ADubhlaoich

This week was the graduating show of a ten-week comedy course ran by the Craic Den Comedy Club. Our teacher was the indomitable Aideen McQueen, with guest appearances from Eddie Mullarkey.

Sometime six or seven months ago I had a ticket to go see Dan LaMorte and Natalie Cuomo in the Laughter Lounge. I completely mangled the date and went to explore The Nightmare Realm the night I was meant to see them. It was embarassing to realise I'd wasted that ticket, but since I was already at the venue with an empty Friday night, I grabbed a ticket on the door and went in anyway.

Aideen happened to be performing that night, and was the only person to take the time to plug their social media. I don't follow people I don't have a personal connection to (This includes businesses), but I checked her profile and noticed a pin about a comedy course.

Humour's a big part of my life, so I figured, why the fuck not?

A foreword

I had a great time: don't take this as a review or outline of what to expect. I write notes for myself and relate new things I learn to things I already know - I think a bit abstract. I'm awful at remembering facts, so I try to focus on understanding concepts instead.

I used to do circus performance, and have spent a lot of time attending or working burlesque cabarets: between those, public speaking and doing almost everything you can in swing dancing besides competing or jamming, I have lots of observations.

Basics about jokes

A joke can be broken into two components: a set-up, and a punchline. A simple example of a standalone type of joke that exemplifies this is a "Yo mama" joke:

"Yo mama so fat... she lives across two postal districts."

This makes simple sense, and also resonates with insights I learned from Several short sentences about writing: every sentence has its own velocity. The cadence of the delivery is important. Unnecessary words can slow you down, as will complex language.

During class, we had to come up with our own discrete jokes. Here's mine, in the same format:

"Irish people are so repressed... they think confession is foreplay."

Aideen always asked us to add more colour to any idea we presented: enough to make a scenario presented more vivid, so the audience can fill in the contextual gaps with their own imagination.

This is completely commiserate with something I've noticed about documentation: sometimes, people want more detail. Nobody ever asks for more complicated words.

You're allowed to reuse a set-up, but it's not acceptable to reuse a punchline. It makes complete sense, but was still interesting to hear. During my years involved with the Street Performance World Championships (Later renamed City Spectacular), I got to watch some of the best street performers in the world do their sets repeatedly over the course of five days.

By the end of the five days, a lot of them had outright "taken" or remixed each other's jokes. Nobody took it personally, but the context is different. When running a circle show, you're likely the only one performing, and you have your home city. It doesn't matter if someone uses your joke if you live on a separate continent.

You're both just trying to hold attention long enough to extract money from an audience after 35 minutes of crowdwork, and five minutes of technical performance. It's completely different if you and someone with similar or copied material are sharing the same stages in the same city together.

Crowd concerns

We were warned very early in the course not to do crowdwork, because it's risky to try if you're inexperienced. I took the advice seriously, though I did find it disheartening. Whenever I have to "perform", I like to include people in whatever it is I'm presenting to them.

Part of what made street performance enjoyable to me and why I like giving talks now is that I can see people, and allow myself to be seen in turn. There's a vulnerability in that, but it means we can connect to each other more easily. I understand why someone might not want to do it if they were shitting bricks, but that ended up being a huge factor in the professional comedians I liked over the ones I didn't.

Throughout the course, I made an effort to go to at least one comedy show a week. Often it was the Craic Den itself, other times I'd just appear at one of the half dozen shows on every night.

I saw a few professional comedians run the same sets repeatedly: many were sensitive to how the audience reacted to a given joke. Sometimes they would cut a bit short because the crowd was already enraptured. Other times they would tease out more detail or incorporate information about audience members.

A handful of times (Particularly with new material), I saw comedians bomb a little, but that became part of enjoying the atmosphere as collective members in the same experience. The comedians I didn't like walked in, executed their sets with the precision of a tour guide who's been at it for far too long, and fucked off immediately afterwards.

Being predictable and unshakeable can make you reliable to an extent, but the examples I saw erred on the side of nervous and scared of deviation, instead of confident and controlled.

Persona and presentation

Outside of jokes themselves, we were given guidance on how to sell a joke using act-outs. Lee Evans was given as a foremost example of a "kinetic" performer. Some others in the class took this advice to heart, but I just didn't feel it for myself.

I do a lot of dancing, and I've put a lot of time into prop manipulation as part of circus, as well as a bit of mime. If I'm using my voice for a message, I want to keep that coherent as the primary source of humour. We were asked to figure out a few adjectives for a stage persona.

I think the three I chose were "tired, unfettered and optimistic". I wasn't even choosing words for the stage: they're just what I think of myself.

Whenever we're in front of others, whether we choose to care or not, how we carry ourselves and are perceived will affect how people react towards us. One set of random ideas I had for a bit involves the fact I spend more time around scantily clad women than most straight guys due to my involvement with the burlesque community.

I have a few odd jokes here and there in my working memory I thought I could probably pull together into a set:

• "I used to work as a barista, and working a burlesque show is like counting cash at closing shift. I might incidentally touch something, but I feel nothing unless I'm bringing it home with me".
• "The problem with dating a performer is that you end up carrying burlesque herpes for weeks: glitter. Maybe also actual herpes."
• "I like my lovers like I like my plants. Succulent, neglected for weeks and sustained by spit".

They work okay on their own and could probably do with revision if used together in context, but I just couldn't see myself using them. I am not a naturally flirtatious person, and what has kept me grounded when performing has always been to stay earnest.

Although contrast can be used for humour, the gymnastics involved trying to present myself as someone I'm not felt like it would interfere with my ability to tell a joke naturally. Whenever I do public speaking, I tend to make crass assertions that would likely upset a HR professional.

I give myself the authority to do these things by being the expert on my own lived experience.

Cut for time

The Elements of Style is foundational to how I write. I could probably get "Omit needless words" tattooed to my body without regret. Since there was a dozen of us, we had to work around a constraint of three minutes.

When writing anything, the first pass of editing usually involves killing about a third of the words. When you're short on time and maximising the impact of the words you keep, you're in even less of a position to be precious in comedy than in writing.

This idea resonated the most with me of anything else, since it touches so much of what I do as a technical writer. It's why I genuinely enjoy updating my C.V and helping others with theirs.

How complete a story can you tell in as few words as possible?

What details add colour?

Does the "audience" come away with an accurate idea of who you are?

If I were to continue with comedy, I would do it just to keep challenging myself around how much I could pack into five minutes of time. An element of that timing is simply silence.

Give yourself time to breathe, whenever and however you tell stories.

I will continue to explore noise.