Recently I did my first half hour of a work in progress (AKA a collection of new characters cobbled together) and was pretty anxious about it. “I’m pretty anxious about it” I mentioned to a friend as we were getting into our costumes for a corporate Showstopper show. “Why? You’ve done it before”, the friend said hooking my mic pack onto my bra strap.“No I haven’t, not this material”, “Well no not this material but you’ve done this process before, you’ve done solos shows before”, she said as I fed the wire of her mic down the back of her top. “I suppose so” I replied, and off we went to improvise a musical for business leaders about a kindly chimpanzee.
It’s true I have made solo shows before, but my last show was in 2018 so it’s been a good solid five years. FIVE YEARS. Where did the time go? Damn those lost pandemic years. Suffice to say I was nervous. It’s all very well advertising something as a work in progress (which it was) but I didn’t want it to be such a work in progress that the audience had a terrible time. Also, as discussed in a previous Substack article, it’s much easier for a standup to try new material, nestled safely amongst tried and tested jokes, than it is for someone trying out characters and/or big visual set pieces. A standup can literally say mid-bit “I might not keep that” and get the audience on side, but it’s harder to do that as a character comedian, unless you’re happy to keep breaking character again and again. Anyway, despite my worries, the half hour of new material went ok and, judging by the drinks an audience member bought us afterwards, and some very generous bucket donations, all six members of the audience had a nice time. Having said that, this may have been down to Paul F Taylor who did a great half hour set straight after mine - thanks Paul!
Regardless it was useful and humbling to have a gig with 6 (admittedly lovely) strangers in the audience. It felt like doing the Free Fringe at Edinburgh where people wander in to see shows for all kinds of reasons. In one of my solo Edinburgh Fringe shows years ago, a guy in the audience had brought his whole family in because he had a sore knee and needed to sit down. His cartilage loss was my gain.
The advantage of doing a show to complete strangers (the vast majority of whom don’t have a clue who you are or what kind of comedy you do) is that you can find out what has the potential to work and what might be to be too confusing. There are no free laughs, everything is earned. It’s not always easy, but it is enlightening.
I started my half hour work in progress with a character who has been going down well at gigs and who is the most normal of the characters I have in the show so far. By normal I mean she’s a human, as opposed to an inanimate object. (There’s a low bar for normality in my show). I thought starting with her might be a smooth ramp into it for the audience, however, it took a while for them to warm to her. Admittedly not that long, but long enough for me to notice and wonder how to fix it in the next iteration. I think one solution will be for her not to go first, but the other thing I’m keen to do is to figure out some sort of proper introduction as myself so that people have time to warm up to me and understand what I’m all about. I’m not sure what form that will take yet but it’s something to experiment with.
What is Character Comedy?
As I was analysing the set afterwards, another thing I wondered was whether the people in this audience had seen character comedy before. It can’t be a given because, apart from anything else, there isn’t that much character comedy around anymore. And anyway, what is character comedy? One of my international improv students asked me this question so I really had to think about it. It’s certainly not just a case of putting on a costume. I explained to my student that it’s a bit like standup, but the comedian is in character and the comedy often/usually comes from the character traits/the character’s point of view of the world, what they say and how they say it or how they move/behave and what they do.
He said, “Ah so is it like being a stereotype, like being a Karen for example?” which was another interesting question. I explained that there might be some characters like that, characters who are recognisable types, but that it’s important not to simply play a stereotype. Also (thinking of my inanimate objects) I explained that sometimes the characters might not be recognisable types of people at all, sometimes they might be absurd ideas or visual concepts.
To be honest I don’t think all of my current material would be considered character comedy. Some of it is, but some of the stuff I do is a bit clowny or interactive or absurd these days. I don’t really know what it is. As for many people who do comedy which is not mainstream, it’s hard to categorise it. In my first ever show I did more straightforward character monologues, sometimes with a dark or poignant thread to them. In 2009 I saw Colin Hoult’s show Carnival of Monsters in Edinburgh and, although it was full of laughs, one moment stood out as being quite sad and disturbing and pretty laugh-free. I think I was inspired by this when I wrote characters initially and I’m still interested in exploring these moments. As time has gone on however, I’ve become more drawn to the relationship between performer and audience and am keen to continue to experiment with this. My intention in the long run is to have everything I love doing all in one show; character comedy, absurd clowny moments, interaction, light and shade. I’m not there yet but that’s what the work in progresses are for.
Where are all the Character nights?
There are some great sketch nights, clown nights, new material nights and alternative comedy nights in London but, as far as I know, unlike in New York (home to the long running character comedy night Characters Welcome), there aren’t any nights purely dedicated to character comedy in the capital.
So because of this I’m putting one on - Character Happening, next week at Hoopla (London Bridge) on Wednesday July 5th.
This will be a night dedicated to character comedy. The first half will be purely character comedians doing scripted solo sets (including all of these great people!) and in the second half we’ll have two improv teams doing character-led improv. What does character-led improv mean? I guess it means improv which focusses on; characterisation, character games and making character choices central to the scenes. I’ll be hosting the evening, in and out of character. I might ask the audience to give me a character to improvise so that there’s an overlap between the first half (solo character) and the second half (character improv). This paragraph was sponsored by the word “character”. Please come to this character night. If it goes well and we get a good crowd at this character night maybe this can become a regular character night. I’ve already had a few people ask to perform at Character Happening (a character night) but the slots are all taken, so it would be nice to be able to offer stage time to those character comedians who I didn’t have room for, in the future. It’s going to be a fun night of character comedy. Character, character, character. Did I mention the word character? Character.
Nb: Thank you for the messages people have sent me saying they’re enjoying this Substack. It’s really lovely to know that people are reading and enjoying it. Apologies for the lack of articles these past two weeks - this was due to a combination of work-in-progress panic and the exact opposite - a very non worky and non panicky holiday! The latter I highly recommend, especially if you’re a self employed creative type who doesn’t switch off from work much/ever. If you have the means to, do it. Book that holiday and disconnect! Everything will still be here when you get back.