Remember, Kids: Have Fun Out There!

I have had a rough few gigs in a row.  Since the Yuk Yuk's showcase, I just haven't felt myself up on stage.  Which is a shame, because that's how I was making most of my tips.  *Rim shot*

The problem is this: I have allowed my focus to shift from my main objective, which is to become a good comic.  I'm the kind of person who puts a lot of pressure on myself to do a good job in whatever it is I am doing.  This could be a fantastic quality if I were also the kind of person who is able to stop and define what a "good job" means to them in a given context.  To reverse the proverbial forest for the trees phrase; I tend not to see the trees for the forest.  I have to start focussing on the details and developing my stage presence.  Instead, I have been doing my best to hone my impression of a comic, if that makes any sense.  I am lousy at trying to be other people.

I want to be really good at this.  Being a stand up comic has always been my goal.  Through university I used to wish I could stop thinking about it and be happy at the prospect of leading a professional life as a lawyer.  I could never warm up to that idea or to shake the incessant daydreams to become a comic.  At the beginning, I set small goals and celebrated my achievements.  During my first few gigs, I was just working on going through the motions in an attempt to become comfortable on stage.  Then I got comfortable enough to think about my stage presence.  Around this time, I performed at Yuk Yuk's and any reason and logic I possess was hijacked by my imagination.  I viewed the showcase as my huge break.  Hold on Chrissie, it's certainly been a long couple of months but we're nearly there!  I stopped setting small goals and clumsily stumbled toward my goal to become a professional comic.  Not only was I setting myself up for disappointment, but I wasn't celebrating the small achievements anymore.  In short, I managed to suck all the fun out of this little adventure of mine.  And who suffers here?  My fans of course!

To me, a good comic is someone who is able to be themselves on stage and get personal and honest about themselves and their worlds.  That's where the humour is.  We are all human and while our individual experiences are of course very different, we're all so much the same.  A lot of my material focusses on my disability because that is part of the lens through which I view the world.  But my emotions are not unique and my material is relatable because of this sameness we all share.  I love it when I see a comedian like Greg Giraldo or Chris Rock who manage(d) to get up on stage and be honest and real.  What's funnier than that?  I want to slow down and focus on developing my act from the ground up.

Coming up with and writing material is easy for me.  I come from an endearingly crazy family and I am handicapped.  My comedy cup runneth over!  I do, however, seem to have had great difficulty achieving any kind of consistency in how I deliver this material.  This impediment is the result of the approach I have been taking to comedy as a profession.  I was reminded recently that I am an amateur, just starting out and I should take the opportunity to experiment now when the stakes aren't so high.  Sound advice.  So this is how I want to approach every gig from now on.  I need to experiment right now with my material and delivery.  Some of you readers might be saying to yourselves: "Well, duh - that's just common sense."  But you know what?  Nobody asked you (My Mom has a problem with this line, so I would like to add that this was a joke for anyone out there who found themselves similarly offended.  I take great pride in my nastiness and would never offend anyone unintentionally).