Absolutely Terrified

When my stand-up comedy class ended, I thought to myself, well, that's one more thing to strike from my To Do List.

In our final class, we teamed up with the neighbouring improv class, where we performed the bits that we had created over the eight weeks and they performed for us. We got to gather our nerve and do our stuff, to see how funny we could be.

Albeit, it was a welcoming crowd, made up with supporting classmates and people who wanted us to laugh at them as much as we needed their laughs.

So that was it, right?

Wrong.

No sooner had I finished the class that I signed up to do it again: this time, culminating in a live stand-up performance in a real comedy venue.

With paying customers.

I'm only going to say this once: I'll be performing my stand-up routine in a five-to-six-minute bit on Wednesday, May 3, at Absolute Comedy, on Preston Street.

That's my deer-in-the-headlights look. Get to know it.

Come if you want, if you can.

I've spoken several times in front of crowds and have done many years of public speaking. That's easy. I've sung from a microphone in front of complete strangers. That doesn't bother me.

With public speaking, you have a prepared message that you deliver, either memorised or with notes, and you convey a message or information. It's not very different from blogging: it's blogging out loud. At the end, people clap, either pleased with your talk or relieved that you've finally shut up.

Singing is easier. You know the song (hopefully) and you work your way through it. If people like the sound of your voice, they applaud. If they don't, they usually applaud anyway out of politeness.

Comedy is hard.

You've created jokes, hope that you can remember them, hope that you can deliver them effectively, and hope that the audience laughs. If they don't, you try another gag, hoping again for laughter. And again.

If you don't get laughter, you start to think that you suck, and you probably do if you don't manage to get a single chuckle. And yet, you persist, and the crowd gets weary, and someone might heckle you, another might boo you, and everybody in the room, including you, can't wait for you to get off the stage.

I have roughly a month to polish and practice my material, and present it on stage, in front of people who will either make me feel great by laughing where I want them to or will make me want to crawl under a rock and die.

At least they have some decent craft beer on tap.

Come if you want, if you can. I can think of worse ways to spend $7.

And you just might enjoy the show.

 

Funny Guy, Again

I do a lot of things that waste time. I surf the Internet. I watch mindless hours of shows on Netflix, often series I watched when they first aired on network television.

I write this blog.

I'm also taking a night class, once a week, for no other reason than it makes me laugh and it lets people laugh at me. The laughing kind, where they're not pointing fingers at me while they do it.

I'm taking a stand-up comedy class.

Almost a year-and-a-half ago, I signed up for a sketch comedy class, and I had a great time, bouncing ideas off my classmates, listening to their ideas. We came up with about 10 sketches, which we worked on over the eight weeks of class and wrapped up the course by performing these sketches in front of students from another acting class, family, and friends.

It was a lot of fun, and even though we had to read our scripts because we hadn't taken enough time to rehearse and memorize lines, our performance was well-received.

I video-recorded the event, and one of these days, I'll share it.

This time, the material is all ours. We own it, but our teacher, actor-comedian Pierre Brault, helps us develop it. We also provide feedback to the other classmates.

Over this eight-week program, we hope to have a five to six-minute set that we will perform on our last class. Some of us may even perform live, at Absolute Comedy, in March.

I may be one of those folks, but we'll see.

If anything, this course will push me well past my comfort zone, which is the ultimate rush. I'm a shy person, by nature, but I keep trying to break myself of that social handicap.

It's fun, if not a waste of time.