PERFORMANCE A: RAW COMEDY COMPETITION
And that takes us to the performance night. I walk into the venue and ask the person at the counter where I need to go. They point me to my left, so I walk towards the tables. To my surprise, the person at the table closest recognised me—he was from my old high school, being in the year below mine. We sat down and talked, and it turned out this was his first performance. It was strange, sitting across from someone who had less relevant experience rather than more, given how infrequently I'm put in such a position, but it was also cool to be able to relate to him as a first-timer, a stand-up virgin if you will.
His curiosity on the subject led him to ask some questions. He asked how I felt when I first went on stage; I said was nervous as fuck, and shaking quite a bit. Realising you have no one else to rely on while you're up there is daunting. He asked if I was nervous; I said I wasn't, but that I would become nervous eventually, more and more so as my time to perform approached. He asked what my material was about, and I told him what my subject matter was. In asking him the same question, he told me his was a quite misanthropic routine, about how everything was horrible, how shitty our politics is, how he thought his parents were idiots, etc. I like dark comedy, so I thought we'd get along quite well.
We were then moved into the green room. This is where the nerves start for me, but at this point, it was mostly due to being around strangers; the worst was yet to come. The show coordinator asked if anyone wanted to go on first. I decided not to; the guy from my old high school took the plunge instead. He seemed very game for a newcomer. When they came back with the final running order, I was on last. This seems to be a pattern for me, cos I always go on last. I went on last at both my high school variety shows, I went on second-last at the previous RAW competition (which I have no blog entry for, but may write about later), and I went on last at this one too; and these were all running orders whose composition I had virtually no part in. I could make the obvious joke about saving the best till last, but if I was the best, I'd know by now :P
Someone from downstairs also came up and gave me a small can of Pringles, saying my mum bought them for me... cos if there's one thing a public speaker needs before going on stage, it's a salty snack to dry their throat. Maybe my mum's a professional troll and I just don't know :P I should have mentioned that on stage, improvised a joke around it, but it only just occurred to me to do that (super-mega-ultra-delayed reaction, lol).
We were then read the rules (which I'd already read... you know, like we all should have :P), and were told if we went over five minutes, our mic would be cut (just as they said last year). She also said we couldn't use any offensive language. Given that my performance was rather graphic and profane (for effect, not just for the sake of it), I was like "What? At all?", to which the coordinator replied "if it's justified by context, yeah, but otherwise, no". I knew all my stuff was justified by context, so I wasn't worried. But when she left, the guy from my old school criticised the censorship policy. We got into a discussion about censorship, and it turns out our views on the subject were rather similar: we both disliked prohibitions on free speech, we both had little respect for political correctness, and we both thought (ie. knew :P) offence was entirely subjective. I was starting to like this dude :)
Continuing to speak with him, I learned that, much like me, he was a big fan of George Carlin, Bill Hicks, Lenny Bruce, Steve Hughes and the like. He also spoke very highly of Doug Stanhope, who I wasn't too familiar with, but had seen enough of to understand why he liked him so much. I went home and watched some Stanhope clips later that week—this only enhanced my appreciation for the guy (though Carlin and Hicks still reign supreme for me personally).
We spoke about the comedians, we spoke about liberalism, we spoke about the hypocrisy of Obama crying for the kids at Sandy Hook but continuing to order drone strikes in the Middle East; we just talked and talked. This is one thing I love about these competitions: I get to meet other comedians! My friends can crack jokes, but they're not into this like I am. They don't trawl YouTube looking for new stand-up vids, they don't see live shows, and they neither write nor perform material (though some of them think so fast on their feet that I swear they could do my job better than I can :P). These events are the only time I get to talk to other people who do what I do, and it feels amazing to share all this stuff that I don't normally get to talk about.
In last year's RAW competition, there was a semi-professional prop comic who'd performed in the United States, doing gigs at amateur comedy clubs in Manhattan. It was unreal not only to be talking to him about the profession, but for a semi-professional to be talking to an amateur like me without a hint of condescension. He was just as enthusiastic about comedy as I was, just with a little age/experience gap. Talking with the guy from my old high school (who I'm gonna have to give a pseudonym so I don't have to keep calling him that :P) was much the same, albeit with me as the 'experienced' one.
