A while back I had a good look at myself and decided that life was too short and it had to be lived. After all, no one really wants to spend their limited time living the day to day grind until retirement. Since then I’ve gone out and traveled more, taken a few career risks and clocked up a good few adrenaline sports. And I’d encourage everyone to do the same. So in that continuous vein of putting myself out of my comfort zone, a couple of months back I signed up to a stand-up comedy course.
My best description of it would be that it’s a bit like that feeling you get when you go skydiving and the plane takes off. It’s that horrible thought of “what the hell am I doing here”, rapidly followed by “what was I thinking”. An adrenaline sport where the build up fear lasts for months.
It’s two months in, with a month to go until the course end and with it my first gig. And this week I finally hit a couple of breakthroughs. And none too soon. After 8 weeks of writing on an almost daily basis, there’s finally some stuff there on paper that looks like it might get laughs. That’s been one of the hardest things – you just can’t tell after a while. Dissecting sentences trying to extract that little nugget of mirth that you know lies within tends to kill the joke for you. It’s been a huge relief – kind of like getting to cloud level (if I can go back to the skydiving analogy) and being told that by the time you’re here again the chute will be open.
Stand-up is not like telling jokes. You can’t run them past your mates. It’s all about atmosphere, context and typically a chained story (you could be doing one-liners). So there’s no real test bed other than getting out in front of an audience and giving them your best shot. To make it more complicated, it’s 90% delivery. If you want proof, just check out these sets that Michael McIntyre wrote for TimeOut (spoiler: they’re not that funny when you read them). So it’s this bizarre art form with immediate feedback when you perform, but absolutely none beforehand. No wonder it’s mind-numbingly terrifying to those of us who haven’t braved the stage yet (and probably for a good number of gigs afterwards as well).
The course has been really good in getting some valuable stage time in front of an audience where anything goes. So far, I’m loving it. Lots more writing and practice ahead.