After performing at a couple of roast battles, I had a shift in how I came up with material. Having to write mean, dirty, and dark jokes about people started bleeding into the my other writing. Out of nowhere one afternoon I wrote a very dark new bit about child kidnapping that moved through pedophilia, murder and prostitution. It was difficult stuff for sure. Way out of my usual voice, and more serious and challenging for a crowd to get into. I wanted to stretch my creativity with stuff like this. I respect the Stanhopes, Burrs, and Simon Kings of the world that can nail difficult premises and get people laughing about subjects they want nothing to do with. I wanted to know if I could pull that off just like them.
Turns out not so much...
That night I was at an open mic and gave the crowd the choice to hear the new bit. They regretted saying yes, as I took them to some heavy places. Some of the crowd did laugh, but I ended up walking a table of ladies at the end of my set. "Walking a Table" means you caused people to leave by being bad or hard to take onstage. That had never happened to me before. And fairly, in that coffee shop, in the daylight, with no one drinking, that material was really hard to hear.
I completely understood that, and knew that I could try the stuff again on a "Dark and Dirty Show" that was coming up a couple of months later. That show was last week. I wanted to know how this stuff would fly in a place that is better suited to hear it.
Flying did not happen. I could feel the crowd tightening as I got into it. I knew I had to keep confident and push ahead. Letting them rattle you out of a bit is always doom. As I hit the darkest part of the bit, they got me. I stepped out of it and yelled at them. "This is a dark and dirty show! You came for this!" I did this at the expense of the part of the joke where I try to spin them out of it to get the laugh. By the end of it, two tables had walked, and complained about me on the way out. The crowd completely hated me, and were seconds away from outright booing me. I've never seen anyone get booed at these shows. Even when I first started, I never bombed like that. The stink of the shame hung on me the rest of the night. People I'd normally chat up on the way out wouldn't come near me. Even the staff looked at me different.
After I had a couple of days to process everything I felt after, here's what I came away with:
-When doing material like this, the first step is to get them on their heels and make them uncomfortable. You want to build a tangible sense of tension. I had that down for sure. The problem is, step two is to pop that tension balloon in a way that gets them laughing, usually extra hard to release that nervous energy. I couldn't nail that part.
-So why couldn't I? The shortest answer is I'm just not good enough yet. My writing isn't strong enough to have the bit precisely built to manipulate the tension. My delivery of the material wasn't good enough to have them on my side, and my level of stage confidence and poise is too low to handle that hostility and pivot into a laugh when it wasn't going well. All of those things.
-Stand Up is the ability to relay your ideas to an audience in a way that they understand and find funny. I didn't execute that for those reasons above. I'd never blame the crowd for reacting the way they did, because I didn't do my job. The more challenging the concept you're trying to deliver, the better you have to be at those skills.
-The other main thing I realized is that I need to be liked up there. I NEED it. When they didn't come on that messed up road I was trying to drag them down, and they turned on me, I couldn't handle it. Some comics live in that place, and love it. I was so uncomfortable. I need to assess going forward if I need to get more comfortable with being unlikable, or cater my material to stay in my happy place.
The next question is, what's next for that material and do I regret doing it?
No. Not at all.
The only way to determine if you can do something is to take a swing at it. I struck out bad, but at least I know now. The lessons I took away were worth how gross it all felt at the time.
However, now that I have that info, I don't need to go back to the well anytime soon. Yes, I could keep chipping away at that bit. Refining it until it hits. But how many more terrible shows would I have to get there? How many tables would I walk trying to get that joke right, and how many showrunners would want to keep letting me try at the expense of their show? It's not worth that. None of my material is worth that. If I keep progressing as a comic in general, at some point in the future I can go back to this bit, blow the dust off and be able to adjust it with more experience. I can get it to where it needs to be much faster, and with less traumatized crowds on the way there.
So for now, it's going on the shelf until I have the chops to do it right.
Thanks for reading as always
B
