Gig 23 - 27 Club, Cassidys, 25/01/10

Gig 20, Underground Comedy Club, Thomas Reads, 14/01/10

Gig 18, Boards.ie Comedy Gig - Cassidys, Westmooreland St, 05/12/09

Some lovely guys from mixtape.ie filmed this gig properly with HD cameras and such. Should hopefully get the footage from them at some stage.

Pre Show

I had a good feeling about this gig going in. Geek crowds I suspected, would be smart, self deprecating, and (according to world beating sex columnist Dan Savage at least) kinky. The perfect audience for my creepy routine. The gig was a lucky snatch (ok ok), as I’d been fortunate enough to stumble across a thread on boards.ie discussing it, and offer my services. So when the first promoter pulled out, and Drogheda’s Graham Duffy stepped in, he was able to offer me the gig. Just another demonstration that in comedy, it never hurts to ask. Cassidys on Westmooreland St, where Shane Browne runs the excellent ‘27 Club’, is a strange room. Wide rather than long is a good thing in Comedy, as more of the audience can see and hear the acts, and there’s a normative pressure against talking to their table rather than listening to the set. However Cassidy’s is bisected by two mirrored walls, so that the audience is divided into three Chunks, and in some seats the view is better through a mirror. One result of this was that I spent this gig glancing left and right like a nonce in a infant care unit.

Watching the Video…

Apologies for the cruddy video quality- there was actually a video crew at this show from Mixtape.ie, so perhaps a good quality recording of this show will emerge at some stage! MC Rory O’Hanlon (a comedian with probably the most comfortable stage presences in the country) messed up my name, made me sit down and reintroduced me, which messed with my intro a little. Right before I got up Graham told me 10 minutes rather than 7, which of course I didn’t hear, meaning I did a shorter set than I needed to with such a great crowd.

I’ve discovered at this point that anything you can do to reference the night you’re performing, this venue and this crowd in particular goes down a storm: Caveat, that’s assuming it’s a joke- merely saying ‘Tim talked about this earlier’ doesn’t get a reaction. I’d written a brief derogatory intro with lots of geek references, but I threw in a ‘callback’ to an earlier performance by Hamlet Sweeney (an up and comer with great delivery).

Right away I can see how distracting all that looking left and right was. Must remember to focus on one portion of the audience. On the plus side I’ve reduced my wandering about the stage and general twitchiness to a minimum. I’ve also gotten better at slowing down and waiting for the laugh. This is so important. When I first started I’d watch comedians with awful material get up and get laughs that I couldn’t explain. So much of this is due to simply waiting for the audience to respond, guiding them (and occasionally cajoling them), and giving them permission to find you funny.

Really happy with how I adapted my material to the audiences reception. It’s a small thing but saying ‘Never since have a found a lady under-confident and psychologically screwed up enough to lick my arsehole’ is so much better than ‘…kind enough to indulge’.

This show was the first time I shortened the intro to the ‘older girls’ bit. Contrary to most comedians I think being verbose is fine- assuming the audience understand that you’re being intentionally pompous. But ‘bits’ do need a quick payoff. It’s alright (better in fact) for grotesque descriptions to go on and on and on, as Richard Herring says “Past funny, to unfunny, and back to funny again”; but introductions should be slow but brief.

My intonation during some of this gig was great. I really inhabited that ‘character’ (Edgar Oliver by was of Francis Urquhart), with lines like ‘a yooooung girls vagina…’ Although I’ve done the ‘vagina impression’ much better. This is a bit that I really need to commit to. I need to become the cunt. The description afterwards was well done though, I feel I did the ‘older girls vagina’ gestures better than I have before. I still don’t understand the last line in that bit, “It’s not the teeth you need be afraid of, it’s the acid tongue.” It seems to work, so what the hell!

Tried a ropey new bit at the end, ‘Pooing old man’, which went down OK, but doesn’t work in practise nearly as well as I’d hoped. Still, glad I tried it.

Gig 17 - Laugh Out Loud, Anseo, Wexford St, 05/12/09

Pre Show:

We were in two minds whether to go ahead with this gig. Despite valient efforts from John & myself to whisk punters upstairs, Anseo was all but deserted. More power to Aidan Killian for managing to fill the place on Wednesdays. Playing to a tiny audience (say less than 15-20 folks), is never fun. Social facilitation is the great enabler of laughter. We laugh in part because others around us are laughing. Tiny audience are both too self conscious to chortle, and too difficult to impress.

