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I'm trying to get the balls to do my first open mic sometime in the new year. I was taking a small weekly comedy improv course (which was building up to a performance to a few people tomorrow evening, so I'm making GBS threads myself!) so I'm definitely bookmarking this thread. Actually, I'd recommend doing an improv course if you're having trouble writing material, as it's great practise to just break down your logical filters and just run with an idea no matter how ludicrous it is. Personally, any time I see something that makes me chuckle, I write it down along with why I laughed at it. Then I'll just start typing in a conversational style about that as though I was telling a story to a friend. Along the way, I'll jot down any notes that I want to be sure to hit and try to guide the story towards getting through all of them. When trying to memorise my material, I just have a list of the key bullet points of the routine so that I don't end up just reciting what I've written word for word. Now, this might be dreadful since I haven't actually performed any of the stuff I've written yet, so once I finally get up there I'll post again with how badly it all went! I know that UK and US comedians tend to have rather different styles, but he's a fantastic British podcasts from a comedian called Stuart Goldsmith that I would recommend to anyone who's interested in stand-up. http://www.comedianscomedian.com/ Basically he interviews other comedians about how they write their material, where they get their inspiration from, etc. I generally try to stay a few episodes behind in it so that every time I'm running short on motivation to get writing, I'll listen to a bit of the podcast and suddenly get back in the mood to get some work done.
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Dec 3, 2012 16:48
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Pastamania posted:It's not an open mic set if it doesn't include at least one poorly thought out rape joke, folks. Same goes for Catholic priest (or more recently, Jimmy Savile) jokes. In a bit of material I'm writing, the inevitable conclusion is a rape reference and I'm desperately trying to push it in any other direction. Actually, one day I ended up writing so many god-awful sex jokes that I could probably do a good couple of minutes about how bad my own material is and how I'm ashamed of it!
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Dec 12, 2012 11:53
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My problem is definitely having too many half-baked ideas and not enough complete material that I'd be happy to perform. I guess once I actually have my first try at stand up then that might inspire me to finish off some ideas, or if I gig enough the. I'll eventually be forced to finish off something new!
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Dec 17, 2012 13:39
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A question for the people who have been doing it for a while: Do you keep a categorised list of all the routines you have? Like, you have all your material typed up (maybe not word for word, but enough of it to remind you what the content is) and you have categories/tags on each one to make it easier to transition from one piece to another? e.g. Routine A is about films, so you can pick a set order by searching for another routine that is tagged with "films" and "anger" so you easily link into that from routine A, then a third routine which is tagged "anger" and something else, and so on. Would I just be better off just mixing about the order and seeing what flows naturally?
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Dec 18, 2012 10:21
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I like the idea of those of us with no experience being able to get our work critiqued in advanced, though as you say seeing it written down makes anything look poo poo!
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Dec 18, 2012 19:46
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Not necessarily related to performing stand-up comedy, but people in this thread would obviously be fans so it seems like a good place to ask. In the new year I'm going to be launching a comedy listings website for my local area (well, the tiny country I live in) and the plan is to try and get acts/promoters to put their own listings up, with me catching whatever I miss (e.g. for the big TV acts who'd be too big/busy to list on a local website!). Although, I've gone through and put in a load of shows from the main venues just to get things running. What kind of stuff would you find most useful in a comedy listings website? Right now it's mainly a calendar with event pages that show a title, blurb, photo, price and link to the event page on the venue's website. It's all being done through Wordpress and I'm not much of a coder, so any new functionality will need to be through existing plugins or very simple tinkering of code! Eventually I'd like to get a blog going in it but I don't have time or much to write about in it myself, so ideally it'd be a place for local acts to write things about the scene which I could then publish on the site.
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Dec 20, 2012 11:54
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I almost think it'd be worth having an IRC channel or something full of comedy goons to bounce ideas off each other without it being too public of a forum that other people could easily steal some gags?
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Dec 28, 2012 13:17
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Smerdyakov posted:Howdy Dick Holdem! Thanks for the critique--I've been working on slowing down in general, but your advice to pause before punchlines is not something I've heard before and I'm definitely gonna try it, because I may be losing people unnecessarily.
