"Oh... back, are you?"
Indeed I am :D
"Probably here to talk about that fancy of yours -- am I right?"
Go fuck a tractor :D
Believe me, I will be talking about her, but not right now. I can already hear the sighs of relief -- don't try to hide 'em :P
Rather, I intend to discuss effort, reward, and the occasional lack there of. I've been under a great deal of pressure lately to work, and my recent toil has paid off. I've nearly finished a short play I started a month back, I've got a few short stand-up segments together, and I've been through an(other) exam period, one of the few I actually studied for :P It's been stressful, but (almost) entirely rewarding, with the energy I've spent slowly coming back as good marks and good material. Not everything I've been working on this year, however, is so dandy. I mentioned in an earlier entry a comedy competition I was preparing for, which I recently performed in... and lost :P To be beaten is one thing, but to be beaten by people who prepared less than you and had less experience than you is grade-A bullshit.
Four out of the eight or so performers would go on to the next round, and two of the four chosen were well deserving of advancement. The rapid-fire ventriloquist act and the stand-up comic with a missing ligament were outstanding performers with fucking awesome material, more than worthy of their spots. I regret to inform you that I can't show you their acts, 'cause I would if I could. The third placement was iffy but still an acceptable candidate: a non-sequitur comic with only ~2.5 minutes of material, heavily influenced by Mitch Hedberg -- one of his jokes almost mirrored word for word that of his idol. The fourth choice leaves me stumped: a performer who spent half her performance "umm"ing and "err"ing, stalling, and lacking overall stage presence. This is just bad performing in general, let alone for a competition.
These four competitors only shared one thing: a good reception from the audience -- and that's all the judges were looking for: laughs. Preparation, delivery and structure simply did not come in to play as deciding factors with the placements. Some people were rehearsing with scripts... scripts! If your performing a five minute routine where you need to maintain a connection with the audience for the entire set, the least you could do is learn your fucking lines! Even the guy who hardly had three minutes of material had his jokes written on paper -- from my experience, individual jokes are easy to remember if they're good (i.e. worth remembering), so that confused me. In all my years, I've never seen such reliance on the dreaded reading material. Granted, no one had a script during their actual performance, and to bring your script for the occasional reference in case you fuck up a line during rehearsal is a smart move, but to be reading it top to bottom in preparation only goes to show you weren't doing what you were supposed to be doing yesterday.
I was the only one there who'd done the competition before, with my first stand-up performance quickly teaching me that confidence is vital for any comic performance; and while most of the entrants were confident in their routines, I was the only one who was complimented on being openly confident (by the non-sequitur guy :P) In addition, I was the only performer who received commendation from the comic mentor in terms of delivery, and the only one she said had conversational tone -- she had not one suggestion for improving my act! Not one! "See how he was talking to the audience like that? That's the way to go!" I was the fucking benchmark! Everyone else's routine was altered in some way via the professional's suggestions, but I performed my routine for the audience no different to how I'd performed it in rehearsal. This might have been to due the fact I'd been writing and editing the routine for three months.
That's right: three months of writing to come out with five minutes (little more than a page) of material. Considering most comics perfect forty-five minutes of material in around two years, this is ridiculous even by the industry's standards :P The time taken was mostly due to a meticulous editing process I implemented in my attempt to utilise every second of the three hundred I had to strike lolz with the audience. The set had to start strong, end with a punch-line, and stand out from the rest. My opening lines were carefully written to get the audience laughing as soon as possible, and the end was (in theory) a great round off. Unfortunately, the audience wasn't as bright as the (considerably younger) student body I'm usually surrounded by. Here's the opening gag (I'm holding a bottle of water):
"Let me take a drink of water here... they call this a bottle of water -- is this really a bottle of water? Think about it: if a stack of chairs is a stack made of chairs, and a pile of leaves is a pile of leaves... then what's a bottle of water?"
Do you get it? Huh? Do you!? The audience didn't! They didn't have a fucking clue! Surely, an educated, literate adult (like those that filled the audience) can do the math and figure it out: it's a bottle made of water, which isn't structurally possible and hence absurd to consider. When I recited the same joke for a pack of students, I was cut off by laughter -- they got the joke before I even finished it! Irony was girding its loins well before the actual event :P
All this boils down to one thing: my unadulterated, ego-fueled arrogance. I was not only the most experienced comic, but also the cockiest, and it takes a downfall like this to teach a very valuable lesson in one single blow: shit happens. Karma has been in the education business for a very long time, and his experience in this field is unrivaled by that of any other spiritual concept. I went in thinking I was the most talented when I was only the most conceited; but I was also the most prepared, and I will continue to question the judge's criteria and the audience's intelligence for weeks to come. There is the small chance of a wildcard bringing me to the next round, but with the appalling reaction I got compared to previous performances, I highly doubt it.
...fucking amateurs... I hate being one :P
EDIT: I got the wildcard... yeah, I'm confused too :P
No comments:
Post a Comment