Gig No.13 done. MC Sonia Aste
Thursday 17 April 2014
April 16th, Wednesday. Gig No.13, Heavenly, Green pub
OK, now it’s getting depressing. 13 gigs in, and I’m sick and tired of this shit. I look like Paula Radcliffe when she pulled out of that race, broken and crying on the kerb. (No, I don’t look that bad, though I did take a piss in the street.) The open mic level I’m at right now - rock bottom - is throughly weird. Every gig I do it seems, the audience is basically other acts and their friends. Acts doing their acts in front of other acts. How bizarre is that? At night, in secret basement rooms dotted all over London, acts are doing their acts in front of other acts. The whole ‘audience’ are sitting there, bored but intent, going over their own acts in their own minds, looking concerned and nervous as they wait to go on. All to do acts to other acts who’ve seen their acts before. (You wouldn’t get this in any other sphere of life. You don’t get plumbers going to plumbers meetings, going “Right, now I’m going to show you how to decongest a toilet U bend”. The other plumbers all privately sigh in unison, having plumbed a thousand toilet U bends themselves before, going over their plumbing tips in their own minds, saying to themselves “I can plumb better than he can. I hope I don’t forget plumbing tip no.3, they’ll be astonished”) I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve looked in the faces of acts in the seats in front of me, not paying attention. Distant. Clearly waiting to go on, their anxious knees bobbing up and down, forgetting completely that there is an act in front of them NOW. Their face looking like they’re watching a documentary about Romanian orphans. They forget to pretend they’re enjoying it. I don’t do that. When an act onstage looks at me, I have the common courtesy to pretend I’m having fun. Privately I’ve heard all their shit before, in one form or another, and am thinking how can I get out of this weird hellish fever dream. I feel like Jack Nicolson in the Shining, feeling trapped and quietly going murderously insane. (Sometimes I go onstage and repeat ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’ for five solid minutes) But my face belies the truth. If you do your act just to me, you’ll think you’ve cracked it. That’s because I’m a pro. Thats a sign of being a professional act - you make an effort to be a decent audience member. One act when I was on not only failed to look interested, he actually actively rolled his eyes as I was about to go into a bit. This little turd was definitely new, he needs to do more gigs. He needs to practice being an audience member more. I’m thinking of running a course for aspiring open mic audience members, teaching them how to laugh, when to laugh, when to look entertained or even just mildly amused. How to dress, where to sit, how to clap. One day if they do enough gigs, they will be top audience members, maybe even good enough to be audience members at Live At The Apollo. Right, I’m off. I have to prepare for the gig tonight. I’m going to sit in a seat and practice a series of authentic, well timed laughs. Cause that’s the secret to comedy - timing.
Gig No.13 done. MC Sonia Aste
Gig No.13 done. MC Sonia Aste
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I am very much enjoying your blog! And I identify with the open mic nights. I've been doing some open mic gigs test driving material for my Brighton and Camden shows. I'll be honest, I do try and be a good audience member but when you sit through 4000 acts doing 5 minutes you can forgive anyone who loses enthusiasm and wants to commit suicide by the 2nd half.
ReplyDeleteAlso, your act is pretty much going to die (not a proper comedy death as at a pro night which hurts really bad) but a death as in you won't get many laughs because you're either doing new material or 5 mins from the middle of a show out of context.
The positives outweigh the negatives though because if you do get a laughs from some material at an open mic with a crowd based mainly of acts then you know you've found gold. And I don't mean get laughs from making a mistake or taking the piss out of the room or gig. I mean get a laugh from a joke or observation. Only probably is you have determination and masochistic tendencies to find the gold.
There is a button on a keyboard called 'Enter' or 'Return' and that allows the writer to create things called paragraphs which gives the readers' eyes a break when reading through a blog of someone who obviously hasn't done a course in writing taught by a writer who's taken on a dare to write 365 articles in a year who's already bored by his thirteenth one :)
ReplyDeletePerhaps it's a conscious style decision by the writer? Joyce and Kerouac often wrote in a stream of consciousness style. Also, Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting was heavy on the dialect. Did you put down A Clockwork Orange because Burgess didn't do a course and broke the rules? Joe may be having a nervous breakdown and this style could be a reflection of that?
ReplyDeleteThe reason for the lack of paragraphs is because I had to cut short training Joe on how to use wordpress ;-)
ReplyDeleteHey Paragraph Boy, that's how I write! I want to make people's eyes BLEED. I give a shit about paragraphs! No, I've never 'done a course' in writing. I never claimed to be a writer - I am a comic doing a challenge to do X number of gigs. Have you done a course? Judging by 'reading through a blog of someone who obviously hasn’t done a course in writing taught by a writer who’s taken on a dare to write 365 articles in a year who’s already bored by his thirteenth one' your course leader forgot to teach you one thing - 'Grammar'. (In case I've misread your tone and you were actually just bantering in a friendly way, full apologies and hugs and kisses)
ReplyDeleteP.s. Thanks Simon and Paul too, I LOVE YOU
Don't you dare give up. Chefs often drop eggs on the floor. Actors 'freeze' - even the great ones...it's getting there! The journey is the thing, even the bumpy bits.. And potholes.
ReplyDeleteIf you read with a less critical eye you might find some gems in there! You don't need a course in writing to entertain in print!
ReplyDelete