NOTES ON A COMEDY GIG
NOTES ON A COMEDY GIG
I just went to an open mic night in *********. Not to perform, to watch. It was local and so I just popped in with a friend. It reminded me why I don’t want to perform onstage anymore. Actually it didn’t remind me - I haven’t forgotten. It reinforced it. It was so bleak that I witnessed everything like I was an observer of a sociological experiment. The sheer complexity of what goes on in a room like that is too much. The interpersonal and emotional complexity, and the setting in which it takes place is, too much. Firstly the pub is just bleak. It’s a pub I would never take someone I love to. It’s a pub where the acquisition of guns has blatantly been discussed at some point. The sound of a toilet hand drier is going constantly. People in other sections of the pub are talking loudly with no separation and they have definitely hit people in car parks before. This is not a place where the acts could be discovered in anyway. I work in the business but I’m an anomaly. No one who works in show business really wants to live in the places I do. If they’re gonna perform here the acts may as well gig alone in the rain under the night time glare of artificial lighting on a building supplies site that’s surrounded by harsh sharpened metal fences miles from residential housing. It’s just a sad night in the city for these people. There is nothing for a comedian to learn or gain from gigging here. Zero. It’s simply an assault on their spirit and soul. All it has to offer them is depression. Actually there is one lesson to learn and I guess it’s an important one. The only thing to learn here is that there’s nothing to learn here. If a comedian can crack this code they can take something valuable away. There are some situations which are not there to be won or overcome. There is zero to gain. There is nothing to win by enduring. Learning to recognise a pointless dead end is a great life skill. None of the comedians cracked the code tonight. You could argue that another lesson is what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? But these aren’t chance encounters the comedians are surviving. It’s the deliberate self-infliction of pain on a slow week night. It’s an illness, not an education. Even stray dogs under cold stars know not to place themselves in places that keep hurting them.
Anyway, as for the gig, it was the usual open mic guys going up there. Tiresome, hack attempts to shock with material about paedophiles or Nazis. Men who don’t know who they are on the stage of life - let alone on the part of life that is actually a stage. I don’t wish to be harsh but it’s so instantaneously obvious whether someone is a funny person. I don’t wish to be even harsher but some of these men should give up. I mean it. They should give up. They’re never going to make it in comedy. But that isn’t the reason why I think they should give up. I don’t believe the purpose of doing things is simply for career success. Doing something because it brings you joy is it’s own reward. But these people aren’t experiencing joy. They hate it. They are self-harming by going to bleak places. They are being made more depressed by their experiences onstage. They should stop doing it immediately and discover the meaning of their life elsewhere because it’s not to be found in a stinking pub that’s a relic of skinhead days and where gun deals are made. There was one guy who isn’t a funny person - but he could be a likeable person - but he totally talked himself into a depression onstage and didn’t really do material and had decided it was going terribly from the off when in actual fact the audience were up for spending time with him. But he completely self sabotaged himself with sadness and nerves. There was another guy who did the same. And another. Oh - I forgot to say that for the entire gig there was a horrible coke-head in the audience. A horrible disgusting narcissistic coke-head prick who looked like a fat Rylan Clark who talked throughout and tried to bully the MC into letting him onstage whilst the other acts were performing. Credit to the MC he didn’t let this happen as their debate at the back of the room spoiled the purity of acts dying through their own material alone rather than through the constant talking disrupting their heartbroken flow. A lady came on and she was more commanding because her heart was stronger and she was simply a person who has more presence and belief. She was firm with the coke-head but the night and experience had even got to her because she gave in slightly to open mic apologetics that reference things aren’t going well - when in actual fact she was doing alright and had flipped the power dynamic away from the room and onto the stage where she stood. Eventually a lady in the audience went over to the coke-head and whispered something in his ear. Whatever she said completely destroyed him. It castrated and neutered him and he left like an emaciated alley-cat. Both those who went on stage and those who tried to get onstage were broken. There was nowhere nice for the comedians to go after the gig. There is nowhere nice here. It isn’t a place where people choose to go. It was an open mic night in London in a place where the walk to the tube is long and where normal people are asleep under duvets. You have to be mentally ill to be a stand-up comic and probably even more fucked up to succeed.