He had to leave not long after that, though, as the first half of the group to perform moved into a dressing room closer to the stage. The rest of us stayed, able to watch/listen to a feed of the stage in the green room. Problem is that, while you could clearly see the performer doing what they were doing, the audio was horrible. Instead of simply relaying the comedian's mic feed, the speaker seemed to relay the mic that was on the camera: the comic spoke, the speakers amplified their voice, and the camera recorded what the audience was hearing (as well as the audience themselves). It's the theatrical equivalent of holding a tape recorder to a boombox :P So, of course, it was really hard to make out what the comedians were saying—we could only really discern between 'comic talking', 'audience responding' and 'silence'. They need to fix that shit. I have no experience in the field with A\V stuff and I could fix that shit. Come on :P
So, on goes the newcomer from my old school. His performance was just as misanthropic as he said it'd be: lots of references to suicide, hate, disdain, etc. As I mentioned, I love this kind of humour, so I laughed here and there (at the jokes I could make out :P), and he got a fair response from the audience, but the others in the green room didn't really laugh or say much. He did a lot better than I did when I first took the stage alone, so props to him for that. He came back and said he wanted to keep performing, that he didn't want to stop now that he'd gone on—I can kinda relate to that (it feels pretty fuckin' cool to have people laughing at what you're saying :D). In retrospective, after watching some more Stanhope clips on YouTube, the similarities between him and the guy from my old school became rather apparent, Stanhope's influence now even more evident than it was before.
The other performers went on too, but seeing as I couldn't understand what any of them were saying, I can't tell you what they spoke about. All we could evaluate was how much the audience liked them. There was one guy who bombed hard—first timer, wrote the material yesterday, 'it was on my bucket list' dude. I noticed that no one said anything about how hard he bombed; they only congratulated him for giving it a go. I mean, getting up in front of hundreds of people to tell jokes is tough to try out, don't get me wrong (if anyone should know that, it's me :P), and seeing as he's not pursuing this as a career path or anything, he doesn't really need the criticism; but it's just another example of how hard it is to deliver your judgement unto someone, even if your comments are constructive in nature. I don't exclude myself here, cos I didn't say anything either. But he had horrible material—even my friends who were in the audience said so.
Eventually, we got to the end of the first half: an Irish comic. He does his set and gets a brilliant response. Everyone in that room knew, leading some to verbally affirm: we had our winner. It was over. Only one guy from this heat would make it through to the state semi-final, and we were pretty sure it'd be him. I went there super prepared, hoping to get as far as possible, but this guy got a really good reaction, so I didn't really know if I could top him. I just had to wait and see.
I was eventually called down to the dressing room, as it was time for the second half of performers to get started. This is where the nerves started to really kick in. As my slot drew closer, I started to shake and shiver, I started to fret about what would happen if I forgot a line, or if I jumbled my words, or if I spoke to fast, or if I ran over time. I started going over my lines, making sure I remembered them all, refusing to believe the twenty-to-thirty run-throughs I did over the past few days was enough :P
I was then called to the side of the stage. The stagehand quietly introduced herself before giving me a quick rundown on the mic and my time limit. I was shaking quite a bit at this point, my anxiety building. This isn't really stage-fright, per se; it's just a basic fear of making a mistake in front of hundreds of people at once. I feel it just before every performance, and it always dies away once I'm on-stage. To quote/paraphrase one of my high school drama teachers:
"If you're not nervous before you go on-stage, you're not at all concerned about how well you're going to do out there."I wanted the MC to stop talking just so I could kill the tension in my stomach. What was probably only two minutes felt like at least five :P Eventually, though, the wait was over: the MC called my name, and as the adrenaline took its peak, I walked on-stage.
I grabbed the mic and moved the stand aside (something I learned on my first ever gig to get out of the way as fast as you can), then I moved onto my first joke: the train station joke. It got a laugh, but it wasn't the strongest intro—good, but room to build.
