I’m currently in the process of making a new solo character comedy show. It’s the first live show I’ve made for over four years and I’m very excited about the whole thing. It feels like I’m discovering the creative process for the first time and I’m relishing the puzzle of finding (and failing to find!) the funny.
New Material nights
For the past few months I’ve been trying out untested characters at various gigs and new material nights. New material nights are an opportunity to try out brand new comedy material to discover what has the potential to fly and what does not. One of my characters has already been relegated to the great bin of ideas in the sky because (despite managing to get a few laughs here and there) ultimately I just didn’t feel funny being him. Sometimes all you need to do is put something in front of other human beings and you just know.
A necessary component of new material nights is failure. The problem is, “new material” to one person, means a set they’ve only said out loud in front of their baby/cat/mirror, whereas to another it means a polished 5 minute bit they’ve been doing for over 6 months. Those is the newer camp will fail harder and those in the polished camp will probably do well and earn the respect of the audience as well as their peers. Being in Camp New I find this challenging, especially if something dies on its arse. Shouting out “Thanks for the gig it was very USEFUL!” feels - well - useful, highlighting as it does a self-awareness that it didn’t go well, and that it will be better once I’ve developed the material….but ultimately no one really cares (!) so I need to stop doing that.
Artists must be allowed to fail, or as art critic David Sylvester says in this brilliant extract from an interview “Artists…must be allowed to have dud experiments.” But this is easier said than done. The problem is, it’s very hard to be in a situation where you are genuinely allowed to be shit. It is often claimed that failure is welcome, but the reality can be different. Some nights are set up in such a way that you are encouraged to do anything you want; clowning, loose moments, experimentation. These are nights to be treasured. Interestingly though in this context an experimental, pleasingly strange act may thrive (even if it’s not new material) whereas a brand new, scripted set which has never seen the light of day may struggle. The latter is new material but its newness may fail in a more obvious way. For instance, I tried out a tightly scripted set at one such night lately and it was met with indifference, whereas at a character/sketch night the following week it went down well. It was a useful reminder that every audience and every gig is utterly different. Of course in addition to this my performance was better the second time around, having done it once, because I was less beholden to the script and was able to mess around more.
Noble Failure
I had the absolute treat of performing at ACMS the other night. This is a gig in which failure (and success) is encouraged and celebrated. The hosts declare every act “A failure!” to which the audience responds “A noble failure!” It is a wonderful, creative, gorgeous night in which anything goes. The only downside is that the audience is so comedy savvy and generous that it’s hard not to be lulled into a false sense of security, and to believe that every gig will be met with such a warm response. I wish!
Pre new material night new material event (how many times can I say new material?)
Not long ago I gathered together a group of comedy performers who all had bits they wanted to try out and we met in the daytime with no audience other than each other. It was a really productive and wholesome experience. Just saying things out loud to other human beings really brings into focus whether the things you are saying are any good or not. I had two characters to try, after which I had a vague outline of a third character which (on doing out loud) I realised might not be worth pursuing. But now I know! Another one bites the dust-bin-of-ideas-in-the-sky.
Improv ethos for new material
Thinking like an improviser is helpful when developing new work. In improvisation we are taught to “hold on tightly, let go lightly”*, in other words to commit wholeheartedly to an idea but be ready to drop it at a moment’s notice if it doesn’t serve the scene. Or to put it another way “drop your shit” as my first improv teacher David Shore taught me to do. I credit improv for teaching me not to be too precious or attached to my scripted ideas. There’s always another idea waiting in the wings after all, if the first one doesn’t work. My writing partner Lucy Trodd and I are very on board with this (both coming from an improv background) and when writing scripts together we champion the ideas we love but are equally happy to cut entire chunks of script if need be. A decisive cut can feel quite liberating! Like a much-needed haircut a good edit leaves you feeling lighter afterwards.
*this amazing phrase apparently comes from an expression used by Japanese judo sensei in times gone by. It was about the yin and yang balance between commitment and the the ability to adapt and make a change.
Pushing through
To my mind, character comedians have a particular challenge when working up new material. When a standup attempts new material they have a few tried and tested jokes to fall back on if needed, to maintain the audience’s good will, but when a character comedian tries out a new character they’ll have nothing to fall back on, making the whole thing feel more risky and potentially embarrassing.
Pushing through this embarrassment is necessary though. This is what I’m telling myself anyway. Accepting that comedians/audience members at the gig might not know you’ll improve but that this really doesn’t matter is important. As I’ve got older I’ve cared a little less about what other people think and have managed to cling to the overriding objective, which is to make the material better in the long run. It’s a good feeling to be less attached. I am now trying to concentrate on the puzzle of analysing an audience response. Did certain moments fall flat because they were half baked (or not at all baked) ideas, or was it because there were only 5 people in the audience? Is the overall idea boring, or was the audience mostly made up of acts who were not responding because they were thinking about their own material? Was I too stuck to the script? Was I too loose with the script? Is the setup unclear? Does it need more laugh-lines? Was it hard to follow five sexy clowns spitting regurgitated food into audience members hands? Yes. Yes it was. Will that always be the case? Probably not. So I’ll put my soft food away for now and keep on failing.