IT WAS week three of Theo’s Comedy Skool on Monday for the stand-up hopefuls, including Standard editor Tristan Harris.
There are now less than three weeks to go until the live show at Bromsgrove’s Artrix Studio. Here’s how Tristan is finding it.
AFTER the introduction session we have spent the last fortnight frantically writing away to come up with our own original sets for the show.
Monday’s theme centred on ‘is what is funny on the page going to be funny on the stage?’
Theo told the group from now on we would be hearing less from him about the workings of comedy and techniques and more from us and what we had to offer.
One group member had gone to Birmingham’s Central Library for a ‘change of scenery’ with his writing and the ‘people watching’ element had made the scribbling easier.
I had also had the most productive week since the course began.
After writing as soon as I had got home from the previous session last Monday, I had also managed to map out the whole set in bullet points. I even freed up some time on Saturday night to rehearse and video my performance, watching it back and analysing what worked and what could be improved.
When I arrived at the session on Monday I was a lot more confident than I had been in previous weeks because of the preparation I had done.
I was anxious to see if I could perform my musings in front of the others as confidently as I had done at home and was interested to finf out what my fellow members thought of the act.
I went through half of what I had written and it was a couple of minutes over the time I had for the whole set.
I felt it went well and received some positive feedback from the other members of the group.
Potentially, though, I have another three or four minutes worth of material I want to squeeze in so some serious editing is going to be needed between now and next week.
As with most writing and other creations, you have to be ruthless and just keep in the best bits of the best scenarios. In this job I have found it is a lot easier to edit and cut copy written by others than work you have written yourself.
The most encouraging thing was that I now have more material than I need so I now just have to choose what I think will be the most effective on the night, although as comedy is so subjective, that is not going to be the easiest of tasks.
Other members of the group performed their pieces and feedback was given to everyone, both about their whole acts and individual elements within them we liked and others we felt could be improved.
With the show so close it is important for us to choose what is going in the final script as the sooner that is done, the more time there will be to polish what we are going to perform on the night.
Ideally, Theo said, from next week people should not be having paper scripts.
With that in mind we discussed the best ways of remembering what we were going to perform and in what order. There is nothing worse than performing some material and then realising you have left out a key, potentially funny, part.
One suggestion was to record yourself performing the set and listening to it as often as you could. After all repetition to remember works well with music – how many times have you learnt a song subconsciously simply by hearing it over and over again on the radio or in the car. The one drawback with comedy is if you hear it over and over again it will naturally become less funny and even potentially boring so there will be the challenge of keeping the stories and jokes fresh and believing it is still funny.
Other mooted techniques for remembering our acts include having a simple ‘narrative thread’ through it which is easy to follow and ‘mnemonics’ – using acronyms of letters which each remind you of the next part of the show.
The Comedy Skool show takes place in the Artrix Studio at 7.30pm on October 28. Tickets are £8 (£7 for over 60s and students). They are available at www,artrix.co.uk or by calling 01527 577330.
Theo has a new stand-up Comedy Skool starting at The Core Theatre, Solihull, starting on Thursday, October 19. There are six sessions before the students take to the stage for the show at The Core Theatre on November 17. Visit www.thecoretheatresolihull.co.uk or email [email protected] for more information.
