Comedy Musings 002

I've been feeling like the last week or two have constituted a relative drop in the quality of my gigs, which is super frustrating... I guess the fact that it's happened during Fringe time isn't really that terrible, and if anything could be seen as a bonus as now more than ever, no one important is watching my sets. This decline in quality may even be because of the fact that it's Fringe time, but whatever it is, I'm going to work through it... NOW.

So first of all I want to say before I get anything else out here; Melbourne Fringe kinda sucks. Well, I don't know how much money they have to work with or what kind of angle they're going for with it, but as far as comedy is concerned, I see little to no point of putting a show on outside of one of the truly established venues. Even though we (Line Up Comedy) are at the Portland – a venue at the heard of festival comedy in Melbourne – very few if any people are aware of our existence. Flyering the streets before shows we might as well be flyering for a regular, stand-alone, ticketed showcase. No one I've talked to knows that the fringe is on, or even what it is. The bars in Fitzroy are conspicuously lacking any Fringe promo posters or even guides, and the laundromat I go to every week, with it's full wall of free promo material, magazines and give-aways, has nothing either. Today on the 109 tram I saw a lonely A5 poster for the Melbourne Fringe in one of the frames on the wall, and rather than assuage my pessimism, it only served to make me feel sorry for the people staking some sort of reputation or hope on this lonely, forgotten carnival. Never mind though...

In the month or so leading up to the Fringe I promised myself I'd stop writing so much and concentrate on making the material I have work well so that I could consolidate a strong ten-minute set. The bits I was thinking of including in the set at the time were:

• Girls: about how I'm never going to pick up doing comedy
  
• Dog: a pun that turns into a rant at the audience about living lives devoid of wonder
  
• Anal: story about writing a bit on the tram and having a girl see the word 'anal' in my notebook
  
• News: “I don't like the news” going into a political bit
  
• Herpes: fabricated story about a friend's new girlfriend, that ends with a strong, jokey punchline
  
• BrisTrain: story about a train billboard in Brisbane that pretends to be intellectual before ending with a dick joke
  

Of those bits, I still do all except the 'News' one, which I had to drop after I tried doing it post-election and discovered that it was only really floating along with the political maelstrom leading up to September 7. 'Girls' is now my opener, after Beau Stegmann and Brad Oakes both said it's a good joke – I trust their judgement and sort of understand their reasoning, but I think I'm still trying to come to a complete agreement with them within myself. 'Dog' and 'Anal' I feel are fairly similar, in that they contain parts that I like very much, but neither ever really fleshed out to become a solid bit to rely on. 'Herpes' started out as my best joke, but lately has been receiving diminishing returns, possibly in part, I've been thinking, due to the fact that I've been getting a bit vague with the setup, or partly because I'm sick of it, or partly because it's a bit blue for no reason, or maybe all of the above. 'BrisTrain' started as a silly idea I had – it took me two months from writing it down before I even tried it – but I'm growing to like it more and more with time and I think it provides a welcome respite for audiences amidst a lot of my rather intense attitudes/jokes/subjects.

So the reason why my gigs have been a bit shit lately though, I still can't quite put my finger on it. I mean, my expectations haven't taken a sudden jump upwards... I don't think they have. They are constantly rising as I continue to improve, but never in big jumps, they just rise to meet my last ten or so gigs and where they have left me. It's possible that not writing so much has left my act slightly stale, although the reason I wanted to stop writing was because I wanted to figure out how to perform more effectively, without the crutch of having new bits to invigorate me. The situation with 'Herpes' is the most interesting, I think, because it's been, and continues to be, a reliable bit, although I think it was working better as a three-and-a-half minute bit with a long lead-in, rather than just a quick one-and-half-minute thing out of nowhere. Launching in to a story about “my friend's new girlfriend” might shock some people and appear bitter and pointless. Maybe that's it?

Also I've been focussing on writing my show – although 'focussing' really is a generous way to term it. I've been thinking about the show a lot, but only in the last few days have I come to some conclusions about what is to be done to resurrect what only a week ago seemed to me to be the flailing carcass of a good idea executed with not enough skill and experience behind it. I just need to work at the thing, and I finally have some ideas for where to start.

So yesterday and today I've written some new jokes, and I'm trying to bridge the gap between my 'material' material and my 'show' material, by writing observational bits specifically for my show. It needs to be funnier, and I need to be working on it week in week out during my spots or the months will fly by and I'll find myself all of a sudden at the Adelaide Fringe with the same show I have right now, and it'll suck, and I'll be embarrassed. And fuck that. Fuck that right off.

Peace, Taco.