A final(ish) gig report.

On Friday I did, what will be, my last gig for probably the next 6 – 8 months. I’m taking a break while I get sorted in a new job and have also been struggling with my confidence to apply for gigs so it felt like a break might be good to reinvigorate me too.

Confidence is a strange beast, you see it when you watch football, the striker who whereas normally would calmly trust themselves to deliver instead lingers too long, overthinks, panics and then sky the ball kilometers over the bar, their confidence shot. For me its rarely shown up when I’m onstage but instead a lingering doubt that has accumulated with the single voice of “you’re shit, why are you doing this”. It affects me applying for gigs (and I realise as I write this how ridiculous that seems) and also has some other side-effects. In the lead up to a gig I’ll stop eating properly for a couple of days, my sleep patterns will change, hilariously I sometimes get the night sweats accompanied by dark dreams of failure. I know I obsess about anything that isn’t perfect and inherently don’t trust feedback. For example if someone says to me that I was good, my mind instant starts thinking “well you would say that wouldn’t you, because you’re a nice person and not a twat” – after all, no-one gives honest feedback, not really, unless 100% anonymous.

Which kind of begs the question why am I writing a gig report I suppose? I think as a record that I did the gig. Maybe so I can write down what it was like before it comes a tainted memory and also so when/if I pick up standup again I have a previous marker.

So the gig…

It was a charity fundraiser, a phrases that usually makes you want to stick a fork repetitively in your own eye, but it turned out to be really nice. Raising money so that kids can have new leotards for their gymnastics club is surprisingly fertile ground. I was MC which is a position I think I’m reasonably strong at and, in a hot room, I think it went okay.

The opening section is always slightly terrifying as you’ve no idea whether an audience will be coming with you – I think I need more material sometimes at the top of the show, but then I’ve seen MC’s who rely on the material and don’t improvise from the room and it can seem a little formulaic and staid(sp?). Usual interactions with the front row bounced nicely if not explosively and although they were warmish when I brought Allan Finnegan on (who is ace, book him, actually book everyone I mention) they maybe needed prepping a little more. The audience was on tables which in theory is great (somewhere to put the drinks) but in practice means you’ve audience further away than you’d like and a row of people who were late on row 2 didn’t help.

The middle section was much better, lubrication with beer invariably helped as did some pretty crude fingering jokes, material about Bluetooth-enabled leotards and a giant of a man whose sperm was the size of a subway. I think going a little crude in the middle tends to work for me if they like me after section one, it also means I can gauge it for the final bit about whether to go worse or rein it in. There are occasions I notice that I go a little panto-dame-esque with “you can do better than that” but I think I manage it by making sure that I keep dipping to my reference points in the night (leotards, man giants, subways).

Final section was spot on (which I rarely say), I asked the audience if they wanted darker material, they said yes, I said no, then told an elongated spitroast joke about an elderly 3 some in their 80s which gets darker everytime I tell it. I particularly like being able to use a stage whisper to change the tone and also find that silence for this works really effectively. The punchline “vaseline” is as horrendous as it sounds but hit perfectly and it also gives me chance to talk to the audience about how it’s lucky I’m not telling that joke tonight.

We ended, as invariably charity gigs do, with an epic raffle. 20+ prizes of differing quality dispatched within 5 minutes including the most hideous cuddly toy ever seen. Overall it was a nice gig I suppose. One downside was Radio 4 not working in my car on the way home but then I’m not sure I can include that that as an element of my gig report.

So that’s it really, keep up with tedious marketing blogs on here and the odd bits of theatre stuff and I’ll write again when I start again!

 

P.S. Oh, another blog worth reading is by Jim Bayes, it’s really interesting if you like the gig report/thoughts of a new(ish) comedian – click here)