A 22-Minute Show

I performed a 22-minute comedy show today.

I was really excited when I first got the email saying I had a 30 minute slot. That was really intimidating. For the next month and a half I freaked out. I practiced constantly, I changed things around, I added new things, and I created what I thought was a masterpiece. Then they told me that it was actually 25 minutes. I didn't care. I was just happy I had more than five. I rehearsed a 24-minute-45-second comedy show over and over again alone in an empty room with no mic stand and did it perfectly almost every time. Then I got onstage with a weird mic stand in a small theater full of people three minutes later than I planned, and I performed a 22-minute set with a lot of mistakes. I messed up the intro to my first song which requires a lot of context to be funny, I forgot my lines twice, I played the wrong chord or the wrong rhythm a couple times, I had to cut the second-funniest part of the show because of time, I had a LOT of trouble adjusting the weird ass mic stand, and every time I sat down I tried to scoot the chair towards the microphone and it didn't move so I just looked like a nerdy long-haired college weirdo forward-thrusting his butt so hard that the chair had to rock onto two legs. 

And the whole time in the back of my mind I was thinking about my grandparents and my parents watching the live-stream, seeing me make an ass of myself in real time. 

I found out that my first two two bits that I expected to get pretty good audience reactions turned out to be just mediocre. They were crude and not much else. They worked with college audiences, who tend to be drawn to shock-factor comedy, but not so much with experienced adults whose comedic styles have become more clever and witty.
 
But I am often my own worst critic. 

I expected maybe 10 people to be in the audience. There were about 60. The audience was full of my friends,  dedicated comedy aficionados whose friends performed before or after me, and people who were volunteering their time to the organization. I expected maybe 3 of my friends to be there. It's far for college students (who don't have cars). But nine of my friends showed up, and a few more told me later that they watched on the live-stream. 

My closing song was the cleanest one. I didn't think it was the best one, but I put it at the end it because it was slow and had a sentimental feel to it. It turned out to get the best audience reaction of anything I had done.

The rest of the performers all seemed to know each other. They were all a family. I was the weird kid sitting in a corner of the empty blue room facing the door playing an ukulele, staring awkwardly at those who entered, and looking away as soon as we made eye contact. And yet after I left the stage, they told me I did a good job. 

It wasn't perfect. I've got a long way to go before I can do a show perfectly. I have to put in the work. And I'm willing to do that. My expectations were incredibly high and I came up a bit short.

But it was a good show. I know what I need to work on. I needed to see myself make mistakes on a stage because it's different up there than it is alone in an empty room. I am happy. And whatever else I do next, I'm probably not gonna crush it. But I'll crush some of it, and those parts will be awesome.