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Jan 4, 2013 09:51
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Are any of the other posters/lurkers in this thread from Northern Ireland at all? I'm hoping sometime within a month or two to finally memorise a few of my bits and try to find a 5 minute open mic night somewhere handy, like in central Belfast. I know that the Pavilion Bar does them but apparently it's a little out of the way. Incidentally, I'm about to launch a comedy listings website for NI quite soon. Not sure if it's worth linking here seeing as I assume most posters are likely from America or England, but I can put up a link if anyone is interested in having a look regardless.
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Jan 9, 2013 12:05
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Well the limitation of being near the city centre is mostly since I don't drive and need to be able to get home afterwards. As for bringing notes on stage, I wrote a small bit as an excuse to do that. It's a mixture of a referential gag to my opening bit and then hopefully a visual laugh from the fact that I'd plan on having notes as a big sheet of paper sticky-taped to my arm (under my sleeve which I'd then reveal). Plus something else I've written is about various features of my phone, so the plan would be to have screenshots of each app so that I can flip through them - seemingly to show to the crowd what I mean but really just to remind me of what happens next. I definitely agree about the ad libbing and would plan on recording my sets to make sure I can remember anything that came out on the night, I'd just feel a bit nervous without having at least the key beats that I have to hit drilled into my brain to make sure I don't accidentally forget to set up a thing that I want to refer to later on. Fingers crossed I'll stop being a pussy and finally do it soon - I think I've just set myself too high of a standard that I want to live up to, even for my very first try!
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Jan 9, 2013 23:03
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Not quite open mics but I've been to a handful of local shows that a friend of a friend was performing in, one of which was for charity. I think he was the only one in the charity night who didn't do a catholic priest joke and one of the few where I didn't notice any of his jokes being lifted from other comedians. I think my girlfriend was getting bored with me constantly poking her in the side and whispering where the act at the time lifted a gag from. And I've seen several different Not-Frankie-Boyles who just brought up rape as a punch line to everything without really getting that Frankie Boyle does a little bit more than that. I think all those people had done it at least a few times before, so that made me more confident. It's more of a personal thing, I hate being poo poo at stuff! Still, I've asked the friend whose done it before about open mics in the area to hopefully I'll pull my finger out and give it a whirl! The guy stripping to his pants and trying to chat up a girl sounds so loving surreal that I suppose I would've been laughing jus to try and fool myself into thinking its clever performance art rather than a mental breakdown.
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Jan 9, 2013 23:44
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Oh yeah I made a point to laugh politely and make it look like I was just whispering a "I liked that" sort of thing. It was just really grating after a while to see how much stuff can get lifted at times!
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Jan 11, 2013 01:08
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alanthecat posted:I'd like to see the listings website that Question Mark Mound mentioned, just to take a gander. I'm in class at the moment but I'll try to check out your links when I get home this evening. I do always like comedy websites that do pretend reviews of things they know nothing about or go off on tangents. Also, it seems like there's a standup writing course in February/March in Belfast so I've signed up to that, hopefully it'll be good. I suppose I should get a notepad and a pen since I don't wanna be "that guy" typing everything up on an iPad.
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Jan 26, 2013 11:02
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Did my first 5 minutes there on Saturday. I was utterly terrified and forgot a couple of bits I was meant to do in my routines, but thankfully none of the crucial stuff for it all to make sense. That being said, I would've loved to have had a chance to say "nominative determinism" to a room full of people. I was introduced as a first-timer so I dunno if I was getting pity laughs or if it actually did go down well. Accidentally used a bit of a "no-no" word just because a lot of people I hang out with use it casually and it sort of slipped out in one bit that I had only just thought of that morning, but luckily the crowd went with me on it, and some people even thought it was intentional and worked well in the routine. After about a minute and a half my mouth was utterly dry, so next time I'll need to remember to have a glass of water with me or something.
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Mar 4, 2013 19:49
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Zero Star posted:Mine's coming up on Wednesday. I'm terrified already. What if nobody laughs?
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Mar 5, 2013 10:00
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Greek Tragedy posted:This happens constantly, I call it "stage deafness".
