Get up, Stand up

This past weekend I did my first stand up performance ever. I think it went pretty well. It was a different experience then most of my previous entertainment. Most of the entertaining has props. This is a great thing as it gives you a bit of a buffer if you mess up. If a joke bombs you can do a trick to distract the audience. With magic so much of the performance is based around the cards that most of the words you say are build up or misdirection. Guess what you hid behind when doing stand-up?

I knew I was doing this about a week in advance. Which may have been too much time. There was a very slim possibility that I would be able to juggle in this venue. And when I arrived I realized that wasn’t going to happen. Since juggling was out I decided that I should just go for it. Make the leap and hope the net opens in time to catch me.

I told variations of posts from my blog. I talked about injuring myself while entertaining, having a famous brother and the romantic trials of a young balloon sculptor. And I got laughs. I don’t know if I had a joke that failed to get a laugh. Talking to the proprietor of the comedy club he said I needed to work on my pacing to get the laughs faster. Which I will do.

I am so used to having the safety net of props that I was super nervous. Before my set I sat at the bar and fiddled with cards, burning nervous energy and watching the other comics pat each other on the back. It was funny in a really sad way. Also comics are very (surprise) ego-centric people. They are competitive but very complimentary.

I want to try more stand-up but I am too much of an early to bed/early to rise guy to go to open mics. Seriously who is up at 8:30pm? Not me. If open mic is at 6:30am I am golden. I will keep my eye out and will get up there again.