I was pretty tired tonight and I think it affected the show. I was making lots of slip ups and felt that I was not my usual light hearted self. The 70+ people in the audience had seemed quite up for it at the start, but then I maybe lost them a bit. I won it back, but it was an unsatisfying performance from my point of view. I am glad I have a day off tomorrow.
Then I went over to the Dome for my third stand-up gig in as many nights. This one was the only true bonafide stand-up type situation. There was a large crowd, who were rowdy, but supportive of the other acts. I felt determined to do well after my lacklustre show, but was scared that I might fuck it up.
It turned out to be the best of the three gigs. I have had a bit of a block over stand-up due to many unpleasant experiences with it in the early 90s. I had come to believe that it was something that I couldn't do. But tonight I really felt in command of the stage. I was able to play around with the crowd a bit and pause and generally mess about. Again I did stuff from Talking Cock and it mainly all worked (although a cut meant that I was suddenly doing the bit about being in the bath with my dad as a child right after the bit about talking about our fathers' spunking cocks which almost led to disaster!) The "Where have you put your penis for fun?" bit is great for a stand-up crowd and works well out of context. It made me quite keen to try getting back on the circuit again after all this time. The only way to learn how to do this job is to get up there and do it. And if I've jumped out of a plane and run the Marathon then getting up on stage and talking to some drunks should be easy. The thing I need to work on is relaxing enough to include the audience (due to the scripted nature of my Edinburgh shows there is little time for interaction). I was never bad at doing this (except when I let my temper or bad humour come to the fore), so it would be interesting to work up an act for the clubs.
My mood was lifted and my tiredness deserted me and I stayed up late again at a party at the Pod. Once again, slightly pathetically, my mood was determined by how a performance had gone.