Watching the video…

I opened well, accent in check, not to quick, strong tone. That laugh you can hear came from my friend Niamh, the kindest member of an audience of about seven.

Speeded up too quickly around the line “that vision of grandmamas falsies’, and started jittering about a little because I wasn’t getting the reaction I was used to. It’s not really visible in the video (and perhaps it wasn’t for all the audience), but during the pauses for laughter I played around with exaggerated facial expressions, which felt like it worked quite well.

Really happy with how the ‘vagina impression’ bit worked this time. I think the trick is to dive right into it before the audience knows whats going on, and nail the ‘Ronny Drew’ accent- I should throw in some ‘magic moments’ \ ‘dirty old town’ references the next time I do this.

Completely lost the audience after this point… Understandable as it was comprised of the comedians, four stone cold guys to my right, and my doubtless horrified female friends. Need more gender neutral material in any case.

Overall, not a terrible gig at all, considering the audience. Had a chance to meet Kieran Lawless, whose a great MC and a lovely guy. As always, I need to work on holding my focus through moments of audience silence, you can always bring them back with the right word at the right time. Audiences basically want you to be great, even if at times it feels like they’re screaming ‘impress me’. Q

Quick note to anyone planning on performing at Anseo… Don’t bring girls. The place is associated with sleazy ‘pick up artists’ who more than once have run their creepy ‘material’ on friends who’d come to support me. Not cool.

Gig 15 - Comedy Crunch, Sheebeen Chic, 22/11/09

Pre Show:

I’m not going to name him, but the MC that night was a disgrace. I’ve never scene twenty people walk out of a comedy club before, but I could hardly blame them. Being screamed at and abused from the stage by an MC desperate to run as much of his own material as possible, and seemingly unconceared with either promoting the acts, or actually being funny, would drive me out too. Midway through the evening I grabbed a wooden sign and raced out into the rain desperate to recruit a new audience. Chasing up and down the street outside the venue I managed to cajole a few reluctant punters into this (free) gig. But I could hardly blame the woman who walked by after unchaining her bicycle and told me point blank, ‘I was in there, but I left, you need to fire that fucking MC’.

A bad MC is one thing, getting an audience worked up before and after comedians of variable quality is no easy task. Dealing with tight fisted promoters, tardy acts and all the rest must be a headache. I’ve never done it, and I could hardly judge anyone else too harshly for screwing it up. However, using an MCing gig as an opportunity to run ALL of your own material (as though you were headlining), is unprofessional and screws over every other comedian performing. On this night everyone had to make do with 5-7 minutes, and the supposed headliner only got 15.

Watching the video…

Another chance to make use of my Drogheda gig to comedic effect. This worked really well, one of the strongest openings I’ve had. This is another example of how tailoring material to the room in even the tiniest way is enormously appreciated. My ‘kinky sex shit’ is still a little too long, if the audience don’t pick up on the very start of it, there’s a little too much of me having to explain the premise, need to sharpen this. Overall though my delivery has gotten much better, and I’ve mostly managed to stop myself zipping around the stage with nervous energy. Still need to pause a little longer for laughs, and build on them with exaggerated gestures and repitition. Speaking of gestures, my vagina impression went particularly well this time- I think because I was very comfortable on stage, jumped into it quickly but carries it out slowly and with committment, giving the audience a chance to understand the ludicrous idea of a filthy Dub gee. Messed up the ‘tuck away neatly’ bit at the end though, arg. That ‘even enjoy the fragrance’ line rarely works, need to drop it. This whole bit went fantastically well overall though.

Lost the audience a little at the start of the ‘sexual history’ bit, but I got them back by following their lead well after the mention of Fibber Magees. It’s all about interaction, or at least the illusion of interaction. Went too quickly through this whole bit, partly out of nervousness, but mostly because I was aware of how curtailed my set would have to be. You can hear the result of this in the audiences lack of response, despite the fact that I did the ‘lying vaginas’ section very well. I think this whole section needs ot be tightened up, and needs to come before the ‘young girls’ part, which is more of a climax. Anyway, enough excuses, the last section went as badly as the first had gone well… With muted audience response, and visible nervousness on my part. Bad standup, no cigar. Overall this was a tough audience, fairly unresponsive after being screamed at for an hour, but I think I did OK.

Gig 14 - Black & Blue Club, Drogheda, 20/11/09

The infamous Drogheda Gig.

Gig 13 - Underground Comedy Club, 19/11/09