A short story of dealing effectively with a non-ideal situation
My young friend Jesse (pictured here with his special lady) is an up-and-coming standup comedian who faced down some tough odds on stage the other evening.Performing in Los Angeles can be difficult because everyone from every part of the world who wants to become famous comes here (or goes to New York and learns despair + rats + a pervasive garbage smell). So every audience is usually made up of one's friends and/or other performers. It is only when one travels into the hinterlands of, say, Joshua Tree that one again finds real people in the audience.
So Jesse was faced with following up an acoustic folk singer and preceding a blues band (like Blues Hammer - no relation - in Ghost World) at an Irish place on Fairfax called Molly Mulwraith's or something.
If Jesse had had a comedy audience there, he would have had them doing that thing so common on 70's laugh tracks where people begin clapping and hooting at the jokes. Alas, they were a Blues Hammer/acoustic folk singer audience.
But he did not do that other thing that is so common: he didn't apologize for himself or his being there and, more importantly, he didn't berate the audience for not getting a joke or being more supportive. Other comedians I have seen would have antagonized the audience from the start and wouldn't have left the stage with the warm round of applause Jesse received.
I admit that I feared the evening would end in tears, binge drinking, and lamentation because the odds were stacked against our friend. Instead, he delivered an excellent 20-minute set with plenty of callbacks, confidence, and enthusiasm.
He did call the audience "people" several times ("I'm telling you, people," etc.), which struck me as odd because he doesn't address other groups similarly. I suppose I put on affectations of my own in my climb to the top, such as the one where I say I climbed to the top.
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by Marty Barrett at Wednesday, October 26, 2005
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