As a comedian – we perform our “acts” as our bread and butter.  When I’m being paid good money for a gig – I go to my “act” because it’s tried, tested and true – the jokes, generally, work.  My act has a story arc, alot of characters, re-occurring themes, etc. and it’s built to tell my story.  A good comic though won’t rely on that “act” for years and years and years and years and years and years, all the while, still charging TONS of money for that same act.  I’m not a comic that does that.  Though relatively young in the “standup game”, and having only done standup for the last three and a half years, the one thing that I understand about comedy is that you HAVE TO BE RELEVANT in order to matter.

There are many comics out there that go to their hits at open mics because it’s the safe thing to do and it almost guarantees the laughs.  For me – I feel like I’ve cheated when I’ve done that.  NOW.  That is NOT to say we shouldn’t go to those jokes when we need them – but I think it’s important to ALWAYS write, try new, and to get better.  One way we get better is to work on our material on stage and therefore we can’t help but do our “act”.  I’m more talking about those that have an assload of material but still show up with the same old jokes every show.  It almost becomes robotic for that comic.  Soon the laughs stop.  When the laughs stop or aren’t there anymore – then what?  I started to feel like I was going through the motions a bit and that really drove me crazy – really crazy.  I stopped enjoying being onstage.  I hated it.

We, the comics, have a hard time with new material because it’s a bit of a head trip to think about completely bombing, getting no laughs, leaving a show with your head hanging in shame – all the while you just want to grab everyone in the room one by one and tell them about one time when you did really really well and everyone in the room that night really really loved your super funny take on the world.

The last 5 local shows I did here in Winnipeg I’ve bombed at.  Hard.  Bombed hard.  I told Duff, half joking and half serious, that if I bombed last night I’d quit doing comedy.  I don’t know if I would have actually quit for good, but, I was serious about hanging up the jokes for a while, taking some time off, and maybe coming back in a year.  I don’t think I’ve ever been that frustrated before.  Anyway, I didn’t bomb last night and I had alot of fun onstage.  I worked hard on the jokes I wrote, which for me, usually, means they aren’t funny if I have to try that hard, and the pay off of having people sit, listen and laugh is a real honour.  I appreciate the audience(s) so much and as a comic – you only want to be heard -  the laughter is a bonus.  Thanks for the laughs.

I won’t be taking time off.  I won’t be quitting any time soon.  I really had to kick my own ass to do time last night.  I did it and I didn’t bomb.  The last 6 shows the tally looks like this: BOMBING -5, NOT BOMBING – 1.  I’m working towards flipping those numbers around in time.  Thanks for reading.  Thanks for laughing.  Thanks for supporting local comedy.

Here’s the video from last night.

comedians standup comedy writing new comedy material