Trying Stand-up for the First Time
So I tried stand-up comedy for the first time and almost took a shit on stage. Sorry to be so graphic, but we’re talking comedy here, so we’re talking truth. And that’s what almost happened.
About a year ago, my friend Melanie and I took a stand-up comedy class together. I’d been skirting around the idea of doing stand-up since college, but I never had the time or gumption to pursue it amidst being a full time actor. So a few months ago, when Mel invited me to take another class, I decided to go for it. My baby only needs the boobies once a day now (he’s 14), so I figured Mama can take a break and practice being a young CK Louie…a female Pryor. What? You don’t have normal thoughts like these when pursuing a new hobby?
Just in case, my baby is not 14.
So the class consisted of four group sessions, three 45 minute privates and a final show. Simple, right?
We wrote ten minutes, practiced on stage for the class and privately with Jodi Miller, the teacher, who is quite gifted with punching up jokes and helping you find the funny in your material. I realize now, she made this process seem deceptively easy. I even walked off stage after one class and thought, why does everyone say doing stand-up is so terrifying? I mean, why did I wait this long?
By the night of my graduation show, I had done an emotional 180. My husband was driving me to the theatre while I rode in the passenger seat, head stretched out backwards over the head rest, waiting for a guillotine to put me out of my misery, panting and literally holding my stomach in my hands. My breath was stuck in my throat and my voice was doing “the thing.” Dead voice. I had dead voice: a sign I was disconnected and experiencing performance anxiety.
My husband comments, Wow I’ve never seen you like this.
Yeah! I know, right? I laugh a hyena pitched laugh. But I’m not really laughing, I’m completely baffled. Two thirds of my life, I’ve spent it performing professionally, often under high stakes circumstances. Nothing had quite prepared me for the enormous amount of adrenaline wracking my entire body. What was happening to me? What was happening to my body? It was like someone had slipped me a drug. Bill Cosby, is that you?! I know, not funny. Scary.
I know. My brain knows, I’m not going to die on stage, but I felt like…I could. I could die.
Where had my confidence gone?
Everything had been fine until the day prior, I’d done my “dress rehearsal” set and when I’d forgotten a couple jokes on stage, because I hadn’t fully memorized them, I stood in front of an audience of TWO, TWO PEOPLE, staring blankly at them as I went brain dead. The whites of my eyes rolled into my head as I searched for the few words I needed to complete my jokes. I was like a horror bobble head. I even vainly attempted to improvise my way out of the verbal black hole, but evidently no amount of living, formal education, training and/or conversations with other human beings in the past several decades could bail me out of two jokes that weren’t fully memorized. I mumbled something like, Gotta fix that and then numbly walked off stage.
Something died in that moment. My innocence? I was never quite right after that. Dread set in. What had I voluntarily done to myself? Stand-up comedy? What was I thinking? And why God? Why had I invited so many people to my graduation? I mean, I emailed like four or five people! How could I be so egotistical?
I walked from the car to the green room where everyone had gathered. Fellow classmates pointed at me, Oh wow, you’re nervous. Yeah, that’s right! I shouted out. I admitted it. I was trying to Sheryl Sandberg the moment and LEAN THE BLEEP into it. I slipped into the lobby. Jesus Christ. It’s a packed house. I performed a Broadway show all over the world, my friends are like, can’t make it, but ten minutes of comedy, and they’re asking, Do you have a pillow I can sit on?! (Okay, maybe I invited more than five people.)
I turned to my buffet table of performance skills acquired over the years and searched my arsenal of techniques, coping strategies and the like. I started talking to my cells, telling them to expand, I was releasing my muscles, taking in more breath, I even started lucid dreaming in the hallway outside the stinky bathroom. I told myself, what if I pretend to be a comedian on stage? I searched for an objective. My purpose on stage is to — entertain? Why don’t you just say to exist? NOT HELPFUL. What do I want from the audience? I want them to — laugh? Trying to be funny-kiss of death! I’m telling stories! I’m story-telling! This is not a story telling show. This is stand-up! Why do I want to be on-stage tonight? You have no reason. You took a stupid f — -class!
