Reaching The End Of The Comedy Roller Coaster

Until yesterday I did not realise how much of my time and thought this standup comedy thing had taken, last week more than ever.

On Saturday evening I was the openning act at the The Comedy School Student Showcase near Camden. Why I was selected to go first I don't know. It might have been a compliment about confidence or maybe that my material more suitable for a sober audience - two hours later I think alcohol was certainly contributing to the atmosphere.

On Wednesday we had been invited to an extra half hour one-to-one with our comedy coach. This was unexpected and we thought a response to the slating we had received the previous week. I tend to think now that it is fairly usual. In practice it was a "script" session, where we went over what we had written with the coach helping sharpen the material. I am still impressed how his mind works and finds the comedic value in almost anything.

He made what I though were good comments and I rewrote the material before the class next evening.

At the class we all did our pieces and then received feedback. To say we were slated again would be an understatement. This was certainly not a nurturing coach, but rather a psychological bruiser.
Maybe that is what is needed for the world of standup, but I know everyone went home somewhat deflated.

The main complaint was a lack of emotional connection and texture. For me the more I polish material the less emotion tends to be in there, so I felt conflicted. We were being taught the importance of the right words in the  right place in the right way, yet when I focussed on that I lost the rest. He kept saying that I reminded him of Patrick Moore!

As this was our last session I had drink with one of the guys, a surreal young Australian who reminds me of Noel Fielding. We talked about things that we could do better or different. I am disappointed to say that he didn't turn up on Saturday for the showcase, but maybe I will see his name somewhere in future - it is not one you forget - Shaulan!

For me I decided to go with what I felt was me. A more gaggy and observational delivery and I cut out the true but rather re-engineered stories. I was doing this between noon and 3 on Staurday afternoon before the show. Nothing like being last minute, but I felt happier at the end. I have no idea what our coach would have said and he was unable to be there on Saturday evening so I may never know, but he had said that we should find ourselves and our audience would find us - I think that is what I did - find myself I mean.

Of course nature conspired with the Northern Line being closed for engineering works so what should have been a relaxed journey became a nightmare of finding and then riding a replacement bus service. In the end I arrived on time.......just.

As I walked to the venue I had to lauch. It had been cited as Cecil House, but the in big letters it proclaimed itself to be the English Folk Dance and Song Society. Now this is one of the last places on earth you could expect to find me. The next two being sitting on the papal chair (I am not Catholic) and the other being High Hefner's mansion (I am not that lucky). I am the only person I know that was banned from dancing at their own wedding and as a precaution I had to mime my vows.

Anyway I did find some fellow performers there and the process started. They set up the running order and as I said I was first. Nerves were obviously getting to others, but for me I had done all I could. That said I decided to take advantage of being first and build a reference to the location into the opening of my act.

As the time approached I was pacing behind the entrance door. I heard my name and then I was on!

I think it went OK.....only when I see the video will I know. I got some laughs - I think - and I delivered most of what I intended to. I know I forgot and left out some, but I think it flowed OK. Afterwards my fellow class member had nice words about how it went and in the interval a couple of people from the audience had nice words. Maybe it was OK.

The best think about going first was I could then get a drink and watch the rest. No one died and we made a full show of around 2 1/2 hours.

We then received our certificates and the adventure was over. I seriously doubt that I will ever do it again, but I guess you never know. At least I know I could. I do have Ellen's 18th Birthday coming up sos maybe the Father's speech will be a little better that it might otherwise have been.

It is a shame my daughter was not there, but I did take the opportunity at the end of the act to mention her and wish her well in her acting career. That should be captured on video and eventually she will hear and know it.

All in all this was a more demanding challenge than I expected. I took a lot of time and energy from me. It made me look at certain things anew, with fresh eyes and I may have one or two new good friends.

Now to get back to the other things in life - like more interesting blogs and start thinking about Challenge 2014. I have already seen some fencing classes and am toying with that, but we shall see.

Thank you for sharing my journey and if the video is any good I may put it on Youtube. It is not due for a couple of weeks so please don't hold your breath.

Week 6 - This Comedy Lark Is Not Easy!

I am just in from Week 6 of my course with 10 days until the showcase and still feeling quite confused. Last week I was disappointed with the feedback I received. My style was presentational and I was likened to Patrick Moore ( Is that such a bad thing? ).

This week I decided to do less formal preparation, to try and be more conversational as our coach seeks, and I put more of me into it. I bared parts of my heart and soul, unsure if it would be funny, but with faith that I would find the comedy in it.

I was still described as presentational, requiring more emotional texture and set up, more misdirection. In truth I am quite confused and really unsure how the next ten days will go.

I was surprised how airing some of the items brought strong emotions to the surface. I will have to watch that! I am sure a coach would say to try and harness the emotions, but given this evening that may too much to ask in ten days.

I am torn between trying to follow this path the coach is setting or to follow my instincts and put together more of a gag driven, less personal routine. I have fifty plus years of training/development in logic and reason. I can link A to B to C to.......to Z faster than most people and I can admire how our coach can twist and turn the raw, poor material we are dishing up into something with a higher comedic value. I just can't find that in me, my mind seems to be wired differently.

I also struggle, and this may be just that I have been alive longer than the rest of the class and heard more jokes, but I struggle when the highest praise goes to people delivering old material, albeit masquerading it as their own story.