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Mar 8, 2013 16:32
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Zip posted:So loving annoyed tonight. I've been performing for like a year and a half and the good friend who got me into stand up, usually gives me rides to open mics. The problem is he's a total hack. A complete loving hack. He steals my jokes often or worse just asks "can I borrow that joke". If I say "no" he says "dude it's just a joke..." Unrelated, but I have my second open mic this Tuesday. It's mostly base-level jokes which I am openly not proud of, but I need to squeeze it into 7 minutes (it's on a timer). I'm always running 40 seconds over when I practise it at home, having trouble seeing what I can cut.
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May 16, 2013 10:05
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Belfast, Northern Ireland. I know comedians are supposed to travel, but that'd be a bit of a trek. 
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May 16, 2013 17:23
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So I've only done three open mics myself at the start of the year and haven't done anything for a long time, does anyone else get stage blindness/deafness - as in you can't really see or hear if you're getting a response - while you're up there? After I listened back to a recording of my first one I got enough laughs, but I really could not tell whatsoever at the time how I did. I'm signing up for local improv course just to get my performing confidence back up again since I haven't done anything for ages - kinda like taking a few driving lessons if you haven't driven in years. I really ought to write some more material too. Even though people seemed to find the other stuff funny, I wasn't hugely chuffed with it (even having my last bit being about how un-proud I am of it).
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Aug 28, 2013 11:52
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^^^ I've been pulled onto the stage before by a big name act for more audience participation stuff and I have a major respect for those guys - with the stage lights of a large venue you literally can't see past the first five rows.captain platypus posted:I could tell whether I was getting a response, but the whole thing---even though I clocked it MANY times at five or more minutes---went by in a flash and didn't allow much time for analysis or self-correction.
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Aug 28, 2013 16:10
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If nothing else, improv skills may even help with coming up with material or riffing on the spot.
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Aug 29, 2013 08:00
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Well it seems that I'm doing another open mic a week before that improv workshop starts! Gonna try some new stuff which I'm not sure is as funny as what I had before, but it's a little more confessional and personal so I hope that can earn me a few points with the crowd.
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Aug 30, 2013 08:07
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captain platypus posted:Good luck! Gonna film it? I'm nowhere near as confident with this set - it feels like forever until the first joke. I ought to come up with a good opener.
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Aug 31, 2013 18:46
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Unfortunately "supportive" isn't a word I'd use about most of my friends with regards to me trying comedy, so I don't think that'd work. My problem right now is that it's more of a storytelling bit than joke/joke/joke, which I think is more of a UK thing compared to American stand-up. And with that, I need a little too much explanation right now to make things make sense so I'm gonna need to shoe-horn some jokes into the middle of the speech somehow.
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Aug 31, 2013 20:51
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So my gig today didn't go too bad, I guess. It was a bit odd because for the first half (which I did my bit in) the entire audience was entirely made up of the other acts and a small handful of their mates, so there was about a dozen people in the room and nobody was getting any big laughs even for stuff that has worked well before. Totally gutted that about 1/3 of the way in I forgot how I started my next bit so I very quickly had to check notes on my phone. My friend said I covered it well enough but I still wish I had nailed it all. Still, I suppose with moving up from 5 to 10 minutes in my 4th ever gig I hope I can be forgiven for cocking it up a little.
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Sep 7, 2013 20:25
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I have an audio recording from having the phone in my pocket but it's practically unlistenable.
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Sep 7, 2013 22:22
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I tried to make segues for all my material less for making it seem like a smooth transition and more as a memory aid so I know what I'm doing next!
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Sep 16, 2013 13:31
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Personally speaking, I think hecklers are lower than any form of wit at all. Although you shouldn't discount the pun, comedians like Tim Vine, Stewart Francis and Milton Jones can really sell you on them.
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Sep 22, 2013 11:58
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You can't just say that and NOT tell us what your show is called so we can go see it!
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Jun 13, 2014 14:41
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Hold on, were you the guys acting as the advisors during last year's Knightmare Live show? I definitely recognise the name. Unfortunately my evenings are totally booked up for my time at the Fringe this year seeing shows so I can't check you out.
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Jun 13, 2014 15:17
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XIII posted:I'm jealous. Doing Edinburgh is on my goal list (thanks a lot, Comedian's Comedian podcast). Wish I could come see you.
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Jun 13, 2014 16:13
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I've been to a few of the live recordings and have discovered people who I had never heard of who have since become some of my favourite comedians and have been to a few of their shows.
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Jun 13, 2014 16:28
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