June – A young lady walks onto a stage…

There’s a fine line between courage and stupidity. Usually, if it ends well, its labelled courage; end badly and you’ll forever been known as an idiot. As I found out this month, one person’s brave is another person’s ‘are you bloody insane???’ This month’s challenge was to be a modern day court jester, or as Arj Barker so eloquently puts it, a mirthsmith. This month I tried my hand at stand up comedy.

There was really only one reason why I put this on my list of things to do. I’m really, very shy. I’m not so bad one on one, but in a large group of people I go very quiet and don’t talk. The main reason being a mix of thinking I’m not all that interesting and not having anything to add to the constant stories of drunken debauchery that are forever told (I don’t drink alcohol, so waking up in a pool of my own vomit with a blinding headache not knowing where I am is, happily, not something I have ever experienced). I’ve made a conscious effort in the last year to stop being so shy, and while it’s working, I’ve hit a bit of a plateau and needed a kick up the bum to move me along. Being buoyed by stories that some of the greatest comedians in the world are actually some of the shyest people off stage, I decided that maybe I should give it a go. After all, if making a fool of myself in front of a bunch of people doesn’t cure me of my shyness, I don’t know what will. All I needed was write some jokes and find an open mic night. Easy, right?

Not so much. There are a bunch of comedy clubs in Sydney, most offering an open mic of some sort for budding comics to have a go and established funny buggers to try out new stuff. However, the number of comics far outweighs the number of clubs, so it’s a bit of a pain to get an open mic spot if you’re not well known. As I wasn’t getting anywhere with the clubs I tried, I had to find somewhere outside of Sydney that would be happy to have me. Hello Canberra! The boys at The Front got back to me straight away, and as I wasn’t deterred by the five hour round trip from Sydney, we were on.

The next part of our little challenge was writing my jokes. Being the massive dork I am, I did my research. I watch hours of stand up from the greats – Robin Williams, Ross Noble, Danny Bhoy, Arj Barker, Adam Hills and a stack of others. And no, it wasn’t to steal their jokes. I wanted to see what it was about them that made the audience love them so much. I wanted to figure out the mechanics of how they tell their jokes, how they make them flow from one story to the next. The way they engage with their audience and make them feel at ease. How they use words, language, actions. I became a bit of a stalker, noting every raised eyebrow, every chuckle (had they known what I was up to I’m sure they would have sent a few restraining orders my way). I noticed they all had one thing in common – they owned the stage. It was their domain to command, and no matter what happened, they still had control over it. The audience could yell out any random nonsense (and in the case of Ross Noble were encouraged to do so), they could mess up the set up to a joke (great save Arj Barker), but they remained calm and unfazed.

I also listened to what they said, because what’s a good delivery if you’ve got nothing to say? Even though they had different styles and different stories to tell, they all pretty much stuck to the same rule – make it interesting, make it clever and don’t be too rude. They created an image in the audience’s mind, one that they could relate to, that they could easily understand. They didn’t resort to vulgarity to get a laugh. The humour lay in the essence of their stories, not in how many swear words they could fit into a sentence. There was no need for them to work blue because the stories were interesting and clever on their own. If they did get a bit rude, it was only very gently, and never the focus of the joke. They talked about the everyday, the things we all notice but don’t think too much about. They applied their own clever little twist on it which makes us all think ‘Yeah, they’re right. I’ve never thought about it that way.’

I had made a conscious decision before I started not to be rude and not to swear in my routine. This tends to make it a lot harder as it exposes a bad joke much more brutally because you don’t have any rude bits to hide behind. People are childish by nature, and any sort of swearing makes them laugh, much like we all used to think it was hilarious if someone said shit when we were in kindergarten. Swearing and vulgarity also have the unfortunate by product of making the audience feel really uncomfortable, in the same way a racist or sexist joke makes people cringe. The greatest stand ups are great because they make the audience feel comfortable, like they’re sitting in the pub having a laugh with their mates. They don’t make them feel awkward, as if they’re listening to their mum tell them the story of the night they were conceived. You may have to put a bit more thought into it, but if you get a laugh out of it, it’s all the more rewarding.

