Live and die in the Big Apple
Performing live comedy is all about trial and error. It’s a process of regularly humiliating yourself and then going to bed and getting up and doing it again.
It’s not for everyone, I especially wouldn’t recommend it to people who like themselves, as you have to be inclined to a certain level of masochism to keep going. I should however, say, I am under no illusions that it is hard work.
It is not labouring, which I would consider a fate worse than death, as the very thing I try to avoid at all costs is in the title. And it’s not saving lives, in fact, depending on how a gig goes, I could end up actively making someone’s life worse.
It seems counter intuitive to be a comedian and actively publicise the worst times you have bombed on stage. But I’m a risk taker, comfortable enough in my ability to write at length about the times I’ve displayed anything but ability.
When I first started comedy, I was living in NYC and it was a baptism of fire (as opposed to the water-boarding technique of regular baptisms).
For those of you unfamiliar, New York City is the city where F.R.I.E.N.D.S is based. It’s a beautiful up-and-coming metropolis that’s getting a lot of good press.
When I first starting doing improv in NYC (a sentence I refuse to be embarrassed to write) I used to go along to midnight events called, ‘‘Improv Jams’’.
These improv jams consisted of willing improvisers turning up at midnight, putting their name in a hat and then being called out in groups of 10 to perform for 10 minutes. It’s a concept, that quite frankly already reeks of disaster and is made infinitely worse by the fact that it is open to anyone. You do not need to be an improviser to participate, you just need to be present and coherent enough to write your name down on a piece of paper.
At my first improv jam I quickly learnt that Americans would have more trouble understanding me than I knew. I learnt this on stage in front of a room full of strangers, when I initiated a scene with ‘‘Honey, I can’t find my cardigan’’ only to have my scene partner respond, ‘‘oh God, you’ve lost the cat again!’’. We proceeded to improvise together for a full two minutes, in two completely different scenes.
You haven’t experienced a low point until you’ve been on stage for two minutes to a quiet audience at midnight in a city where you have no friends, looking for a cardigan no one even knows exists.
At least when you bomb as an improviser, there’s always someone else to blame. To bomb as a stand-up is a completely different feeling. It’s all your fault.
When I was starting out, I used to go to this bar and do two-minute spots. You’d put your name in a hat and wait two hours for it to be called, so you could do two minutes. One evening, after waiting patiently for my turn, the man before me got up and told a story about how his friend had died in a car crash the day before. It was not getting many laughs. It was clearly a hard moment for the man and arguably an even harder moment for me, as the first joke
I had planned, was about a car crash.
Unable to change course, as I didn’t have the skill, I went on after this man and told my joke.
I was met with something less than silence.
It was my first massive bomb and I did not take it well. As a way to cope with the embarrassment, I turned on the audience, telling them to go f... themselves. Why this didn’t endear them to me, I’ll never understand.
At the end of my two minutes, I walked off to silence – something made truly made worse by the fact that you didn’t exit through the back of the stage, you entered and exited through the audience.
I never in my life more wanted to be on stage looking for a cardigan, while someone else looked for our cat.
With all this in mind, you should check out my comedy festival show. It promises to be, at the least, better than this.
Alice Snedden will perform her show, at the 2018 New Zealand International Comedy Festival, which kicks off on April 26.
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It was my first massive bomb and I did not take it well. To cope with the embarrassment, I turned on the audience...
Self-Titled: Volume II