Last
night was the first night of the split Fringe show I'm doing with
Geoff Setty, Brett Blake, Megan McKay, and Dick Wakefield – Brett
wasn't in last night so Simon Cantwell took over guesting duties, and
we actually had a pretty solid turnout of around fifteen people. That
alone made the show much better than I expected; I haven't been
assuming that it was going to be bad, I've just been trying not to
think about it to be honest, but now that we've had that one, and we
had some bookings before the show even, I'm starting to re-evaluate.
Of course, that could have been a fluke... but I mean, how did they
find out about the show at all? Maybe the Portland as a venue is so
well known that we'll be able to pull some people in just off the
back of that... maybe?
I didn't have the greatest set though, I did okay and definitely held it down, but I got a little shouty and angry and I think I started to make people uncomfortable which is annoying... I had another gig afterwards at Station 59 which I MCd, and in which I succeeded in completely alienating the audience through a series of frustrated outbursts over the course of the night, but I don't really want to talk about that.
I think the trouble with my set at the Portland last night was that I wasn't really living 'in the moment', I was too intent on going up there and just getting my material out, and so when the front row turned out to be happily boisterous and chatty, I wasn't prepared to play with them. That sucks, because I could have really brought them into the performance, bounced off of them, done some riffing, and turned the whole thing into a really great set, but as it was I think I just managed to scrape by with a six out of ten. I think that just comes down to preparation again, because while I did go up there with a rough idea of what bits I wanted to do in my head, I was still under-prepared and hadn't thought much about my set that day, so when the opportunity came to do something real and in the moment, I was too focussed on my set. I hadn't thought it through, so it was still occupying my mind when crunch time came. I need to think about it, finish the thoughts, and then banish it from my mind. The material should be a fall-back when I run out of things to talk about – to paraphrase Bill Hicks.
Okay, so maybe I will talk about my set at Station. I think (I hope?) I realized something about the whole 'in the moment' thing last night; it's not good enough – and doesn't even really count as riffing – to sit side of stage and think of jokes about what's happening on stage at the moment, and then say them when I get back on. Okay, so maybe that works for MCing, but only if the crowd is up for the type of quipping that those half-formed jokes will inevitably be. But if I'm not MCing I need to be able to ACTUALLY riff, rather than just write material very fast... I mean... hmmm, maybe there isn't much difference once you get to the high end of the scale, but for where I'm at now, I need to be able to just take a thought and run with it without knowing where I'm going. I need to be able to think and talk at the same time, and make the talking compelling enough to stall the audience while I think of something to cap the thought off with. That's what I want to do tonight.
Tonight, when I get on stage at the Portland, I'm going to be prepared, with my set all thought-out in my mind, but also ready to abandon it at the shortest notice in favour of actually talking to the audience. Kirk's set at Station last night was a great example of audience interaction that wasn't contrived and wasn't centred around the tedious 'what do you do for a living' routines that passes for engagement in the minds of so many hacks and bored idiots. Real questions, or engaging observations, that's where actual interactions come from. To create something real between the audience and the performer, the performer has to actually be interested in the performer's input, and to create that, the question has to be something worth asking. No one cares what they do for a living, nor do I care what anyone does. I want to know why that person is wearing an interesting hat, what they think of the people sitting next to them, or why they came to the show and what they expect out of me as a performer. The question, I guess, is how to icit that kind of information in ten minutes, and still make it funny for people.
Learning learning. So many questions.
Peace, Taco.
I didn't have the greatest set though, I did okay and definitely held it down, but I got a little shouty and angry and I think I started to make people uncomfortable which is annoying... I had another gig afterwards at Station 59 which I MCd, and in which I succeeded in completely alienating the audience through a series of frustrated outbursts over the course of the night, but I don't really want to talk about that.
I think the trouble with my set at the Portland last night was that I wasn't really living 'in the moment', I was too intent on going up there and just getting my material out, and so when the front row turned out to be happily boisterous and chatty, I wasn't prepared to play with them. That sucks, because I could have really brought them into the performance, bounced off of them, done some riffing, and turned the whole thing into a really great set, but as it was I think I just managed to scrape by with a six out of ten. I think that just comes down to preparation again, because while I did go up there with a rough idea of what bits I wanted to do in my head, I was still under-prepared and hadn't thought much about my set that day, so when the opportunity came to do something real and in the moment, I was too focussed on my set. I hadn't thought it through, so it was still occupying my mind when crunch time came. I need to think about it, finish the thoughts, and then banish it from my mind. The material should be a fall-back when I run out of things to talk about – to paraphrase Bill Hicks.
Okay, so maybe I will talk about my set at Station. I think (I hope?) I realized something about the whole 'in the moment' thing last night; it's not good enough – and doesn't even really count as riffing – to sit side of stage and think of jokes about what's happening on stage at the moment, and then say them when I get back on. Okay, so maybe that works for MCing, but only if the crowd is up for the type of quipping that those half-formed jokes will inevitably be. But if I'm not MCing I need to be able to ACTUALLY riff, rather than just write material very fast... I mean... hmmm, maybe there isn't much difference once you get to the high end of the scale, but for where I'm at now, I need to be able to just take a thought and run with it without knowing where I'm going. I need to be able to think and talk at the same time, and make the talking compelling enough to stall the audience while I think of something to cap the thought off with. That's what I want to do tonight.
Tonight, when I get on stage at the Portland, I'm going to be prepared, with my set all thought-out in my mind, but also ready to abandon it at the shortest notice in favour of actually talking to the audience. Kirk's set at Station last night was a great example of audience interaction that wasn't contrived and wasn't centred around the tedious 'what do you do for a living' routines that passes for engagement in the minds of so many hacks and bored idiots. Real questions, or engaging observations, that's where actual interactions come from. To create something real between the audience and the performer, the performer has to actually be interested in the performer's input, and to create that, the question has to be something worth asking. No one cares what they do for a living, nor do I care what anyone does. I want to know why that person is wearing an interesting hat, what they think of the people sitting next to them, or why they came to the show and what they expect out of me as a performer. The question, I guess, is how to icit that kind of information in ten minutes, and still make it funny for people.
Learning learning. So many questions.
Peace, Taco.
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