Tuesday, 7 December 2010

I'm Living In A (New) Material World

Tomorrow I will be performing my first stand-up gig in over a month.

During the forced hiatus that my health issues imposed, I wrote a load of new gags for inclusion in my set.  Most of them made it in, some didn't.  Some of the old stuff got removed to make way for the new stuff, or because it was weak.  In fact, in the 6 gigs I've done so far, in order to make the material as strong as possible, each set has been somewhat different to the one before.

And herein lies the problem.  Every time I change my set, I need to relearn the running order, as well as the new material.  From day one I've struggled to remember every joke, and never managed to complete a gig without missing at least a few out.

I now have just under 50 gags to tell in around 10 minutes, and I'm frantically rehearsing the night before the gig to commit them all to memory.  To make matters worse, 12 of those gags are new, untested material.  I've put most of them at the end of the routine so I'll hopefully managed to avoid forgetting them.

I may have to take a cheat sheet on stage with me, but I'm hoping that I manage to get through one gig without forgetting a single joke.  I've kind of created a rod for my own back by choosing a rapid-fire, one-liner style of comedy.  If my material was more anecdotal or followed a pattern or story, it might be easier to remember everything.  But I can't write that sort of material, so I write random, standalone jokes that have virtually no connection to each other.

So tomorrow's gig is a test.  If I can remember all my jokes, great.  If not, I might just give up this comedy lark once and for all.

Anyway, back to the rehearsing...

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