Gig Report: Monday June 21st 2010

Its been a little while since I gigged at a new venue, so on Monday, it was refreshing to be doing my first open spot at Carnivale, part of the Comedy Bin group. And a very interesting venue it was. They had unisex toilets for a start.

With the World Cup in full swing, the night was starting a bit later than they usually do: 9.30pm instead of 8. With the number of acts, there was a lot of potential to run extremely late, but the compere/organiser, Gwilum Argos, managed to keep things moving pretty quick and we were thankfully done before midnight.

I was on early in the second half, following a fantastic character act (which put me in mind of Bernard Manning having a love child with Tony Clifton). I was carrying on with my set of "short" gags, and they went down really well, a few misses, but on the whole I was pretty pleased, especially considering that we were rapidly approaching a point when everyone was too tired to really give a strong reaction.

I'd dropped a few weaker lines, and put in a throwaway joke I'd posted on Facebook the day before, which surprisingly got a huge laugh (despite being cheesy as hell) so I'll be keeping that one in. I need to put some variety in, though, as my opening 2 minutes is just a series of puns. They get a good reaction, but I'd like to mix it up a bit so I don't seem like a hack.

I'm still putting in too many post-joke asides. I think I'm going to try a little experiment with myself: over my next few spots, I'm going to try both extremes, going through my lines verbatim, and spending more time informally chatting with the audience, then see how things go. I'd love to improvise more, but I'm also terrified of doing it badly. Might as well get some practice, see what happens when I'm not doing it half-heartedly, and if its better than not doing it at all.

I've certainly got some room in the routine to keep swapping in new gags. I think I underran a bit, which was a nice change, although admittedly, I did forget a bit.

I've been worrying I might have been losing some of the spark I had at first, and not enjoying gigging as much as I might. I think if I keep experimenting, I can keep things fresh and fun for a lot longer. At least until I get distracted by something shiny.