The Comeback & The Road Ahead
Tags: amateur comedians, Saskatoon, stand-up comedy, The Stand-Up Diaries, trevor deanI could use this particular posting to take shots at and to rip those who publicly doubted my ability to succeed in this comeback. I would be justified but fortunately it’s not my style. Nor will it be my style to publicly rip on the person for the ignorant comments on my comedy page.
Instead, I choose to take the high road. When life knocks you down repeatedly as it has to me, if you were hell bent on exacting revenge by publicly trashing people when you prove them wrong, it just opens up a can of worms that you never quite get rid of. I learned a long time ago to let my actions do the talking.
Having said that, let’s talk about the comeback!
Last Wednesday was my last coaching session before heading back to the comedy stage. My comedy coach and myself re-wrote most of the act I was going to do. This was at 10:00 p.m. I had a busy day at work the following day so I was really unable to practice it. When I arrived at the club, it was maybe a 1/4 full, but a great audience nonetheless. I don’t think I was nervous before my set, maybe unsure though. I had my set list written out for 5 to 7 minutes, then because of the large number of comics performing that night, we all did a tight five minutes. Now I have to browse through my set list and find out where to chop it. It was because of this, that I didn’t feel like I memorized my set so I took up a set list and wrote down a couple of key words for each bit. I didn’t look at it a lot, as I was able to remember the next bit to tie into the one I just finished.
Of the several comics that night, I know I didn’t set the room on fire by having a killer set. However, I do believe I had the most consistent set of any of the performers, meaning that every joke got a laugh. Think about that for a minute. Every joke I told got a laugh. Not to sound arrogant, but I don’t believe there was another act that night aside from the headliner, where every joke got a response.
I knew the crowd that night was predominately younger, and that the jokes that were dealing with drugs or sex would get the biggest laughs, and I was proven right. But my set was constructed to work anywhere in front of any audience, and it did.
The headliner that night then went on stage and said that he made a bet with the manager of the club as to how bad I would do (the number of laughs I would receive). Needless to say,the headliner lost the bet. Not only that, but when he went up on stage and said I was horrible, the audience didn’t laugh. They knew he was incorrect in his assumption of how things went. I was then told he thought I would have 100% failed and that I proved him wrong.
I knew I would. So,where do we go from here? Well, the good part is we wrote much more new material that I was unable to use that night, so over the next month or two leading up to the comedy festival, I have the chance to hone my act and really get the timing down for the material.
To those of you who believed in me from the start, thank you. To those of you who didn’t or were unsure of how I would do……..
I TOLD YOU SO