Tom Foolery

I got back on the stand up comedy horse last night with a gig at Funny Bones Comedy at the Tom Foolery in Bromley. Although I applaud all efforts to promote live comedy, I've performed recently in a number of venues that are inappropriate spaces for stand up. The Tom Foolery, although well named, comes under this particular category. Performing near the entrance of the venue when you have to compete against punters coming and going is not ideal. Neither is setting up a gig at the same time as a Literary Death Match event taking place elsewhere in the pub. Based on their website, Literary Death Match seems to be a lot more fun than me rattling off some self-depreciating jokes for the umpteenth time.

It generally feels like a comedy night has invaded a pub rather than being a separate entity. The people who are in the audience are not comedy patrons but pub customers who happen to be present while some comedians are speaking. None of this is particularly helpful. It wasn't quite as bad as my gig at the Royal Standard in Croydon a fortnight ago, which involved performing literally in front of the bar with constant interruptions. I find it astonishing how some "promoters" seem entirely ignorant of the mechanics of stand up comedy and in doing so, treat the comedians they book with complete disrespect.

I did as well as could be expected in front of handful of audience members along with the rest of the acts. A couple of new bits were received favourably and I'm looking forward to trying them out again. Some promoters also seem to think that if they book enough acts then they will provide the audience for each other, which ignores the fact that acts aren't responsive in the same way as audiences from the public. This tends to be either because they are trying to focus on what they're going to do on stage prior to their set or because they tend to look at comedy more analytically. If I hear a good joke from another comedian, I'm more likely to think, "That joke was well constructed" than laugh at it.

There's a perceived wisdom, particularly when you start out that you need to do crappy gigs in front of no-one. I think over the three years I've been doing stand up properly, I've done enough of these gigs to know that they have no real merit. They also aren't "character building" as I have been told. In future, I think I'm going to be more selective about where I perform stand up.