Gig Report Thursday 25th April 2013
Angel Comedy Club
Before Gig
Tonight I am headlining the Angel Comedy Festival at the Angel Comedy Club. Headlining comes with certain onerous responsibilities like being funny, ending the night on a high, looking professional etc. The Edinburgh festival is looming (3 months away) and I have to crowbar new material into my set to road test if for Edinburgh. I have written a new piece of material about a pig in a zoo. I have never performed this piece before. I am desperate to try it out. I don’t know if it will work. I feel in my bones that it is funny. I am very excited about the pig material. Me being excited is always a warning sign. Every new bit of material is the best thing I have ever written. Every new bit of material is the best thing I have ever thought. Not only will it be hilarious but it will transform not only my act but the art of comedy itself, things will never be the same again. Two days later the new bit of material is invariably lying discarded never to be repeated again. “How could I even have thought that that was ever funny?” So imagine my trepidation at having a new piece of material on my hands that I believe to be funny. I am seriously worried. If I think its funny, imagine how unfunny it may turn out to be. The pig material is seven minutes long. If I try it and it doesn’t work, it won’t work for a whole seven minutes in a row. That is an eternity in a stand up gig. That is a third of a twenty minute set. After bombing for seven minutes it will be virtually impossible to pull the gig back and I don’t mean just me set. I mean the entire gig. Seven minutes.
Various assessments of the audience are floating about the acts’ green room. The audience are quiet, they are loud, they are easy, they are hard, they are warming up nicely, they are starting to flag, you should have been here last week, thank God you weren’t here last week.
During Gig
OK. So I just want to start with a smidgen of old stuff to establish myself, just a whiff of the tried and tested as a yardstick against the new stuff. Just enough to get the audience on side and then as quick as possible straight into the pig section. That then gives me ten minutes at the end to do whatever I want, but i have to try out the pig routine. This is operation pig. Objective pig. If I try the pig routine in its full seven minute glory then I die (only in real life, not on stage) a happy man. Remember just a smidgen of old stuff at the start and then into the pig routine. It shouldn’t take more than a minute before going into the new stuff.
My first impression of the audience is one of pushing a giant boulder up a hill. This audience aren’t giving much. I open with the heroin material and they don’t buy into it, almost to the point where I question if I’ve done something wrong like screwed up the timing? The heroin routine ends to mediocrity. I should be going into the pig section now, but I abort the pig section. I need more time. I need to get the audience on side. So now a bit more of the old stuff and on to giving up drinking, still the audience hold back. It comes alight in the middle and I think now I’ve got them, but no, the audience fizzle back down again, the drinking stuff ends on a lull. Not ideal for starting new material. I should be going into the pig section now but again I abort it, I don’t feel I have enough momentum behind me. My confidence in the new material, shaky at the best of times, is dwindling further and I haven’t even started it yet. Now I am doing yet more tried and tested stuff.
I feel like a pilot using up yards of precious runway while he tries to do the perfect landing.
Still more old stuff on alcoholic percentages. This is going better, that boulder is starting to edge up the hill but as I end that bit I still don’t have the audience where I want them. This is a now or never moment. Now is not the right moment to go into the pig section. I don’t have sufficient trust of the audience yet. But due to time constraints, I can no longer delay. There is fleeting pause, just slightly too long, while I decide. Then a moment when I feel like I am drawing myself up to my full height to take on the school bully. I think I do physically stand up a bit. I wonder if the audience catch it? But I have decided to commit to the new stuff. The common sense part of my brain considers this a bad idea. But wasn’t it common sense that got me into this in the first place?
I start the pig routine, I launch into the opening set up. It gets a laugh from the people standing at the back but it is a better reception than I was expecting. And now into section one proper of the pig routine and the laughter is now moving forward from the back of the audience to the front. By the end of act one of the routine the whole audience are on board in a way they never were for the old material. So far so good. Now into Act 2 of the routine. Will they like this? I dip my toe in the water a little bit further but yes they do like this. I am really relaxing into this. Fortunately the audience laughter buys me thinking time for the next part of the routine. I am feeling my way with this routine. I have a number of bullet points written on my hand but the wording itself is loose. If it appears that I am making it up on the spot that is because I half am.
The routine involves a Polish woman. There is always a bit of my middle class brain that is thinking, is this racist? Or could it be perceived as being racist? Or will people not laugh because their laughter could be perceived as being racist? The audience are going with it and two Russian women down the front are nodding at every new section of the routine. I don’t know if they are nodding because that is how Russians perceive the Poles? Or because that is how Russians perceive themselves? Mental note to self, ask them after the show why they were nodding. Further note to self, don’t bother, you will look like a nutter.
They go with every bit of this routine better than I could ever have hoped for.
7 minutes into the Pig routine and I have reached the end of it, only I don’t really have an ending. Only now does this become a problem. I knew I didn’t have an ending when I stepped on stage but I didn’t actually believe I would ever get this far or if I did would be so elated it worked that I wouldn’t care it didn’t have an ending. Now I do care there is no ending. I confess I don’t have an ending to the audience and they forgive me.
Buoyed up by the success of the pig section, I arrogantly plough ahead with some half baked new stuff on the lottery. It works but not as well, giving my set the shape of a hump backed bridge. I should have quit after the pig victory but victors never know when to get off the field.
After Gig
The pig stuff worked really well. Better than my tried and tested stuff. Does that mean it is better than the tried and tested stuff? Or does it mean that it is worse? Does it means the audience don’t know what they are doing? Was my instinct right about the new stuff or does it mean it was wrong? I don’t know. I will have to do the pig stuff again.
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