Gig Report - Wednesday Feb 17th 2010

This Wednesday was my final night hosting 5 Minutes of Fame at Rudy's Revenge, and what a night to go out on!

The room was absolutely packed, and the crowd was one of the friendliest I've ever performed to. This was a big help in getting me to relax, and adopt a more conversational style, which worked well for compering the night, and there are elements of this I could inject into my normal sets. However, watching back the video I took, I had a tendency to ramble a little when I hadn't carefully planned what I was going to say. This would screw up the timing of some of my odd little thoughts over the evening. I've been focusing on brevity in my writing a lot, and maybe I need to keep this in mind more when I'm improvising as well.

I'd put together a little "prepared" audience interaction piece, which wasn't brilliant, but was a good start. Definitely something I need to continue with. I had a brief gag about where someone lived (checking they hadn't stolen my wallet) which seemed to work well - although I might need to come up with different gags for different sorts of places. The rest was a little off, but with a bit of time writing, I can probably get a decent minute of banter together. Possibly something to pad out a shorter set. And after a few weeks, it looks like the phrasebook routine will end up being a lot shorter than I originally thought.

Watching my video, I noticed that I still have a habit of glancing down when I'm thinking, and adopting a defensive stance. I really need to cut that out, and be out there the whole time, even when I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing.

All said, it was a great night, and everyone had a good time, acts and audience alike. The quality was really high over the night, including a few folks I hadn't seen before, and look forward to seeing again at other nights. Hats also have to go off to Denis Krasnov for actually telling the Aristocrats in public. Been waiting a year for someone to do that!