My Experience at a Comedy Open Mic
Recently a friend of mine who does standup comedy sent me an invite to try standup comedy at a corporate comedy competition. I was confused at why he thought I would be interested in doing standup comedy. My relation with standup comedy is analogous to the relation of a common man with base jumping. For the ignorant, base jumping is…
…Yes, that’s right. Love to see it, sometimes wish to do it but would never dare to actually do it.
So as it happened, I thought “what the heck, let’s give it a try”. Also I thought it might do something for my so called resolution of “trying new things”. I asked my friend to take me to an Open Mic with him and show me around; “Get a glimpse of the daredevils”. For the same ignorant from before,
Open Mic: It’s a live show where comedians (novice/experts) come out to try new jokes and refine old ones.
We took a cab to the place and the entire way my friend was thinking of new jokes, one liners and trying them on me. He kept jotting ideas on his fairly ancient phone with a fairly crude note taking app. I peeked and saw some notes about violent drivers, some necessary “sex joke” and something about a kid. I mean his mind was churning away energy and producing jokes. It was amazing.
However he was not the only one; we reached the place and I saw the same churn there. A woman was continuously throwing away jokes at a guy sitting in front of him (or that’s what I assumed). There was another guy who was sitting in a corner writing something on a tissue paper which I am sure were ideas for his jokes or maybe the grocery list; I’ll never know. There was a manic energy floating around and could be tasted in the air.
I saw comics get up on stage and try to make the audience (majorly comprising of other comics) laugh. Some were good, some made me cry and some were so bad that I started feeling bad for them but surprisingly these guys were unfazed by the deafening silent response to their jokes. They were having fun. Later I saw these comics asking other comics for feedback on their jokes, asking for advice and critiquing other comics.
I learned that standup comedy is a well thought, fully strategized art form which takes years to master and the resolute finds his laugh eventually. I don’t know if I’ll ever give standup comedy a try but it sure was uplifting to see some extremely passionate people trying to get a chuckle out of their audience.
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