Hello my beautiful OnlyFansFans. Thank you for being here. I..
Published: October 15th 2022, 10:34:54 am
Hello my beautiful OnlyFansFans. Thank you for being here. It feels a bit like conducting a business meeting in a strip bar. We're just very focused on looking at each other and not at the beautiful, naked people around us. "So, let's talk about comedy!" I say, as you notice boobs flailing about just a few feet from our faces. "Sure, let's!" you say, slightly panicked.
I want to talk about dying on stage. Or, bombing. Both quite aggressive words to use for something that essentially just means 'no one laughed at my jokes for a bit'. I think it's named like that because it really, really FEELS bad. It FEELS like you're dying, slowly, on stage and no one cares.
I was lucky, when I started out. I had a decent first five minute set, which would usually work. Not amazing jokes, but it sounded enough like punchlines that the audience would laugh. And I would be introduced to the stage by someone saying 'She's very new' which usually puts the audience on your side instantly.
So it took me months before my first death. I don't remember the actual set because I've blocked it from my memory. But it was the first time I was playing Lygten - an indie comedy night in Copenhagen, in what used to be an old train station. Super cool place. I was doing an open mic in the smaller room - to about 20-30 people. I remember that many of them were teachers, for some reason.
And. I. Died. So. Hard.
It was brutal. Just, no laughter. Nothing. There is no silence like the silence that comes after a joke. Your soul is sucked out through your throat. You do another joke... and nothing. You begin to sweat. You can hear your own pulse. Another joke. Someone clears their throat in the back of the room. You begin to fill the silence with ummmmm and uhhhhh. You say something like 'So this is going well!' hoping that they'd at least laugh at the fact that you know it's going badly. They don't laugh at that either. They hate you. They want you to die. Not just on stage, but in real life. They want you to be dead.
After an hour, your five minutes are done and you walk off stage to a reluctant applause. I was shocked. Done. The feeling of failure was in my bones.
I fled to a nearby pub, where another comedy night had taken place. One with professional comedians; something I'd never be, after this night. I throw myself on a chair by the bar and order a massive beer. I tell the professional, proper comedians that I died. That I ruined everything.
'Congratulations!' they cheer. What? They start comforting me. They tell me that NOW I'm finally beginning to be a real stand-up comedian. They'd seen me have fine shows for months and they'd thought: Sure. But how will she manage a death? It's easy to have good shows. It's a nice feeling. How you handle a death - that's when you figure out who you are as a comedian. They treated this as my first ever real gig.
I went back and did the same venue next week. And bombed again. I did it again the week after. And died again. The week after that, I had a good gig. Finally.
They say you aren't a comedian till you've bombed 1000 times.
You never stop bombing. Sure, as you get famous and successful and people start being excited to see you on stage, you bomb less and less. But you always know it could happen.
There are two kinds of bombing, I've found. One is where the audience doesn't like you, for some reason. It's hard to figure out why the fuck not. Something just isn't clicking. You're doing what you usually do -- except it's not working.
Then there is the kind of bombing where YOU fuck up. You get in your head, you make an annoying comment and then you can't win them back. I once had to follow a comedian who had done a fat joke that was so harmful that I had to say something. I opened my set by calling him a cunt. But the whole room had LOVED him. And I hadn't yet earned their trust enough to be able to call him a cunt. There's no going back from that. They instantly hated me and it was my fault.
I think the latter feels worse. Knowing that you could have had a good gig, if only you didn't say or do that one thing.
Either way, it's about learning. As I wrote in the last post, comedy is about learning, again and again. You begin to realise little things you do that can win an audience back. The more confident you are, the more they'll trust that you know what you're doing. You grow skin that's thick as fuck.
And you have something in common with all comedians in the world. You now have your worst-ever-death story. No one likes a comedian who's never had a horrible gig. We want to hear about the time you were utterly humiliated. It's our war-stories.
So what to do when you have a horrible gig? Do another gig. As soon as possible. You've got 999 horrible gigs to go.
Now, let's look at the boobies.