Holy crap everybody!!! Today, I got paid for writing funny stuff for the first time in my life! Um, thrilling! Sure, nothing I wrote has actually been put up anywhere yet, but… you know what guys & gals… it’ll all come in due time. What matters is that I wrote something funny and someone thought I should get paid for it. Isn’t that exactly why I decided to come to Humber?
Well folks. I’ve accomplished that, now I can quit and go back to working for the government and tell people it really wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I’ll settle down, find a husband and have babies and tell them about the days when I used to be a paid comedian in Toronto.
Today is the first of our Archival Show rehearsals, in which we will be taking already-existing sketches, written by people much more funny than ourselves, rehearse the shit out of them, then perform them for the public in February.
I’m excited. Hopefully I will be cast in a role in which a woman is funny.
Clown College this week ended as I theatrically punched a KFC Double Down into a collegue’s face. Apart from that, it has been rather a profound week in which I have taken in three of the key elements I need to remind myself of daily, in order to avoid a downspiraling pit of negativity and self-loathing. The first is the importance of being present in the moment, on stage as well as in daily life. This is something I’ve struggled with for some time, without really having known it until my anxiety reached the point of near-unconsciousness every time I rode the bus last year.
The next, is breathing. It seems funny that somewhere along life’s path, some of us have to re-learn how to breathe, the most basic of human necessities. Stress can do some pretty crazy stuff to the body and performance anxiety can often be pretty damn stressful, especially if you’re not fully-prepared for your performance or you’re not standing behind it 100% of the way. Following my mediocre set at Yuk Yuk’s this week, I got one of the worst headaches I’ve ever had! It can’t be because I’m not used to performing because in one way or another, be it dance, public speaking, barking order or guiding tours, I’ve been performing for the public pretty well all my life. I guess the stakes are a bit higher now and I occasionally need to remind my lungs and brain of that, lest I die.
Finally, I’m going to need to continually reinforce to myself that I don’t give a shit what anybody but the audience thinks about my performances, especially in development/preparation mode even though everyone’s always got something to contribute. I just need to go for it and stop being such a chicken shit.
Blah, these publicly-posted self-musings make me feel like a pretentious, narcissistic drama-queen, which can only mean one thing:
As I sit here contemplating my poverty, I’m trying hard to ignore the mountain of debt I am accumulating while also attempting, with some difficulty to get back into the “it’ll all work itself out in the end, you’re here for the experience” mindset. First semester started off all fun and games but as we move forward, the former public-servant in me is asking for more bacon.
*Not caused by heroin
I’m distracted as I look at my hand and over to my shoulder, where many tiny bruises have surfaced following a Physical Comedy class in which we learned some basic stage fighting techniques. These bruises are similar to those I would sustain on my arms when I played on the volleyball team back in high school. My mom always used to worry people would think I was a hardcore junkie. So, the attached photos are further proof to my parents that I’m enjoying what I’m doing here at Humber. As far back as I could remember I would sustain injuries doing things I loved. It’s good to be back in the pain game! Ha!
Anyway… about stage fighting…How can I put this so you’ll fully understand what I thought about this class. It… pretty much rocked everybody’s socks off, including my own. I don’t know if I’ll ever get my socks back, in fact. I mean, apart from the bruising, how could anyone not find satisfaction in pretending to hit someone and watching that person pretend it actually hurts? It’s like, all the fun of fighting, including a response to your own actions, but nobody actually gets hurt and you don’t get sent to prison! I think my favourite moves of the day were the kicks (a la Lara Croft), the faux-kick to the nuts (comedy gold!) and the fake-choking people, because I felt that was the most true-to-life feel to it. Anyway, so if anyone ever wants to have a fake fight with me, let me know, because I enjoyed it immensely.
Otherwise, I’ve completed my first week back at the grind. Already we’ve missed one Acting class and I can already tell I will be having flashbacks to public humiliation in my Sketch troupe. It was great to be back to Stand-Up, where we are looking at the business-end of the biz and, as previously mentioned, the Physical comedy class was a riot!
All in all, it’s been a not-so-promising, and then promising, and then not-so-promising and then promising start to Term 2.
But we all need a good balance in life, right?
Ooooh! Some great news! The first years (ie my classmates and I) will be putting on a charity Archival Show in mid-February. We’ll be performing some classic SNL/Kids in the Hall/Other awesome sketch troupes’ work and collecting muns for a local community centre. And what’s great about it, is that anyone can come. So if you’re reading this, and you’re looking for a way to laugh and feel good about yourself, stay tuned for the specifics!
And not that this has to do with Comedy or anything, but I just finished Day 5 sans Coke. I’m not entirely sure I can attribute my constant headaches to the lack of caffeine and sugar, but I’m sure it’s a contributing factor. Also, I’m giving you all a fair warning: Putting a can or a bottle of Coke near my eyesight in the next few weeks or so, will be a surefire way to get yourself stabbed…
After the most time off I’ve had, probably since high school, I’m feeling excited about returning to Toronto tomorrow. I’m ready to get back in the game! Not that I necessarily left the game while away from the big city, considering the singular performance I had last Monday in Ottawa (which went AWESOME, by the way!) The Open Mic show at Absolute in Ottawa was a great way to see how my stuff works with a crowd of people who aren’t predominantly comics themselves. The response on Monday was quite positive. Were some of my friends there in the audience? Yes. Did I stack the audience? Only a BIT. Not as much as some, certainly! Am I glad some of my best pals from Ottawa, whom I never get to see anymore since having moved away, attended the performance? You betcha!
I was talking about how fun it would be to organize a small tour of performers around cities the size of Ottawa; university towns and such. I wonder how that would turn out. I should look into that for the Spring.
Going back to school, I have to address somewhat of a shift in dynamic I intend to experience next semester. Recently, my brother and sister-in-law and their two kids have moved back to Canada after having lived in Scotland for quite some time. Both parents have managed to score sweet jobs in TO and I will be living in Mississauga. It’s been a while since I’ve lived anywhere near my family, so I’m curious to see, not so much from a comedy perspective, but just in general, how life will play out having people nearby who will let me do my laundry at their place for free! 🙂
I’m so excited for semester 2. I’m going in with a fresh perspective. I feel like I’ve made an effort in the first semester to get out there and perform and I’m looking at applying myself and working harder (and sleeping less as a result) this time around. Especially when it comes to writing jokes and sketches.
Who’s got two thumbs and is stoked about tonight’s Open Mic set at Absolute Comedy in Ottawa? *This gal!* (Replace asterisks with thumbs for this to make sense visually.)
It’ll be my first time playing at a real comedy club that isn’t Yuk’s and my first time performing in Ottawa. This is exciting stuff people!
If anyone’s interested in attending, here’s the info:
Brie Watson 