Running my set only made it worse. Seeing other people nervous made me feel slightly better. Seeing people trip up on stage was a little comforting. Like we were all comrades. Seeing people knock it out of the park, made me feel worse. I was as unsteady as my Taiwanese Mom after 40 rounds of mah-jong. Coming home from days of lack of sleep from gambling, she’s always slightly delirious and muttering things like, “I was robbed in a parking lot. They took everything but my drivers license. Don’t call the police.”
Yet no matter what happened, I could not slow the racing of my heart, which had relocated itself directly in my gut. They say that’s where the original nervous system used to exist, well, no Shit! And I literally mean that. My bowels had begun to cramp up from all of the anxiety and I was trying to physically decide if I should take a poop so I could truly “let go.”
In fact, one of the comics on stage was doing a (very funny) set about how she had to poop on stage once, which only made me more terrified. Was it humanly possible that a performer could actually loose all faculty and poop their pants in front of a live audience? I mean, could this be a thing? And I just didn’t know about it? I know I’ve lived a comparatively sheltered first world existence, but was I next in line to have a live, unwanted public bowel movement?
I eyed that stinky toilet that looked a little like mini-Afghanistan. (Not that I’ve ever been there. I’ve only seen it in movies.) Inside was relief, but it was only a single toilet. What if people started lining up? Knocking. Jiggling the door knob. Coughing even. Trying to send me some kind of signal. Did I even have enough time to do a flush check, sanitize the seat, lay toilet paper down in an oval without it sinking into the toilet water, watch other comics perform, so I could do a call back if I needed and also relax enough “to go,” all before it was my turn? The pressure was staggering.
I decided to mentally trouble shoot. Maybe I could get to the heart of the problem and “embrace it.”
What had me all cramped up was whether I should say my set word for word or attempt to improvise it? Believe it or not, this one question had me paralyzed in fear. Improvising the other day had sent me into mental cardiac arrest, so I was traumatized by the failure of that, but saying the set word for word felt too disconnected from the audience for this style of performing. I wasn’t an actor with a memorized monologue, I was a stand-up comedian. What do the big guns do? CK? Richard? No time to research (or ask their closest living relative). I was in a conundrum and didn’t know which path to take.
I knew the answer had to do with integration, doing both. But I’m a stand-up virgin! Turns out embracing my lack of trust didn’t really do too much for me. My body continued to hurtle towards territory unknown.
I was about to go on. The show host asked me if there was anything interesting she could say about me when she introduced me. I looked up from my dazed state and said, No. I don’t think so.
I heard my name. I went on stage and did my set.
What got me through those next eight minutes ended up being something that has taken me years to hone as an actor, I simply looked at people and tried to really talk to them almost one on one, which honestly, is a feat, when another part of your body is carrying just enough tension in your sphincter to hold in your poop. I was very relieved? I got off stage in one piece.
I thought, now I know why stand-up is called stand-up. If by the end of the night, you’re not lying in a pool of nervous vomit or your own *ass monkeys after you perform, then, and only then can you say, you have done stand-up. You made it, girl! You’re standing up.
When I walked off that stage, my body was tremoring. This is actually natural to humans and animals as it is a fight/flight response to trauma. Jodi asked me how I felt and I answered, shaky. And my brain added, I need not ever do that again. I didn’t stop shaking for several hours, but here’s the thing, for the moments leading up to my show and even after, even though I thought I was going to die from the chaos of the unknown, I woke up the next day very much alive. And strong. I had lived.
And what I learned about stand-up is that while it’s an exceptionally raw trial by fire lesson in self trust. It’s also deeply human, vulnerable and seen.
And that is sometimes very funny.
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Please note this is an expired invitation! Nothing about this invite stands.
*As of April 1st, 2016, my show at the C Word will be moved to another date. No April 7th Show as previously written.
Check out MichelleKrusiec.com for additional performances and updates. And…my very own co-hosted monthly comedy show. Thanks for reading!
*I used the poop thesaurus for ass monkeys.