I have to admit, I was feeling a little bit scared about the whole thing. Not so much the getting up in front of people – I’ve been doing some form of public speaking for the past 12 years, so I’m use to talking in front of a crowd. It was more the fact that I might suck. I’m one of those people that either does something brilliantly or I don’t do it at all, and the fact that I might not be good at it terrified me. The curse of the perfectionist I guess. My routine was to go for five minutes, the standard time for an open mic. For such a short routine, I spent months on it. I filled up two notebooks full of random observations and thoughts. I wrote and rewrote joke after joke to get it perfect. I coupled them with physical actions that might make them easier to understand. I even did the sneaky and slipped some into everyday conversation to see how people would respond to them. If they laughed I kept it, if they didn’t, I reworked it and tried again on a new crowd. At one point I thought to myself ‘I’m putting way too much effort into this. It’s only five minutes!’ Constantly comparing myself to the likes of Robin Williams killed my confidence somewhat. I kept thinking no matter how hard I tried, he’d still kick my arse. But if you want to be the best you have to compare yourself to the best, so I kept at it, trying my hardest not to write something that sucked too badly.

The day of the open mic arrives, and after a few more practice runs in front of the mirror, it’s time to head to Canberra. My friend, brother, brother’s mate and myself all pile into the car. We chat and laugh about everything except the open mic, which is good because it puts me at ease. Another friend calls during the drive down to wish me good luck. Even as we chat in the car, I’m still going through my routine in my head, trying to memorise the order of what I’m going to say. I tried to write it so that once I start, something in the joke will naturally trigger the next joke, to save my shocking memory the hassle of remembering what to say next. We reach our destination, and after some dinner, we head to the place.

The Front is a little cafe and gallery which transforms itself into an open mic night once a month so comics can try out new material. I get told that it’s the gentlest room you could possibly have, which is perfect since this is my first time. I put myself in the middle of the running order so I can get a feel of what’s going on and take a seat.

The first few comics get up and try out their gags. The audience responds positively – they’re right, it truly is a gentle room. The comic on stage finishes up and announces I’m next. For all the nerves and doubts I had in the months I was writing, I’m surprisingly calm and not at all nervous. I take the mic and introduce myself, telling the audience it’s lovely to be here. I didn’t really have a beginning to my routine, having scrapped my original one because I thought it was too Sydney specific. I thought ‘I’ll just talk to the audience and see what happens.’ While I may be good at wise cracks amongst my friends, under pressure and with people staring at me is a whole different story (and also gave me a whole new appreciation for Ross Noble). My mind went blank when John told me he was an electrician. Spending months watching the best meant I learnt from the best. They call themselves on any mistakes they make and move on, so I admitted I had nothing and moved on to my next story.

My main story was about a horrible date I once went on, where he tried to pick up a prostitute as he was driving me home (I’d love to say I made that up just for the night, but alas, it’s true). I added a couple of tangents about men in skinny jeans and Twilight, which got some of the best laughs of my set. But the biggest came from a comment from the audience. I asked openly what was the lamest way you could impress a girl on a date, and a guy yelled out ‘Get into a fight with another bloke.’ Now where I come from can be best described as Sydney’s version of Glasgow, so getting into a fight with another bloke is a genuine courtship ritual. As soon as I mentioned the name of the suburb, the audience roared with laughter. This was the joke I had deliberately left out for being to Sydney specific, yet they all completely understood. Just goes to show you should never underestimate your audience. On a side note, I probably should have known they would have heard of it. I remember talking to a guy from Melbourne once, and I told him where I was from, saying ‘You probably don’t know where that is.’ He said ‘Yeah I’ve heard of it.’ So I asked, ‘Where from?’ thinking he had a friend or relative who lived there. He casually replied ‘From the news.’ D’oh!

I conclude my set and receive a round of applause, with a few woops and cheers thrown in. My proudest moments come when I get various members of the audience coming up to me to shake my hand and tell me they enjoyed my stuff. I went better than I expected to, which made all the nerves about not being as good as Robin Williams well worth it.

I enjoyed every minute of being up on stage. It was such a rush to try and get a random group of strangers to listen to you and laugh at what you had to say. After all the thought and effort that went into that little set, it was good to get instant feedback as to whether it was good or bad, and even better when I realised that the audience were enjoying themselves.

I said at the start that there’s a fine line between courage and stupidity, that if it ends well you’re brave, and if it ends badly you’re an idiot. I think when it comes to doing stand up, everyone is brave. It’s a nerve racking experience, but I would gladly do it again. Who knows? Maybe a career in stand up beckons. Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?