Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Tonight I was the first comedian in recent memory to…
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2002 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
Tonight I was the first comedian in recent memory to perform stand-up at the Bear's Lair Monday Open Mic Night. I did rather well with a "Best Of" set. I even did an encore, which also did well. Adam, Zed, Leonard, Josh, and Karen watched and applauded. Adam went so far as to play music to warm up the crowd before my set! Well, and to express himself artistically.
I was told that people actually stopped talking and came closer to my part of the bar while I performed. Wow!
Recipe for a good stand-up performance:
- Good material that you've practiced and honed and that historically gets a good response.
- A slightly tipsy audience.
- Be relaxed. I do better when I'm not worried about time constraints.
- Be prepared (as per the first tip), but know your material well enough to let yourself play with it and be spontaneous. Some of my best tweaks and bits have arisen this way.