Of course a large part could be that unlike others on the course I have no ambition to be a professional standup. I have no fear of standing on stage either. I wanted to understand standup better and in that I have succeeded. I will do my best not to let myself down next week, but I am aware that it is not make or break

Anyways our coach seems to think we need more help before the showcase. He has set up additional half hour 1-2-1 sessions next week. I need to have my material written down and right now I have no idea which direction I will take or what material I will use. Instead I shall be away to my bed and hope a night's sleep will bring a brighter vision tomorrow.

Dors bien, mes amis.
.

Not such a good evening - Week 5 at The Comedy School

I went into last evening feeling good. I had worked hard to develop material and thought I had some good stuff. I had worked at scripting and shaping it using the "tools" we had been given in Week 4, and I had taken the challenge to build gangsta rap into the piece, no matter how odd that may sound and certainly felt.
I had also worked on some physical aspects of my clothing that I had worked in.
The first session was two previous students coming back, giving us some of their comedy and then answering questions. If I am honest I was slightly underwhelmed or maybe my expectations are too high. The two comedians were ladies, both having graduated from the school in 2008 or 2007, I don't recall. One was now making it semi-professionally, but had probably done around 1,000 unpaid gigs before she started making money, the other has done less having a day job "for the government", but now wants to lift her game.
In truth, to me, their routines were not that funny, but then for one reason or another they are not professionals after 5 years so maybe I am setting my standards too high. They were honest in their answers and there was a part of me thinking, "Thank goodness I don't aspire to me a comedian, but am taking the course for fun".
That said I don't want to be humiliated and do think I have some good material. I still thought so when we started the second session, ie we students standing up and getting critiqued by the tutor. I was feeling pretty good and thinking I had followed instructions, used what we had been given and stretched myself out of a comfort zone.
This week we were just seven; no girls this week. The tutor chose the running order so I got to see a few stand up before me. I don't know if this was good or bad.
I felt they were less prepared than I was, and they were picked up on that, but they were also picked up on lack of shading in the emotional content. There was good feedback about how to better present stuff, but I was left doing a mental rewrite. I was scoring elements out entirely and reordering the rest.
When I got up I went into my revised routine, but I had to leave out a load of what I had previously thought of as good gags. A couple of my pieces got a few of the group chuckling and smiling, but then I was stopped by the tutor.
Having first noticed I was "confident" on stage he started picking holes, albeit with suggestions how to improve things. My stuff was obviously not as good as I thought. In particualr I was told it was too presentation like, but I think that is the result of preparation, polishing and practice.
Fair enough we are there to learn so I sat down in thoughtful mode.
I found the evening got more difficult, as I then saw two other students get quite praised for doing some very average and I thought contrived and unoriginal stuff. This left me rather bemused and if I am honest a little angry.
 Now I could try and rationalise and say the tutor felt they needed more building up thn knocking down, but at the end of the day I think I have to accept that standup is an art form in itself and that the tutor knows best even if I don't like it.
My plan now is to suck it up and try a different tack next week, taking onboard the comments made. That said I have decided to drop a couple of peices that make me uncomfortable and to prepare less with the hope that it does appear more spontaneous.
It obviosuly got to me as I was aware of waking during the night and my mind goind over it again, but then this morning I recalibrated expectations.
The comedians we all see on TV are, in footballing terms, the equivalent of Premiership players. The two ladies who performed for us last night are probbaly Conference players, while my fellow students and I are South Herts Sunday Pub league 2, and I am probably the stand in goalkeeper who was asked ot play half an hour before kick off!

Rugby Plagiarism?

Last night I watched my recording of the Britis & Irish Lions first tour match of 2013 on Australian soil. They played the Western Force, not the strongest opposition, and won comfortably.

What made me smile was the post match disucssion that highlighted the strategy of using big strong ball carriers out wide and moving the ball to them pretty quickly. Moving from one side of the pitch to the other they stretched their opponents defence and managed to score nine tries,many of them right on the touchline.

Along with George North, the giant Welsh wing, players like Maku Vunipola, Jamie Heaslip and Tom Croft all appeared in the five metre channel. It was simple, but very effective.

This brought back fond memories of the Henley RFC under-16 tour to Le Havre back in 1975 I think. As a team we were above average size for our age group and had been pretty successful. This your culminated as the curtain raiser for an important French club match, between Toulouse and Biarritz I think.

We had all stayed with the families of the french players and I recall attending a big family lunch before the match. Remember this was long before the professional era and we were under sixteens! So looking back the ploy to ply us inexpereinced English boys with copious quantities of wine was probably intentional and not just generous hospitality.

In the changing room before the match we discovered that a number of players had developed involuntarily and hitherto unrecognised sidesteps. This necesssitated some rejigging of our game plan and team line up. This was before squads so we only had 15 players to make up a 15 man team. No one could be left out.

Two players had developed particularly strong side steps so they were consigned to the wings. these were two large and mobile forwards. One was Chris Challis an All-England schoolboy sprinter who was also 6'2" and weighed around 13 stone. The boy called Jeremy (I forget his surname) was a big prop forward who could also run well.

Our game plan became

• Win the ball
• Shift the ball to the wing as quickly possible.
• At the breakdown win the ball back
• Shift  the ball to the other wing
• Repeat as we progress up the field until we score
• Start again

I think Warren Gatland must have been in the stands that day! I don't remember the score, but I do recall it was a successful day for Henley.

Good plans are worth repeating and I am very happy we were able to show the Lions how to do it.

Good days!!!