Standing Up and Being Uncomfortable

Growing up I was terribly shy. Well, shy might not be the right word. I loved getting attention but was very worried about getting negative attention. Part of being a perfectionist I suppose. When I was in kindergarten each individual class put on a play. Peter Rabbit to be precise. I believe the casting process consisted of anybody who wanted a particular part raising their hand and if more than one person wanted a part then their names would be put into a hat to be randomly selected. It was all very professional. The story of Peter Rabbit requires little more than a farmer and a rodent, but since this was kindergarten everybody had to participate somehow so the cast was stretched to fit all twelve or so students. I don’t recall exactly how things went down, but I want to say that I wanted to play Peter Rabbit. Either this is false or I got dream crushed by the lottery. I can tell you that I had absolutely no interest in any of the other parts though, and ultimately ended up “playing” a blackberry bush. Yes, you read that one right. Not a character, not even a prop. Part of the scenery. A plywood cutout of a shrub that for some reason had a face hole cut out. Two faceholes, actually. Apparently portraying a bush was too much work for one child. Needless to say kindergarten did wonders for my self-esteem. It’s okay, I’m obviously not bitter.  

From there I became more of an observer than a performer. Though I had an uncanny ability to memorize the things I had observed. When my mother used to take me to the grocery store I would run up and down the aisles reciting the commercial of every product. In my prime years of viewership it’s entirely possible that I could act out entire episodes of The Simpsons by myself. I never formally took to the stage until my junior year in high school. I played a couple small roles in a couple of bad plays and in my mind’s eye I was more than ready for a larger part. I auditioned for a one act during my senior year and found myself not getting cast. I could handle not getting a part, but I couldn’t handle who was cast instead. I’m not so petty as to drop names, but I am petty enough to say that it was a talentless social pariah. I had words with the theater director about what I considered to be a great injustice. To his credit he was able to speak rationally to me despite my obnoxious and conceited demeanor. He explained that being cast in a show is about a lot more than having more talent (though he was smart enough not to directly say that this was a quality that I possessed). He said he enjoyed having me in the program, but noticed that outside of whatever acting role I had I didn’t do any work for the theatre. The techies weren’t there to do work for me; they were there to work with the performers. I was hung up on the glory and negligent about the work. I was still upset, but I accepted his point of view. He offered for me to be his assistant director and stage manager for the show which I gladly accepted.

After that I put performing on the back burner for a while. I spent very little time on stage my first two years in college. I was still an entertainer in my own right. I don’t think that it’s unfair of me to say that I tell a good story, but entering the world of college theatre sounded like a bit much for a socially awkward freshman. Now and again I would participate in what was called WIT (Winona Improvisational Theatre), which was a weekly sort of show (more of a gathering) where people would come together and do some improv. I had a lot of fun with WIT at first but eventually I just sort of stopped going. I did make my way to a number of the shows of RunnerUp Improv though. They were (still are) the “official” improv club on campus and I thoroughly enjoyed watching them. In my junior year despite my general lack of activity with WIT I was strongly encouraged to audition for RunnerUp. I did, I got in and it’s been one of the best things I’ve ever done. Improv is somewhat indescribable. It’s uncomfortable, it’s uncertain and it gets ugly sometimes, but it’s magical. I can’t get through a show without both being impressed with what the group came up with for a scene at one point and wondering how we missed something at another. In that way I think that the art is really pure. It’s not perfect and it doesn’t try to be. It just is.

From my work with RunnerUp I’ve also gotten very into standup comedy. I’ve always enjoyed standup but the volume that I consume has grown vastly in the past two years. It’s very enjoyable and refreshing to absorb all of the different perspectives and takes on both comedy and the world. I performed my first set to open for a RunnerUp show at some point last year. It was awful. I think that I have the footage somewhere on my computer but I would be too depressed if I dug it up. I don’t think that anybody but me actually remembers this set, so at least I have that going for me. I still have all the jokes from that set saved in the word document where I keep all the material I’m working on. That document is actually titled after the opening line from that set to serve as a reminder to try harder in the future. It’s a bit painful every time I have to open up “have you heard about this swine flu thing…” but it has been a pretty solid motivator. My second set went significantly better. It has even been liked on youtube. Twice.

A lot of people ask me if I get nervous before I perform. When it comes to improv I do. When it comes to standup… not so much. With improv anything can happen and that startles me. When it comes to standup I get all my worrying out of the way in the days before the show. I spend an unhealthy amount of time refining what I want to say and when/how I want to say it. I get a little tense in the minutes before I’m called, but it’s nothing that a couple of beers can’t handle. Last night I performed at the amateur night at Rick Bronson’s House of Comedy at the Mall of America. If you’ve never been there I’d recommend checking it out. I’ve had fun every time I’ve gone and last night was no exception. About two weeks ago people started asking me if I had my set ready to go. It’s probably stupid of me, but I’ve never written a set more than a week before I delivered it. Sometimes I’ll lie and say that this stops the material from getting stale in my own mind or that I work better under pressure, but the reality is that I’m just kind of lazy. Even under this small time frame a given set will improve drastically from my first draft to when I perform it. I haven’t really established a good system for writing yet, but I always try to at least follow two rules. First, I want to get a big laugh (and I mean a BIG laugh) in the first minute. This pretty much eliminates any nervousness I have about performing and also provides a reasonable amount of time to think. After I get to that first laugh I can be sure that my confidence in the set is warranted and things really just kind of flow from there. The other rule I try to follow is to save the best for last. I probably spend about 70% of the time I work on a set thinking about my closer. The opening line and the closing line are the bread of a set, but the difference is that the closer is the piece of bread that has the cheese melted on. If you lose that piece of bread then you probably won’t enjoy your sandwich.

Okay, so this post may have degenerated from whatever my original intentions were into a rather incoherent story, but I’m going to go ahead and publish it anyway. I’d like to think that it’s an enjoyable story anyway. Until next time, thanks for reading.