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Thursday, June 16, 2011

Get Up, Stand Up

So I did it. This past Tuesday, I signed up for an open mic, with maybe three jokes prepared, thinking I could fill the rest of the space with propensity and talent as a comic actor and improviser. Or maybe not. I had a revelation Tuesday, stand up is difficult.

How difficult? Very difficult. In almost every other context I've performed in, the audience was willing to give the benefit of the doubt and you had their attention at least for umpteen seconds until they inevitably tuned out to some degree and hopefully tuned back in. Also though, doing theatre or improv your main focus can't be on the audience it has to be on your scene partner, the story your telling, etc. Not so with stand up! It is all about holding the audience's attention, and a lot of that has to do first with your energy on stage. In a theatre context, I can exude confidence and stage presence pretty immediately at this point, I would say. Not so with stand up. Then again this particular venue was especially difficult, since the crowd's attention really was only half on the stage and the other half on their conversation, if that. I saw a few guys who clearly knew what they were doing really capture the room, and it was impressive. It takes stage presence, it takes a point of view, and it takes material that's worth of a damn.

I don't really have any of that yet, although at least I can recognize it, and that is a start. Of my jokes, the ones which were sort of at the comic who went before me's expense, which I ad libbed, were probably my most successful. I wasn't trying to make fun of him, but then again I sort of was, since he did an extended, rather unsuccessful IMHO bit on Hitler and how it wasn't as bad as he could have been, or something. It didn't really make much sense. It was kind of borderline offensive. I just had to point out "man that guy sure did do a lot of material on Hitler, that takes dedication." Hopefully I wasn't too snarky in a bad way, I tried to be sincere. I made a point that it was my first time doing stand up, that I was "losing my stand up virginity" and that at least got a good cheer from the sympathetic crowd as I bowed off after, I don't know, 90 seconds maybe.

I think I will do it again, slightly wiser, and with a few new ideas for bits and how to make the ones I tried the other night more successful. I've been harping on a quote lately, "the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step" I think it's Lao Tzu or something, but I don't actually know. I do know that I like it's implication.

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