Moving Forward…. YES, I Said FORWARD

Tags: amateur comedians, comedy, Saskatoon, stand-up comedy, The Stand-Up Diaries, trevor dean

I’m not sure how this was possible, but in the middle of all my shit I’m dealing with in my personal life,somehowI managed to right the stand-up comedy ship that is Trevor Dean.

I took a couple weeks away from the stage right after the comedy festival to concentrate on the fact I needed to find a place to live.  While I’m still looking for a place, I feel better about my situation, and it didn’t affect my comedy.  To understand why, we need to travel back in time a couple days to the comedy club.

Thursday night at the comedy club, it was one of the best audiences we’ve performed for since I started.  It was packed by the time Dez headlined and he absolutely tore it up for about an hour.  I was the first act up, and it was probably half full when I got onstage.  It would be nice to be on a bit later when the crowd is more full, but usually a comedy crowd is late arriving, and for good reason.  I can understand some people who don’t want to show up right at the start.  Why watch the warm-up act when you are there to see the home run hitter, right?  Although with the local comedy scene there are some great warm-up acts that are certainly worth you arriving at the start time.

From the start of the night til the end, with as many comics on the bill as there were, sometimes the audience will have a lull, a moment where they’re indifferent to a certain comic, or indifferent towards a few jokes during a set.  However to the audiences credit, with everyone from A to Z, they were very receptive and the night was a lot of fun. 

In case my critics missed that, I included myself in that commentary.  I was told it was one of my best sets to date.  I guess I’d have to agree.  The neat part about it was being able to build on a key component of my act.  Then last night, there were only three tables in the club for the whole night.  I had a good set to.  One part of my act one of the young ladies in the crowd looked at me and could not stop laughing.  She pointed at me and said “now THAT is believable!”

That was a great moment, because I think it will help define my sets for the next little while, in addition to giving me a positive reference point I can always use going forward!  There is a joke I do that I unknowingly parlayed (overlapped) and tied into another joke, which got that response from the lady in front.  I realize now, that I can use that set up to the joke for a few different jokes, and create secondary punchlines from it.  A secondary punchline is what happens after the original punchline, and the comic gives a quick one-liner that follows up the laughs.  That extends the joke and the laughs.  It took a while for me to not only understand what this was, then I stumbled upon how to apply it to my act almost by mistake! 

After the Thursday night show, that picked my spirits up and made it easier to deal with trying to find a new place to live.  I was told afterwards that my sets are “noticeably better”.  Everything is starting to get better.  The writing process whereby things I think about I can automatically turn into comedy, it’s coming back.  For those of you who have not seen my performances in a while, you’d be very surprised by what you see.  very surprised

It has taken me a while to figure out this comedy game, but I think I’ve finally got it to the point where these last two sets are like the proverbial steak in the ground.  From this point forward, no matter where the comedy goes from here, there is a solid, firm positive reference point to build upon.  It has renewed my optimism that this summer won’t entirely suck after all.  Adding to that is the fact that I can get onstage at the comedy club when I go there.  At the start of its existence I wasn’t good enough to get onstage, and I was okay with that.  Now, 8 months later, through all the ups and downs I believe I’ve earned stage time, but it’s something I need to continue to earn.  I may not get as much time as the other guys but that’s okay…..

especially if I’m getting the laughs