Prior to yesterday evening, I hadn't performed stand-up comedy in about eight years. Even then, my experience was limited to maybe six or seven shows, most of which were for small public and private audiences at the university where I earned my doctorate. None were paid. I did it for fun, and because it was something that I had wanted to do since I was probably about twelve years old.
My experience telling jokes into a microphone started with a summer elective that I took in grad school, and then it kind of blossomed from there. The biggest crowd that I performed for was about three hundred and fifty people at a fundraising event at the college, but most of the other audiences were much smaller than that. On a few occasions, they were entirely composed of professors and other grad students. It was a pretty safe space to learn the ropes, and I could get away with what I thought were some fairly clever jokes.
As I moved away from the college (both graduating and then physically moving), the opportunities to do comedy pretty much dried up -- unless I wanted to travel any kind of distance to perform at random open mics, which I didn't have much interest in. In shows like this that I have attended and/or participated in, the audience has generally been made up of people who were just waiting for their turns, too nervous about their own sets to pay much attention to anything else. These events are good for practice, but they're usually not much fun for either the performer or the audience, at least not in my experience on both sides of the equation.
In the years since finishing the PhD program, I have shifted my focus more to making music and other kinds of writing, while living in much smaller communities that host few if any comedy venues. Even if I wanted to travel to an open mic to perform, now we're talking about at least a two hour drive each way. As a result, it had been a while since I had even thought about writing jokes.
When this most recent opportunity presented itself, I reflexively said yes almost immediately, as I remembered having rather enjoyed the experience of making a room full of people laugh. It is one of the rare forms of writing that offers direct and autonomous validation. If a joke works, you get to know right then and there, and it's a pretty good feeling. In the handful of times that I had performed stand-up, I never bombed, per se, but I now realize that this is not the kind of thing that you should ever say aloud.
I am not afraid of failing any more than I am afraid of wasps. Still, it sucks to get stung, such that I generally try to avoid it. At least once since I had volunteered to participate in last night's event, I did ask myself what the hell I was getting into. This was a legitimate question, as I literally knew next to nothing about it. I was just excited to do comedy again and figured that the worst case scenario was that it goes poorly and then life moves on. That turned out to be a pretty accurate assessment.
None of my material had been workshopped or tested at all. I went into it completely blind and with 100% new jokes. I had absolutely no idea what to expect in terms of the audience or what they think is funny. I basically just wrote material that I thought was humorous and hoped that other people might, too.
Over the past few weeks, I put a lot of work into the stand-up set that I performed last night, usually at least an hour or two every day, often more. Most mornings, I woke up with comedic bits playing out in my head. I wrote, polished, memorized and practiced over two thousand words of material. The idea was to try to connect with the crowd and then take them to interesting places, often by way of what I thought were witty observations.
What actually occurred was a bit of a shitshow.
My set was essentially three parts: 1.) Sesame Street-based jokes, 2.) Jokes about running, with an emphasis on marathons, including a brief history lesson on the matter, and 3.) Jokes about being a sad bastard who lives alone and is amused by mindless consumerism.
The audience, from what I could tell: 1.) Was not into Sesame Street, 2.) Cared less about marathons than I do, and 3.) Were either much younger than me, or a little older than me. Most appeared to be on a date, and my jokes about being awkwardly single in the era of late capitalism did not land.
I hope that I did not spoil anyone's evening or ruin their chances for another date, but very little of my material seemed to resonate.
To make matters worse -- much worse, in fact -- the wireless microphone kept cutting out. This rendered my performance very difficult. About a minute or two in, most of my intricately crafted jokes emerged from the speaker as loose, broken syllables, accompanied by jarring pops of static. I tried to listen to what was coming through the PA system while also keeping track of what I was saying, as to stay on script. My brain went into a feedback loop of sorts trying to keep it all straight.
At one point, I repeated the setup for a joke three times only to have the punchline lost to the whims of the shitty bluetooth connection. As I was performing, one of the guys involved with the event suggested that I aim the bottom of the microphone at the receiver in the far left side of the room. It wasn't his equipment; he was just trying to help. Meanwhile, as I am taking direction while performing, I attempted to maintain the illusion of spontaneity while also trying to recite all fifty or so of my jokes in a sequence that made sense.
Just three hours prior to the event, I had rehearsed the entire script from memory verbatim. Twice. Every word and every pause were where I wanted them. I thought that my set was in pretty good shape. I had it memorized well enough that I could focus on the performative aspects, or so I thought.
As it played out in the unpredictable real world, though, I was now being told to aim the microphone in my hand to the distant side of the room at about a sixty degree angle to the floor in order to get a better connection with the speaker. It was a very unnatural way to deliver the material, which ultimately proved not to work, either. However, it took me about four or five misfired jokes before I abandoned the attempt.
I continued to trample on my lines and trip over the segues, while also trying to remember which of my two thousand words the audience had already heard and which were worth repeating. In total, I inadvertently omitted more a third of what I had written and told several parts out of order. I think there might have even been a callback in there to a joke that the audience never even heard the first time around.
To make up for the loss of material that I had skipped over, I filled in some of that extra time with awkward pauses. I was dying up there. Except "up there" in this case really just meant across the small dining room, while much of the audience consumed their steak dinners. In fairness, I suppose it's probably hard to laugh and savor a delicious ribeye at the same time, but I can't recall ever having tried it.
I probably could have made a joke about how much I was sweating in my sweater, but I'm glad to say that I didn't. I wasn't that far gone. I did what I could to recover and keep my cool. However, improvisation was kept to a minimum as I struggled to remember my jokes, most of which seemed to work better on the page, while continuing to fight against a PA system that seemed intent to piss all over my set.
Toward the end of the routine, out of frustration and utter hopelessness, I abandoned the microphone and shouted my jokes. That didn't work, either, as it dramatically changed the tone of my delivery, especially for the people in front. They are the unfortunate souls who got to witness this whole mess as it unraveled in real-time.
Crash and burn. It's how we learn.
Next time, whenever that is, I hope to have a better sense of what I might have in common with the audience, whoever and wherever they happen to be. I would also like to test the PA equipment first. Those are my takeaways from this whole experience. On the other hand, maybe I'll just stick to playing music for now.
It is possible, of course, that I am my own harshest critic, and that the sporadic bluetooth connection bothered me far more than it did anyone else, but I really don't think that's true. Frankly, if I was in the audience, I'm pretty sure I would have thought that it was shit, too, even though these were all jokes that were essentially written for my own amusement, but which I had hoped that other people might connect with as well.
At least it was a free show, so hopefully nobody felt ripped off. Plus I got a pretty good hamburger out of the deal, as well as a story about the time that I went up in flames like an ill-fated firework fiasco. My hope is that my memory of this event gets funnier with time, so that at least some humor comes out of all of this, even if it is entirely at my expense.
I guess what doesn't kill you makes you say, damn, I'm glad that's over. I like to think that any lessons learned from the experience can be applied to next time, which hopefully doesn't take another eight years to transpire.