last saturday i opened for paul ogata. i haven't had that much fun doing a set in a looooooong time. it only lasted for eight minutes but wow, the audience was great!
comedy seems like a roller coaster though and that week was definitely a good one. i was able to write a bunch of new stuff that all worked and it felt great. but then this week came and made me realize that comedy is extremely hard and sometimes you're not so lucky. that feeling came to me when i was trying out new stuff at open mic a couple of days ago. now i know open mics are completely different than a regular audience, but it always sucks when you don't get laughs. still trying to get used to that after a year of doing comedy. i guess it will take a while longer.
the thing that got me most about the open mic was this guy just staring at me from the third row. i'm used to it if there are people in the audience that aren't laughing, but this guy looked downright angry! i felt like my jokes were pissing him off! his face was stern and he was frowning. at the same time he had his leg folded on his chair with his arms wrapped around it. so that made him look even more uncomfortable. i wish i could tell him to relax.
this reminded me that audiences have no idea how much they actually contribute to making a quality show. if a show is good or bad i think a lot of that boils down to the audience. but they don't know that, and we can't tell them. so we have to do the best we can to make it a good one. tough job
