The product is weakened by the delivery
The thing that holds me back in stand-up; the stuff I write is funny of that I’m certain so at least on paper I can do the job but when it comes time to go from the theoretical to the practical it loses something. Like a pizza fresh out of the oven vs. the one that Habib drops off, yeah you’ll eat it but it’s not as good as it was because it sat in the back seat of his station wagon for 45 minutes while he yelled at his girlfriend over his headset.
I’ve always been aware of the problem as well as others, in fact I’ve had everyone from full-time pros and managers to fellow amateurs and hobos on the street tell me so. Good writing hamstrung by ham fisted delivery is the hurdle I need to clear if I’m ever going to get my own show on the APTN or be allowed to re-write and perform a beer commercial for the Senators.
So how to do it? I’m not really sure, I feel a bit like Homer Simpson in the episode where the FBI tries to give him a new identity; it just won’t take. Every time I try to be “me” on stage, that is a natural delivery, it just doesn’t work, “me” simply refuses to show. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve said something really funny offstage and thought “Why the hell can’t I sound like that when I’m on?”
And it’s not even what people hear, there’s a mental space, a groove that I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling, when you know you are being 100% funny, that every cell in your body is harmoniously hysterical and every word, tone and mannerism the exact right one to elicit spontaneous and genuine laughter from anything human within a sixteen foot radius. It’s lightening in a bottle and the real comedians are the ones who can uncork it anytime and anyplace they feel like it.
Can that be learned or even grown into while still looking and feeling like a natural talent?
I think so because I’ve seen it happen, most notable with Tracy McDonald. I remember the first time I noticed; she was telling the same jokes she always told (I’m so fat! I’m so from the East Coast! I’m so drunk!) but the delivery suddenly was different, it was natural, the nuance was “right” for her as a person and a comedian and the material, somehow. It’s something I’ve thought about but still can’t quantify. It was like watching a TV for years and then someone adjusting the sharpness a percent or two and then suddenly the image was clean and sharp and we realize what we had taken as good was really an inferior representation. That slight knob twist made a world of difference, so how to twist my own knob? (ba-dah-bum! Huh? Huh? See what I did there?)
My other issue is that my material has an underlying inconsistency of self-deprecation followed by vicious attack on someone or something else. That’s usually on purpose, my theory being the audience will let me get away with being mean to others because I’m also mean to myself but maybe that’s the wrong way to go; that the audience wants consistency rather than balance.
Well I’m on at least one stage every week for pretty much the rest of the summer so I’ll have lots of time to chew it over and experiment but I think what I really need is a button of peyote, a desert and Jim Morrison to vision quest me to my stand-up Nirvana. Sadly this is Ottawa so all I can hope for is a joint of hydroponics, Lebreton Flats and Brad Lyons.
