Week 4

This past Sunday was probably the first time I've seen both progress and regress in our little comedy workshop. (Ooooh... I like that. Workshop. I'm gonna retroactively change all references to "Class" and "Course" to "Workshop". I always thought it sounded too formal.) So yeah, the workshop was pretty interesting. I felt that we got a real sense of some people's sense of humour. As well as how well some people can follow instructions.

As you remember, our assignment was to find the punchlines in our rants and write a setup for it. Basically, just reduce our rants into sweet, sweet concentrate. I wasn't too happy with my mini rants last week about being hairy and the Expos, so I went back to my list and also cheated a little by using an old topic I'd written about a while ago. Going in, I was fairly confident in what I had come up with.

I hate to say it, but I wasn't very impressed with the rest of the group. Most of them basically repeated their rants from two weeks ago, I could barely tell the difference. Inexplicably, a couple even chose just one rant and expanded on it. There were also several people who either had trouble identifying their punchlines or simply had none to work with. The worst case was someone who went up and said "One", then a couple sentences with no discernable punchline, setup or topic. "Two", repeat. "Three", you get the idea. He basically chose what he thought was the punchline and tacked on the line right before it, without really introducing any subject. It was bizarre, to say the least.

One guy, who was a writer, ranted last week about reading material in the bathroom. It was his only rant and it wasn't bad. He clearly knows how to write something meant to be read, it just needed a lot of cutting down. But this time he just went with another rant, basically starting over. When Joey asked why he didn't stick with his other topic he said that we've all heard it, he didn't want to use stale material. I was very glad someone brought that up, because I've always thought I'd have a hard time repeating the same act over and over again. It seems to me that there'd be people there who would have heard the jokes before and I wouldn't want to give the impression that I only have ten minutes of material that I repeat over and over. However, it was pointed out to me that people listen to songs over and over and go to concerts just to hear the band playing the same songs. And the band has to play the same songs every night for a different audience. I also could watch the same YouTube clip of my favourite comics many times. Not a bad way to look at it.

Joey also had a few encouraging words. "Get ready to hate everything you've written. You're going to be bored with it, you're not going to think it's funny anymore, you're not gonna want to repeat it. But that's how you build it. Also, don't memorize anything. I know a lot of you are going up there and reading and that's fine, but don't memorize it word for word. If you do that, you don't let it evolve. In fact, that's one of the ways it'll stay fresh to you. Write everything down, just don't memorize word for word." I may have cleaned that up a bit. At least, that's the message I got out of it.

There were about five of us left to go when we all stood up at the same time. Joey gave each person a number and I ended up last. I took the stage and said "I've always wanted to be a headliner" before getting into it. Unfortunately, I'm not sure I want divulge what I say anymore, because I'm pretty sure I'm writing some jokes I'll want to keep and it'll be much more satisfying to eventually post a video of me doing stand-up without people having read it. I dunno, I might change my mind. The subjects were "Not sleeping enough", "Not liking soccer" and "Being afraid of birds". I got some good laughs. Including a big, delayed one where I wasn't expecting to get it. It took me by surprise and I had to compose myself before moving on. I actually can't even remember what I said, which is terrible. Hopefully it gets the same reaction next week if I don't cut it out of the joke. I also got one of the loudest groans of the night. Good groans, I think. I'd rather get something than nothing. On the flip side, I was met with dead silence on one line I thought would kill. Meh. Comedy. It's a funny thing.

Joey was giving everyone feedback right after their mini-routines. As I said, most people were getting "Trim the fat" but there was a few times he would point out a specific word or phrase that should be expanded or deleted. I was pretty eager to hear what he had for me. "That was pretty good. Pretty good. I hate soccer too, so I loved that stuff. You still gotta tighten it up a bit, but yeah, I liked it. Pretty good." That might not look good in writing but there weren't many "pretty goods" that night. I took it as an endorsement and felt good.

After the show, Joey mentioned he was a featured performer in about an hour, down the street at Comedyworks for the Best Of Open Mic night. All the best amateurs of the month were invited back to compete for an opening slot for a weekend show. I was feeling good and thought I should mingle a bit more with my new friends, so for the second time in three days I visited the Comedyworks. This time it actually was a field trip.

To be continued...