.

Other than that, it was a really good night of comedy, featuring sketches from Him and Me TV and stand up from Alex Mettrick in the first half. The second half consisted of an Edinburgh preview by Harriet Dyer, which contained the best “whales singing pop songs quiz show” feature that I’ve ever seen.

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Gig 6: Magical Animals @ Sandbar, Manchester – 12th July 2011

July 13, 2011 8 Comments

There was an argument (in my own head) that this could have been gig 5c (see gigs 5a and 5 b), as it wasn’t a comedy night, but I’ve already got bogged down in nomenclature as it is.  Anyway, it’s my decision and it’s officially gig number 6. (Yes, I realise that I’m arguing with myself here, what of it?)

Anyway, I was asked if I wanted to do 4 minutes at Magical Animals, a spoken word (mainly poetry) night and I immediately said yes.  I then had to work out what stand up material I could do in 4 minutes. I realised that there wasn’t any, and so thought it was the perfect opportunity to try out some of my “short plays” that I’ve published on The World of Sherby57.  I’m a quick thinker, so I’d decided all this within about 30 seconds of accepting the spot.

It had been exactly 3 weeks since gig 5 until this, so I was unexpectedly nervous when I arrived at the venue.  Luckily, the plays were written down, so I didn’t have to worry about forgetting them.  I was also second on, so I didn’t have too long to worry about it.

I had practised performing the 3 pieces (yes, 3 plays in 4 minutes.  I told you that they were short) and I’d been able to do it only glancing at the paper, so was able to act it out pretty well.  In reality, I think nerves took over a bit and I was far more reliant on reading.  Also, I wasn’t entirely sure where to look when I was doing them.  I wanted to engage the audience, but also the characters had to be “looking at each other”.  I think this element of the performance would improve with a few more goes.

The plays got some laughs and I enjoyed doing them.  The last one in particular worked well and I think I’ll give it a try in my stand up set.  I also got some good advice about how it could be improved.  I won’t tell you what the play was about, so I won’t ruin its majesty for you.

Most of the other performers were poets.  I guess I had been a bit pre-occupied with my own performance, because I didn’t really consider what everybody else would be doing, but, wow, they were really good.  I’m certainly no poetry expert, but the standard was really high – both in content and delivery.  I’ve never been to a poetry event before, and was surprised by just what good performers they were.  Yes, me being surprised just highlights my ignorance, but at least I’m man enough to say so.

Most importantly, there were free cupcakes.  Poetry and free cakes.  What more could you ask for from an evening’s entertainment?

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Gig 2: Comedy Balloon, The Ape and Apple, Manchester – 8th June 2011

June 9, 2011 20 Comments

Pre-gig:

I thought I’d write this post in two sections, so that when I tell you what I was feeling prior to the gig, then it will be honest.  The downside is that my tenses are going to be up the wall.  I’m sure you can cope.

This gig was confirmed just a few days after my first, so I had nearly a month to prepare.  Learning a lesson from my debut, there was no way I was going to be underprepared this time.

The gig was a straight (ie not in character) show and so I had to develop a whole new set of material for my 10-minute spot (although there is a 3 joke overlap with the Hans set). Luckily, I had a few notebooks of ideas that I’d compiled over the last few months.  It was relatively easy to combine all of these and pick out 15-20 minutes or so of material to use as a starting point – which is not to say that any of it was any good!  I had this first draft completed a couple of weeks beforehand and after a few read throughs, I was down to 13 or 14 minutes worth of stuff.

The next challenge was to learn it. I created two sets of bullet points – one with just the general sections and one with sub-headings for individual jokes. I found it relatively easy to learn the basics once I had it structured.  Once you know the bullet points, it makes it easier to find the next bit in your memory.  It was then just a case of repeating to myself – out loud – hopefully improving the phrasing as I went and throwing in new ideas. Acting the set out also made it clearer which bits to cut out for time, and the stuff that felt most natural stayed in.

Unlike last time, I didn’t spend the entire week feeling nervous, which was an improvement.  The butterflies definitely kicked in the night before, though. It’s a weird feeling because my body was obviously a lot more anxious about it than I thought my mind was (if that makes any sense).  I’m not entirely sure why the anxiety was so strong – although it’s obviously pretty natural to feel nervous before performing.

Driving home from work on the night of the gig, I quelled my butterflies by doing another dry run, and this at least made me excited to perform in addition to my terror.  It’s really intriguing to know how people will react to stuff you’ve thought of and spent time working on.

My main aims for the set were:

1. Stay calm enough to remember the material.
2. Take time to feel the audiences reactions and feed off it.
3. Use the energy I have when performing the pub quiz and improv to make the material sound like it’s being performed and not read out.
4. Don’t worry about whether or not you’re getting laughs. Focus on the performance. (sorry for sounding a bit wanky)

Post-gig:

Without wanting to sound cocky, it couldn’t really have gone much better.

The venue was Comedy Balloon at The Ape and Apple in Manchester. It’s a lovely pub and a great free open-mic night. It’s well worth popping down on a Wednesday if you’ve got nothing on.  A lot of the audience were the other acts or professional comedians –  which could be daunting – but it’s a really supportive atmosphere and a great place for comedy.  If you’re thinking of giving stand up a try, then it’s a great place to start.

I did another run through on the drive into Manchester, which calmed me down a bit more, and I was only reasonably nervous by the time I was due to perform (I was on second, so I didn’t have much time to think about it). My relative lack of anxiety was definitely helped by the friendly atmosphere.

Once I started, I was fine and I really got into it. I have to say that the endless repetition of the set beforehand really paid off.  Because I didn’t have to think about what I was saying I was able to concentrate on performance and ad-libbing.  It’s weird that I thought of new lines to throw in considering how many times I’d already been through it all.  I think this was due to the presence of an audience giving it a different feel.

The first 3 of my aims were met and thankfully I didn’t have to worry about the fourth as I was getting laughs.  Oh, what a sweet, sweet sound.

Afterwards I got quite a bit of positive feedback, which blew me away. Obviously, being slightly socially awkward, I just kind of smiled and said thanks a bit sheepishly.  Having one decent gig doesn’t really mean much,but at least I know I’m not completely wasting my time and that takes a certain amount of pressure off.  Until I really bomb and become a gibbering wreck.

Something to look forward to, then.

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