Thinking On Your Feet
Tags: amateur comedians, stand-up comedy, The Stand-Up DiariesTuesday night was the first night I participated in the rant zone at The Factory Pub at Earl’s. It’s a small venue, kinda cozy with good food and easy sight lines. It holds about 40 or so. You can get there either from the back alley, or when you enter Earl’s, turn left and head to the very back of the lounge, then you hang a left at the wash-up sinks. I have never drank beer, since I am not a fan of the smell or taste, but they have this berry-type flavoured beer that has a chocolate tinge to it….kinda makes it taste like watered down berry juice. That’s the best way I can describe it. It’s not bad though. Their wings and sushi are pretty decent too.
The stage is small, pretty much just a platform, but it allows you to see everybody and the way the lights are situated, you are able to see the faces of the audience, which is good because sometimes you get such blinding lights on you that you can’t see everyone.
The format is pretty simple. The comics get 5 minutes to do new material, or stuff that they haven’t done in a while or have re-worked. Then it’s into the “Rant Zone” where the audience gives us topics to rant about for one minute each. Over the past couple weeks I’ve been there, the audience has had us rant about:
- hipsters
- the letter “S”
- the Pope visiting Mexico
- farting in public
As you can see, there is quite the variety in what’s discussed. Tuesday night was good, it was 3/4 full, and there were several people at the bar from Guess Jeans HQ from Toronto. It’s funny, because I think the majority of people who are there on a Tuesday night probably figure they’d go to Earl’s for a drink and some fun, never expecting comedy, but you can hear it when you go to the bathroom. Anyhow….. I decided to go last for most of the rants this week, so it could give me an extra couple minutes to figure out what to say. For the most part I try to shuffle through the material I’ve written and think if the topic is a good fit for what I am talking about. Sometimes if you do it correctly, you can so reference the topic at the start and go into material that sort of deviates from it, but not really. For example, if the topic was cops, you could give your quick opening opinion about them, and go into a bit where people try to make a difference in their community or elsewhere, and try a bit too hard, often with comedic results.
It’s a neat venue, very friendly staff and the crowd for the most part is receptive to the comedy, well…they are receptive more to the guys who have been doing it longer. After the rant zone is the debate, where the audience picks a topic and each comic takes opposing viewpoints and they debate their merits on that topic. It’s a lot of fun, more so than any other comedy night I believe!
That’s about all I wanted to say on the Tuesday nights at The Factory Pub. I’ve also noticed that my blog is now being read in Jamaica, USA, Hungary and the UK. I find that humbling and neat as well. For those of you reading this from outside of Canada, I appreciate you reading this. Please feel free to post a comment on this blog. You should be able to do so when you click on the “leave a comment” link which should be near the title of this blog.
Thank you again for your support. If you haven’t come to see a comedy night yet, what’s stopping you?