Comedy Is No Laughing Matter

Tags: amateur comedians, cancer fundraising, comedy, Relay For Life, Saskatoon, stand-up comedy, The Stand-Up Diaries, trevor dean

The majority of comics go through this at least once in their comedy career. A gig is presented to them that is quite different from the traditional comedy setup, where the comic performs on stage and the audience sits in their seats.  The comic can either embrace the opportunity or run from it.  Guess which one I chose?

The one thing that I do with my blog is to obviously highlight the wins or successes, but also to show the times when things were a bit off.  I do this to show that I have no ego, I am willing to let you, the reader see every performance because in the end it’s all about growth.

You know by now that I was at the Relay For Life fund raising walk on the U of R campus last night.  It was an amazing time.  From the moment I opened the doors to the Kinesiology building you could hear the music full throttle throughout the gym.  When I entered the gym it was quite the site.  People coming together for Cancer research, some in costume, but all walking along a designed path through the gymnasium.

As you will see in the video, this is completely different from anything I’ve done before in comedy.  People kept walking on by as they completed their laps of the course.  Some would keep walking, some would take a look up at the stage, some laughed as they went by, and a few times I was able to engage the audience too.

There were seats set up in front of the stage, away from the walking path so if people wanted to, they could sit and enjoy the entertainment.  When I was up first, there were about a dozen people that went to sit down to listen to my set, so I did have an actual audience for the time I was on stage.

But when I got on stage, I was a bit nervous because I wasn’t sure how I would be received, as I was going into this totally blind not having any reference points, good or bad, to fall back upon for this one.  I thought I did an okay job stringing together material and creating a bit of a flow, but the one joke I muffed the punchline, and with another joke I muffed the setup, which in turn screwed myself for telling the next joke that I now couldn’t do because I didn’t follow the structure of my material.  No matter how much I tried to prepare my material in the back of my mind I had all these thoughts racing through my head because of all the intangibles that were for the most part out of my control in this type of an environment.

What would the walkers do?  Who would laugh?  Where would the laughs come from with so many people spaced out in such a large area?

Needless to say, it was a fun experience.  I got to engage the audience a bit and have some fun.  It’s all part of the learning process as a performer.  I am glad to have lent my time to such a worthy cause.  Please, feel free to post your comments below.  But, before the comments, please watch the set from last night.

Be blessed!