Archive - Greg Burns Support - 27 Nov 2012

Show Report Friday 9th November 2012

Bloomsbury Theatre

Before Gig

Tonight I am supporting Greg Burns at the Bloomsbury Theatre. I feel

nervous. I always feel more pressure when I support someone else.

After all when you play a club and under-perform you can only screw up

yourself. But if you under-perform as a warm up, you could screw them

up too. Tonight I feel the weight of responsibility upon my shoulders.

The last time I played the Bloomsbury Theatre I OD on coffee before I

arrived at the venue and was wired out of my mind on caffeine which I

tried to correct by drinking some camomile tea in the Green Room but

then overcorrected and hit a camomile slump just as I arrived on

stage. This resulted in my performance being too relaxed (some would

say sluggish).  Tonight I have normalised the caffeine situation but

am now worried about the amount of dairy I have consumed before the

show.  We know dairy coats your vocal cords, and can be troublesome if

you happen to be a singer but I am not a singer - I am a comedian and

don’t know if it really effects us?

Tonight I am wearing boots (the biker ones with the buckles instead of

laces). I don’t tend to wear boots on stage I prefer shoes with thin

soles, ideally Converse or something similar. I like to be able to

feel the contours of the stage on my feet and boots insulate the feet

too much from the sensation. Please see condom sex for more details.

Before going on stage I resolve to experiment with a different walk as

I take to the stage.  A theatre has a long walk up to the mic and is

the ideal place to experiment. I resolve to do a walk where I slightly

dig my heels in as I go (this is how I would walk in the snow and the

boots remind me of this).

The other support act tells me there is a lot of “Industry” in.

“Industry” being the vernacular for “Comedy Industry Personnel” . This

abbreviation is frequently used within the “Business” (Industry

vernacular for Show Business).

During Gig

As I take to the stage I do the planned walk and this is good at

getting me into character. There are some titters of laughter before I

get to the Mic and then I say nothing and pull a face. This elicits a

little more laughter. Then I launch into my set. But I regret not

trying to ride out this laughter longer and seeing how far I could go

with making faces and saying nothing. In general, the audience are

quite subdued at the start.

There is a bit early on when I am talking about alcohol where

momentarily my mind goes blank and there is a split second delay in me

saying the next word, which slightly knocks off the timing. “That’s

not an alcoholic” becomes “That’s not an …alcoholic”.  It's amazing

that in that split second my mind careens through a hundred millions

thoughts to remember one word.

The bit about "Retiring from Drinking" is the moment when the set

really catches alight and the rolling laughter starts and then I get

the phenomenon where you can let the audience go ahead of you in the

thought process. Its is harder to this in clubs but in theatres you

can let thoughts linger more letting them catch up and overtake you

and them leave them behind again. Playing cat and mouse with them.  A

good example of this is the "Dumping a Mate" section where I conclude

by suggesting I marry a man. I let the audience run ahead of me the

whole way towards the end.

Whether or not it was because I took my time more or because it was a

theatre audience but I managed to eek out more laugher on some

routines than ever before. “Being Dumped for No One” was typical of

this where some bits of what I would term “set ups” were getting

laughs. It’s good because this is practically the oldest part of my

set a real veteran of 2011.

“Having Sex for the First Time” was a highlight for me and as always

seems to work best when I don’t try and word it too tightly but

tonight I think I worked out more funny lines on stage and identified

new avenues to explore with it, and I sensed the potential in it

tonight like never before.

After Gig

Doing gigs like this is a luxury.  Theatres are lovely to do. I love

the way you milk more laughter out of each line in a theatre. I love

how different parts of the audience laugh at different times and how

laughter moves about the auditorium. I love how you can take your time

more and let the audience run ahead of you in the thought process. How

you can tag a punchlines with facial expressions.

Tonight it seemed that a number of things I had been working on

started to click into place. Walking into character as I come on

stage, trying different moods with the material and emphasising

certain words to create a turn in the middle of a sentence, trying to

eliminate unnecessary movement.

I was left with a feeling tonight that I could go a lot further with

all my routines. That they are all works in progress and that routines

are never really complete. It’s funny when the material is working

best that I suddenly feel that they are incomplete.

Listening back to the tape. I thought the delivery was really strong.

Virtually no verbal ticks - I counted three. The delivery was very

measured and I let the material breath. Main criticism was that it all

felt the rhythm was too similar and only snapped out of that toward

the end when I got slightly rantier. In general tonight I didn’t feel

the need/desire to rant but this refraining to do so may have been a

mistake. It would have made it more sonically interesting.  It felt a

substantially different performance from clubs. I could sit back and

let them come to me. I left tonight’s gig really loving comedy and all

who sail in her.