Creating a Comic

Wow, what a blast. Thanks to everyone who came out on Saturday for the two great shows at Giggles.

The early show at 8pm felt like one of my better sets. I was getting solid laughs from the start, which magically boosted my confidence and sharpened my focus even further. By the second half of my act I felt like I was hitting all the right notes, and I left the stage to loud applause. It was a tremendous feeling.

The late show at 10pm was… a learning experience. I was given my first-ever opportunity to host, which meant that I went up first to warm up the crowd, then introduced the rest of the comics throughout the show.

I’ll delve further into the specific subject of hosting in a future post, but for now I’ll just say that I have a newfound respect for comics who “hop on the grenade” — the comedian term for going first in front of a cold audience. It was a very different challenge. I made a rookie mistake by going with my same set list as before; in retrospect, I should have mixed in some crowd work at the beginning to get that audience involved and warmed up.

I didn’t bomb, but I didn’t do nearly as well as I wanted to, especially after my solid performance at the first show. But I know how I can do it better next time, so it was a good learning experience. I earned some experience points, as the nerds might say. Yes, you just read that.

Incidentally, I’ve still never had anyone come to a show who knows me just from this blog—which I shamelessly mention now that the traffic stats are ticking up a little bit. If you want to be the first, be sure to say hi to the dude in the bandanna and I’ll buy you a drink.

 — Posted by CJ under Creating a Comic. Please comment or trackback!