#30before30: Stand-Up Comedy

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I have a love/hate relationship with stand-up comedy. I've always wanted to try it, but have always shied away with the certain dreaded knowledge that I will be fundamentally awful. But one of the catalysts for the #30before30 project was a niggling voice in my head repeating ad nauseum “You're gonna regret not at least trying it in your 20s…” - so OK.

I've got 10 years of experience in improvised comedy behind me, and I've done a fair bit of MC and presenting work, as well as writing comedy for plays - but it's not the same. Where I run into difficulty is the actual “joke-writing” bit. How do you know if you have a funny set-up? How do you write a punchline? It's a very different beast.

And “beastly” might be a good adjective to describe the room I played to, at a pub venue on Brisbane's northside. If I could compare it to anything, it would be the Vietnam War – bloody, brutal, endless and pointless.

For starters, it wasn't really a “room”. It was half of the front bar, divided by a small stage and decorative standee. Very kindly, the wall of TV screens beaming the races TAB odds and Keno were left ON during the show. Ah, there's nothing like the sound of trots to accompany a pithy observation about the differences between men and women.

Another problem was the lack of an audience. The few people who were there seemed wholly surprised by the sudden appearance of an open-mic night, and resolved to continue drinking heavily and chatting in that loud obnoxious way that only the truly sloshed can do. The MC for the show, a charming bloke named Chris, struggled to draw their attention, foregoing his own material in favour of just riffing with anyone who'd talk.

I was down as third for the night; but after the second bloke didn't turn up onstage, I was called up early. I had a little notebook with some scrawled ideas written down; the rest I was going to just going to bullshit my way through. I was less nervous than I thought I was going to be; but enough that I missed some good “beats” and got into a habit of trailing off when bits weren't working, like a frightened bunny. Still, I didn't throw up.

According to the two friends I'd reluctantly invited along to witness the carnage, my funniest line was during my “jellybean apartheid” gag. I said something along the lines of black jellybeans needing to rise up against being segregated in separate bags at the chemist, and needing a “Nelson Mandellybean” for a leader.

You know what? That was COMPLETELY MADE UP ON THE SPOT. That was just my brain creating a stupid portmanteau and shooting it out of my mouth. I'll let you be the judge of the rest of my material: you can watch the video yourself. I'm not wearing any kind of rose-coloured glasses here: I was mostly terrible.

 

But I was pleased that I managed to avoid the absolute lowest common denominator. I really didn't want to talk about drugs, bogans, genitals, bodily fluids, beastiality, and all manner of other stuff that is the traditional domain of the rookie stand-up.

And a good thing too, because boy, the other comedians present (all blokes except for one other girl) really took that ball and ran with it.

Some of them were so relentlessly awful that I felt like taking them aside and just asking what was so wrong in their life that they felt the need to torture themselves like this. I wish I could repeat some of the jokes, but you might be eating as you read this.

Others who jumped up were at least watchable; some even delivered some genuinely clever lines, or worked up a good rapport with the few audience members willing to put down their pints for two seconds and pay attention.

And it's hard – pub patrons don't tend to really want a clever deconstruction of Masterchef or a philosophical inquiry into the nature of relationships – particularly not patrons at this venue. They want dick jokes.

I give them all kudos though – stand-up is not easy, and in this exponentially terrible room, virtually impossible. It takes a certain kind of self-flaggelating narcissistic masochist with something to prove to actually get up there in the first place.

And hey – now I can proudly say I'm one of them.