Second post actually about stand up comedy I'm impressed with myself. Also I apologise if this post lacks some of my usual anger but for personal reasons it's a bit difficult to summon right now. It's a bit like an erection it's usually there when you need it but there's always that one fucking time you need it and it's not fucking there. Well moving on yesterday I auditioned for and then watched the Leeds heat rounds for the uk based student stand up competition of Chortle. It's a nice competition for new comic's and I had some fun. Even though I didn't get through to the heats myself I had a good bloody laugh with if you ignore the personal crap the only bad thing about the day that the £1:25 deal on pints in the pub was sadly only on a fucking Monday. So I had to pay full price for my pints but I didn't care as my audition was fun and a few of my friends got through to the heats which isn't surprising as their fucking awesome. My only regret is not applying for the Glamorgan heats would have been much more likely that I would have gotten a bloody heat slot. But as last time I'm going to pose a question to you.
Are there certain topics in stand up which are repeated too often?
Okay I'm going to make this post about more of a personal one from my point of view so this is just my experience others may not have the same. But the day started with a once again long drive so Leeds though this time with thankfully more leg room but with a battery effectively up my arse for the majority of it. I was basically one fart away from turning my arse into the worlds first organic blow torch. Though thankfully I didn't develop bad gas till later in the day so that was fine. But any way we got to Leeds and after circling the Bar about 5 times in search of a parking space we walked in to find out what was happening. For those who don't know in Chortle there's the heats in multiple places round the uk, the semi finals in Manchester and London and then the final at Edinburgh Fringe festival. Though this year thanks to there being so many applicants a lot of people had to audition for some of the heat slots. For me my audition was for the Leeds heat and the Sheffield heat. There were 3 lots of auditions with altogether made up around 30 to 35 comics.
Well I went on and did my 3 minutes as that's the time you had. I felt it went good I got some laughs and possibly mentally scared some people in the process which is always my goal. I will admit the auditions were a bit rushed to be organised but they were very fun and had a nice atmosphere. The crowd you were preforming to were the other comedians which made it much more fun as everyone was being fair and laughing at each others stuff. But this brings me onto my question. While sitting there watching all the auditions I noticed there were some topics that constantly came up. Fair play some people made them work but they were always there. I would say at least half the acts did a bit about where their from. I'm not going to say anything about this myself as I started out doing mainly jokes about being welsh so I can't say fucking anything. But there are other topics that appear a lot as well. Of course the one about how bad everyone's sex lives are is a good example. Like I said before some people make these topics work for them but they are a very repeated concept. Plus if 2 people start with the same basis for a joke it makes it much less likely that there would be a large difference between their jokes in the end. I like acts which are different and have something that makes you remember them. Which is why I quiet liked the winner of the Leeds heat. He was pretty much dressed as a tramp was rather quiet and extremely creepy, with him just standing on stage it was fucking hilarious but he also had a creepy persona around him that fitted his character perfectly. Compared to everyone else he was very unique.
But with basis's being repeated by so many comedians it has the effect of limiting variety, limiting the chance of you getting to see something new and eye catching. But of course this is how everything works when one thing gets popular people start to copy it in hope of cashing in. So I wouldn't personally blame the new comedians for using these topics as these topics are the ones you see all over TV. Which is why I think there should be more encouragement for people to try something a bit different or weird. Possibly more competitions and nights aimed at these acts and only for these types of acts as I know of very few myself. If you have a different opinion or want to answer the question yourself post it in the comments.
Well that is me done for now. I'll say the usual of like/follow and all that but also to those who read this if you know of a unique comedian or one which you think is a bit unknown and should be brought to peoples attention post their names below in the comments and I will see if I can do a post just about them. I want to try and review some acts or just show some people some cool new comedians they might not know about.
The Human Jester
No comments:
Post a Comment