Learning Valuable Lessons

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

Just a quick note here.  Something happened last Thursday at the comedy club that I didn’t expect.  Actually, wait….it was Friday.  Friday night the club was about half full, 95% of them were female this night, and had not been to the comedy club before.  So, I had to take the new material I had put it into my back pocket for a while, as it wasn’t the right crowd for it.

The host, in addition to myself and the other two that were onstage, were not great, in the sense that we all didn’t solicit laughs.  It’s like Dez said, “if you played a piano that represented all of you guys’ performances tonight, it would be the same note, a flat one.”  That is to say that we were all of the same demeanour, the same temperment onstage.  The material has worked before with other audiences, but this night everything just fell completely flat.

Then Dez went up, along with the other headliner and completely killed it.  I can’t explain it, although I will try (if that even makes sense).  From the secondDez hit the stage, from the first few words from his mouth, people laughed.  The last two guys got the reaction us less experienced performers were trying to achieve.

So it begs the question, why did we suck?

I think a big part of it has to do with the fact that the last two guys are very experienced onstage.  In addition to that, they have energy, and their personalities shone onstage, with them being animated and passionate in the delivery of their material.  That makes it sellable to an audience, and translates into laughs for the comics.

So, the lesson for us new comics is to be more animated onstage, change it up a little bit.  Become more animated, be more passionate, a bit more unpredictable maybe in our delivery.  That will translate to more success down the road.  It was a good night overall, the audience enjoyed their time at the comedy club, but the big thing is learning to see how the audience reacted to the first few performers, pay attention to it, and try to change it up.

Having said that, see you soon!