Tomorrow I may die. Like Elvis. On my arse. Not in Memphis but in Lambeth, SE1.
When I was just starting out I was told by a fellow female stand-up comic that the first 30 gigs are fun and then something happens. I didn’t think too much of it at the time, (because I was having so much fun) but she was right. Spooky.
It’s quite serious, comedy. I mean you’ve got to write the stuff, you’ve got to perform the stuff, you’ve got to ‘die on your arse’ in front of dozens of people and you’ve got to go home with your bottom lip trembling and re-write it so it works better next time. There, there. And you’re still only just getting to grips with the mechanics of gag-writing and performing.
As a new act on the comedy circuit you don’t show up on the radar until you’ve done so many gigs and got so many stage hours. Nobody can quite agree on what that figure is as it depends on luck and skill but ranges from 2-5 years and takes approximately 200-500 gigs to crack it. Not the joke, but the crossover from a ‘New Act’ to an ‘Established’ paid act. That’s how long it takes to get really, really slick … apparently.
One hears stories about comics going on stage with no material prepared at all, just a few vague ideas and a regional accent to get them through and then managing to triumphantly ’storm it.’ That‘s how it‘s supposed to look but in truth a comic can be found writing material at the lap-top, hands thumping and bouncing off the keys like Rachmaninoff working on his Third.
A comic has to write, re-write, tweak, trim, craft, hone and re-write so many times that the Sunshine-La-La bus comes to take them away because they’ve grown so bored with their own material that they’ve started writing Jerry Springer the Opera. (No offence Stewart Lee, ’I love your work‘ but I think it makes my point.) And yet each performance has to be as fresh as the little daisy you first ever whoopsed.
Famously, Jimmy Carr went about his first year as a New Act with the same surgical precision as his gag writing and managed something in the area of 500 gigs. Quite impressive, and you don’t get any travel expenses or a fee and so it can cost a lot of money, as I am reminded this week when booking my ticket for the Glasgow Comedy Festival. It’s a long way to go to perform 5 minutes of material but I look at it as an apprenticeship. It’s no different to an actor travelling to auditions. It’s certainly an improvement on the ‘pay to play’ scheme – popularised on the London music scene in the early 90’s.
A few times I have wondered if I’m being exploited, but how else am I to develop as a comic if not in front of an audience? The De Niro ‘Taxi Driver’ method? ‘You lookin at me? Cos I don’t see no-one else here.’ That’s because you‘re using your hairbrush as a microphone and talking to yourself in front of the mirror again Sam. Really, you do need an audience.
I don’t know how my fecundity as a humorist is going to evolve. I don’t even really know what my on-stage persona is yet. It seems to change. Sometimes I’m as deadpan as my broom cupboard and at other times I’m a babbling brook of optimism. Whether this is a natural metamorphosing thing or just a bi-polar thing, I’m not really sure, but I think I will need to find some consistency. It feels like I’m growing up in public like … Jodie Foster or Lisa Simpson…. wait, she’s been the same age for 15 years. She’s a cartoon?! What really? And she has so much more depth than me. Hmmm.
I do know I have always needed to express an opinion. This is good and bad in equal measure. It’s not necessarily considered very elegant or dignified. It’s one thing to be passionate about stuff and another to screw up your face and spew forth a litany of insulting syntax at the object of your excitement. Unless, you are a stand-up comic. At last. I have found my calling. I stand, I exorcise my demons, I make you laugh, I leave. Alone.
Nearly 50 gigs on from this revelation, I’ve reached a curious hiatus. It’s time to take stock. Laughing stock you might say. Up to this point I have been so excited that I no longer have to put up with those patronising edicts, you know the ones, ‘Sit down love’ – whenever I get excited and ‘Smile, it might never happen’ – whenever I’m not smiling and dancing the friggin’ Can-Can. Now I have a voice. Now I have an outlet. Don’t tell me to sit down, I’m a Stand Up Comic. I’m not some Victorian lady trussed up in a corset who needs smelling salts just to keep from fainting. Don’t tell me to smile, I was born frowning and it will be the making of me in a Clint-Eastwood-cum-Star-Trek-Klingon-sort-of-a-way. My trademark if you will. Probably. Oh dear.
Aye and there’s the rub. Each week as my gig-count rises I have to really think about just how I want to use that voice I’ve found. It’s easy to be dismissive or cruel. It’s easy to circumnavigate the core tensions of life – the nose-crunchingly odorous issues that cast a shadow over all our lives and instead make jokes about celebrities and supermarket trolleys and aeroplanes and cheese. It’s frivolous froth. But it can be very funny. If it makes the audience laugh, then surely that is the role of the comic. It’s like orgasms though. (Sorry.) It’s quite easy to have one but I don’t want to feel dirty afterwards. I’d like to savour the refinement of the moment. Perhaps I’m a snob, but I want my orgasm to have integrity and emotional intelligence.
What is harder to do is to make people feel good about themselves. Josie Long the winner of the if.commedies Best Newcomer Award (previously the Perrier) has really fine-tuned it. She’s been fine-tuning for ten years . If you haven’t seen her show ‘Kindness and Exuberance’ yet – you must.
My gig count rests at 44. Tomorrow, February 22nd 2007, will be 45. One day I’ll stop counting. At the moment each gig is a learning curve. A voluptuous curve at that. You can follow that curve as the gig count grows on this site. In the meantime you could visit my website and get your friends along to the 7th Dead Elvis Awards in London, where some new comics will be competing for this not-so-serious award and you can have a laugh at our expense. In a good way.
