Gig #11 14/11/11, Comedy Virgins, Cavandish Arms, Stockwell
This was my second time performing at Comedy Virgins. It’s a fantastic night to be a part of. Each performer has to bring an audience member, resulting in a large friendly audience.
This time I challenged myself to do some new material. I took the best jokes from my usual set and squashed them in to two minutes. Then the last three minutes was all new stuff (partly adapted from the speech I did for the Toastmasters Humorous speaking contest).
I was very happy with the reaction. Being new material it was rough around the edges, but there were plenty of laughs, and plenty of room for extending parts of the set and enhancing the performance. Towards the end of the set I act out a conversation between a mother and son. I think I could really throw myself into the performance and really make use of voice, expression, changing positions on the stage for different characters, and pretending to make eye contact during the conversation.
My friend Tom also suggested I could have milked the laughs more by pausing for longer.
I felt really good afterwards. Not because the audience laughed, but because I had challenged myself to do something different. I think I’ve been doing exactly the same set too much, just going into auto pilot and avoiding risk. It’s nice to have tried something new.
