This week I did a 7 minute spot at The Comedy Center, run in Isleworth’s Milford Arms pub by Matt Lowes, and Sam Hampson (who also hosts the gig with great energy). It’s a lovely little new act, new material night, well organised, friendly, and on the two nights that I’ve done there’s been an up-for-it audience – plus there’s a weirdly high stage, so it’s always fun watching shorter acts trying to clamber onto it.
I’ve been trying to build a new 5-10 minutes of material that doesn’t involve me complaining about being a parent, so I ran in a bunch of that stuff and it seemed to go down pretty well. Although, more than at any other gig I’ve done recently, I noticed people laughing at unexpected points, like halfway through a setup when there’s nothing resembling a joke yet.
The advice I’ve heard for that problem is that if they’re finding something funny at the wrong part of the bit, you’ve got a better joke than you thought, so restructure it so the bit they’re laughing at becomes the punchline and your original punchline becomes a tag to keep the laughs rolling.
Still it’s not happened enough to make me think any of the material needs changing dramatically, but it’s worth keeping an eye on while I work this stuff out. Usually I’m too lazy to record and listen to my sets, but this time I did and the two key things I noticed were:
- I’m rambling and using a lot of filler words – on the one hand I think it makes me sound kind of amiable and maybe a bit more natural, but really I should tighten it up because I’m wasting a lot of time on unnecessary fluff.
- I’m speaking faster than I think I am, which might make it harder for the audience to take in what I’m saying. If I took out all of that fluff, I’d have time to slow down a bit and make it easier for them to digest my setups before I charge straight into the punchlines.
So I’ll definitely spend my next few spots focusing on word economy and pacing. I’ve entered the Whole Lotta Comedy Kingston and Surbiton Comedy Competition in a couple of weeks, which needs a 5 minute set – so I think if I can tighten up the 7 I did this week, it should work.
A couple of that acts really stood out this week:
- Lizzie Simpson – the kind of subversive, family unfriendly act that I really enjoy.
- Liz Bains – really funny, has an easy confidence along with some fantastic jokes, got a lot of big laughs from everybody.
Next week on January 29th I’m doing this Midweek Service gig in Folkestone – they used completely the wrong name on the flyer, but I didn’t have the heart to correct them and at least they put my pic on it…
