Dear all,

Please find below my latest comedy gig which I completed on a comedy bin Gig called Dr. Inks in Southwark. It was a good night with some great acts although less background noise would have been a bonus.

I still have a lot to learn as I have a few tells that give the punchlines away (i.e. pulling the mic away, looking down) but, I'm working on it and hopefully with time I'll overcome this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJQuaChuuOc

Any constructive feedback would be gratefully received!!

Kind regards,

Jason.

I liked the joke about smashing the computer screen to loot goods online.

Good work.

Hi Jack,

thanks for the comment, I'm slowly booking myself in for more and more gigs and am trying to get rid of the tells in my routine. I'm also writing more and more which is helping but, it's difficult knowing what to put in and what to leave out but, I guess that comes with experience??

Thanks,

Jason.

Don't change your set too much from gig to gig otherwise you're not giving the material a chance to shine, as a rough guide don't change more than 10% at a time.

Give each joke, or bit of material, at least 3 gigs, if it works in all 3 then stick it in the set, if it works at 2 put it in the "possibles" and if only 1 or 0 then think about re-writing it.

Try to record or film every performance then look/listen back and try to work out why some jokes work and others don't, did you choke on a vital word? Are you signalling the punchline in some way?

The more material you write the tighter your set should become, you'll start replacing bits which work infrequently with bits with a higher hit rate. You might find, for a while, that you are editing your set so much that it's actually getting shorter rather than longer, don't panic, this is a good sign, much better to have a killer 5 than a flabby 10, try not to add "filler" only "killer" material.

The only way to judge new material is in front of an audience, even the best writers and comics only have a 50/50 chance of working out what material is great and what is rubbish, the only reliable indicator is the audiences reaction, this is why you'll see people like Milton Jones, Lee Mack, etc doing tiny little gigs ahead of their tours, so that can road test new stuff.

Hi Tony,

Thanks for the advice, I'll keep the material the same for the mean time and give it a proper run out because like you said even though I have only done 2 gigs so far I have found that you get laughs/silences in varying places depending on the audience. I suppose where I'm trying to find my 'comedy voice' I have so many different ideas in my head but, given time I'll be able to road test it I'm sure?

I have quite a few gigs in the diary now so hopefully things will get easier in a couple of months time?? As a rough guide how many gigs would you suggest doing a week/month??

Thanks,

Jason.

Hi Jason,

I would suggest trying to do at least one or two gigs per week, that should give you plenty of stage time to gain experience and try out new material. Obviously if you can gig more then even better, although I would say that if you are gigging almost every night then you'll find that you won't have any time to write new stuff or have any downtime.

It took me about 5 years before I "found my voice", so keep at it and keep trying new stuff bit by bit, also don't forget that you don't have to be on stage to learn, what other comics and analyse what they do right and, especially, what they do wrong.