Last night I was in the line up of an open mic comedy night at a pub in a small town, south coast, pretty kind of derro place. There were seventeen acts and I was one of two women on the bill. I managed to score the slot of closing the first bracket where I had 10 minutes of material about Robert Kennedy Jnr. and the worm in his brain.
Hilarious stuff.
But apparently not to this particular crowd. Since the show began this crowd were not impressed. It was a mix of very young uni students, middle aged pub dwellers and men who would have worked in a video store in the 90’s. The MC came out, did his stuff and no one was laughing. Not even pity laughs. I watched 7 men go up and be laughed at, heckled and given dirty looks, so naturally, my brain told me that I would save this show with my weird and whacky content about American politics! A topic small town Australian’s definitely care about.
I had prepped all day. I had listened to the recording of my set over and over on the drive in, I’d written it all out in my notebook which I took with me, and I decided I wanted to film my set to pop it on instagram because I know it’d be great content. I had very high hopes for this night, thinking it would be warm and welcoming and similar to comedy nights I’d experienced in Melbourne.
In Melbourne, the comedy audiences are mostly full of the comedian’s friends, people who like comedy and other comedians. So, people who can understand what it takes to get up on stage and talk shit for 10 minutes. But there was none of that at Ryan’s Pub in Thirroul on Friday the 14th of June.
As soon as I got up on stage and started talking about America, I could feel the absolute distain from the crowd. I don’t know what they expected me to do, but I don’t do jokes about being a lady or having a vag or any of the typical things you’d expect from a “female comedian”. I like weird shit. I grew up watching The Mighty Boosh. I love Conan O’Brien. I like talking about emotions and doing impressions and just being outright silly. But as I started my set, saying what I’d prepped word for word, that feeling of dying came over me so fast that I ended up improvising and losing my place and absolutely destroying my hard work. My set ended up being probably 6 minutes because when I get anxious I just rush through everything. I wanted to get off that stage so badly.
There’s a moment I keep replaying in my head where I said “fuck you guys, this is funny” which I regret and will regret until the day I die. But in challenging these mean thoughts about myself, I have to understand that that wasn’t my room. Doing my kind of stand up to a room of people who won’t understand me doesn’t mean I’m a bad comic, it just means I need to be more precious with what kind of shows I do. I want to do gigs where I feel safe, and I really didn’t feel safe on that stage, which makes sense for me to then freak out.
I have NOT watched the recording back. It’s too soon and between leaving the gig and pulling into my driveway, I revamped the set completely on the drive home. A lot of good comics pop themselves into the stories, which last nights set lacked. But this new version of my story about Robert Kennedy Jnr. should work now that I have popped myself into the narrative.
My best friend however watched the video of my set. I had to put headphones on and watch Seth Meyers and Julia Louis-Dreyfus go day drinking to avoid hearing her watching it, but she said it “wasn’t that bad” which is lovely and exactly what a best friend should say, but it did feel very bad. And I do know what I’m doing on stage most of the time, this stage just wasn’t for me and also my stuff probably wasn’t funny enough or I didn’t connect with the audience properly for anything to really land.
But bombing is great. Thank god for it. Without it, my material for tonight’s gig doesn’t get to evolve. Learning things is cool, but I just wish I wasn’t so mean to myself after things go wrong. Mistakes are dope. I’m grateful for my fuck up. You live and you learn and you become a better artist.
Tits up!