After that came the pornography joke. I thought this was a really good one, so I banked some confidence on a big laugh, hoping for applause. The first few lines were well received, thought my awareness of the time limit made me a little cautious with allowing too much laughter between lines. Optimally, you give the audience as much time to laugh as you can, 'milking' the joke for laughs. The only exception is with rapid-fire delivery, when, if the audience starts to laugh while you're talking, you keep delivering lines to build more tension, hypothetically resulting in a bigger payoff. The final line of the pornography joke took this rapid-fire form, and I did indeed have to talk over the sound of mild laughter for a bit till I got to the punchline. When I finally got to the end, the audience erupted with applause, cheers and whistles—my gambit paid off :D
Next up, the gay marriage stuff. While the pornography joke only implied my views on sexuality, this was an overtly political bit, my opinion made as clear as possible. When you take into account the fact that only around sixty-six percent of this country supports the legalisation of same-sex marriage, you can see why this stuff was also a little risky. But, these jokes were also warmly received (no applause, but I can't expect that for every joke, lol). In the middle of the gay marriage stuff, however, was a joke on the Federal Opposition Leader (which I included so I could take the piss out of both major political parties—fuck 'em both). This did get applause, which surprised me, but I was thrilled nonetheless.
With the topical issues out of the way, I moved onto the tested material; I was relatively safe from here on out. First item on the list of sex euphemisms was 'sleeping together', and the lines were laughed at as I expected. What I wasn't expecting, though, was another round of applause at a line I didn't even think was funny. Here's what I said:
"'Sleeping together'? Sex doesn't involve sleep! You can have sex before sleep, you can have sex after sleep, but you can't have sex while you're sleeping! You can fuck someone who's having a sleep, but that's——"And then they laughed and applauded! The lines before that didn't really get too many laughs, but that last bit set them right off! This isn't an uncommon occurrence with new material, and it's interesting when it happens: sometimes, you think you've got a killer line, but when you deliver it, it doesn't go that well; but other times, you deliver what you think is a mere set-up, something you don't think has any comic merit in and of itself, and people surprise you with a laugh, sometimes a big one—sometimes with clapping too :)
My final joke was on the term 'screwing'. This was the only bit of my performance which required physical activity other than standing and moving my arms (getting down on all fours and rotating—my interpretation of what screwing actually is), and seeing as physical comedy isn't my strong suit, I had to be extra careful in making sure I didn't fuck this up. But, I pulled it off, managing to get yet another round of applause. I didn't finish on a joke that got me a round of applause (something I try to aim for), but I didn't think it mattered, cos four rounds of applause in four minutes is fucking insane. I thought I'd be lucky to get one, maybe two. But four? Holy shit, dude ^_^
And with that, I was done. I said good night, put the mic back in the stand, and went back off stage. I was really pleased with my performance, but still didn't really know if I'd done well enough to beat the Irish dude.
After a bit of waiting, we were called out onto the stage for the results. The MC held two envelopes in his hand: one for the runner-up, and one for the winner. We were all given one final round of applause, then the MC announced the placeholders.
"And the runner-up for the 2013 RAW Wollongong heat is... Liam McCann!"I was like "Wait, wut? ...OK then :)", and went up to get my envelope. I went back and shook the hands of those next to me as they congratulated me. Of course, the Irish dude won, but that was established ages ago, now wasn't it :P Inside the envelope were tickets for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival Roadshow performance at the same venue (which I went to watch a few days ago; many lulz were had), and a chance to perform my act in a cabaret at a venue called The Vault.
While speaking with the coordinator afterwards, I was also told that the RAW judges wanted me to be a guest-judge in the Wollongong heat for Class Clowns (a stand-up competition for teens from Year 9 to Year 12)—that, to me, was the best prize. This wasn't just being good enough to perform again; this was being good enough to have your perspective on comedy taken into account alongside that of professionals. I went home and deliberated on what made a good comedian, what traits I'd be looking for during their performances, what kind of material I'd most appreciate, all that stuff. But, a couple of weeks later, they cancelled the Wollongong heat because hardly anyone signed up for it. So. Much. Disappoint :( Not that I can blame anyone for it, but I was so fucking irritated that I was tempted with the opportunity only to have it ripped out from under me. Oh well.
Technically, this is the best I have ever performed at a heat for a comedy competition. I did come second in the state final for Class Clowns in 2011, but I only got to the state final in the first place as a wildcard; my performance in the initial heat was terrible, so I don't know how much my ranking in the state final really counts. And in any case, the performance went better than I expected, with pretty much every joke hitting the mark, save for one or two which only got a small portion of the audience laughing. After all was said and done, I went outside to see my friends who were in the audience.
Also, after watching the video, my performance only took four-and-a-half minutes, as opposed to the five I thought it'd take. Lesson learned: I (intentionally) speak far slower in rehearsal than I do on-stage :P
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