loads of gigs coming up
the new series of the show is getting recorded, lots of gigs at the stand and performing at a “best of new talent” night at the festival.
Still ten minute slots; and maximum pay of a tenner, all the way: but still.
So,
I’ve “presented’ a series of links for a well known radio station, albeit late night or whatever, and my picture was on thier website.
I’ve become involved with running a comedy night in my new hometown, but still gigging edinburgh and glasgow, and resent shelling out to get to gigs on the megabus; this doesn’t feel very rock and roll and seeing as I’m now spending more than I’m earning at the gig getting to it I feel a bit like I’ve moved backwards, I havn’t; i’ve just moved further away geographically, and I guess if i don’t want that geographical distance to translate into distance away from my goal, i guess I’ll have to keep buying those mega bus tickets.
God, but i loved my last gig. When I’m up there doing it I swear there’s not better thing in the world.
i’m still so scared though; scared I’m kidding myself, scared that I suck, scared that I’m wasting time and money on a dream. Than this other part of me, an arrogant part, i gues, gos “no; you ARE talented; and I sort of feel that I’m holding myself back; that I could be much better If I let myself be.
I have this new idea for an act; it’s really complicatd nd I’m not sure if i have the skills, the eadership qulities and the contacts to putt it off; but if I did TI think it might be brillaint, and that people would love it. I picture myself doing this thing and I’m like “Wow; really? That could be my life. And for real, I think there’s a possibility that it could. This makes me happy, but again, also worried.
Seriously, i should get over myself. I need to get better a t recognising what i have done as well. Our radio show has, yet again, been recomissioned, and yet again, I’m terrified I can’t actually write. To be fair there is some basis for this; none of my sketches HAVE been used yet, but the main reason for this is that they are underdeveloped due to me being so reluctant to submit them, so less good stuff that other writers have been less precious about goes in, and mine doesn’t. I know this. I understand what the lesson is. I know I need to “feel the fear and do it anyway” as that carnegie chap would have it, but it’s just acting on that i find difficult,
I understand the rabbit in the headlights.
Fuck; I am the rabbit in the headlights.
I’m getting paid for my next two gigs!!!!
Ok, I’m getting paid a tenner, but still; it feels like recognition. :)
It’s one of those times.
The radio show I did some writing for has been recommisioned, and I’m doing my little spot again, plus a wee bit of reading on some of the sketch scripts! ive never acted. it seems like this daunting new world.
You knowhow in tetris you are rewarded for your good work on one level by being given more difficult work on the next, until eventually everything gets too hectic and you delberately sabotage the game, longing to kill yourself off and put an end to the frantic deperation of it all: well; if life IS a game; it’s tetris. now there’s a metaphor.
I’m excited by the new challenges; the acting bits, the sketch writing: (will i get any of my sketches actually on teh show this year????hope so; but dunno…) Ithink I’m just trrified of fucking up and everybody realising thatI’m actualkly rubbish.
it’s going well;the oldbeing a commidenne thing: I’ve been paid for a bit or radiowork, and although I still don’t get paid for my stand-up, I do get 10 minute slots now, and the extra exposure is pretty good.
I now nkow the “producer lady” quite well, and I’m really fond of her; she’s properly “harsh but fair” you know?
Still loving the whole thing.although it stresses me out like nothing else.
What?
What do you want me to do. I can’t its too hard, I wanna go home, this is all a bit grown up” is what I wantede to say to the producer at the BBC, but instead I wrote it all down like a good un. Everyone has been given a list of things to alter in their scripts, and a week to do it, to see if we can take advice, and work as a teram. Aaaagh!!!! I am so scared of fucking it up I haven’t started yet: now there’s a strategie for idiots.
Ok so I got some gigs lines up, which is pretty cool. Not till June and July, but still…
My parents are coming to the gig in Edinburgh, how scary, I hope I don’t fuck it up. Isn’;t it strange how the people you love most are those most able to strike terror into a person?
Ok, the myspace dillema is as follows: There is a new space in Glasgow called ” gather in Glasgow” a really cool, bring your event type series of rooms, for socialising, evening classes, areobics, drama clubs, craft markets and volenterring. I saw a thing from this charity who help ill people cope by giving the the cance to learn stand-up at free workshops. Cool, eh? I asked if there3 was anything I could do to help out, as I think it’s an awesome idea. The woman I contacted gave me the details of the charity, and also said she was looking for comedy contacts, as one of the social groups was talking about a comedy night. sHE SAID ” WHERE IS YOUR MYSPACCE”.
i Dont have myspace. I hate myspace. I hate the mockery it has made of the word friend. However, people have previuosly told me I am missing opertunities not having one, and here was direct evidence of this, There should be somewheere where people could go and watch a clip of me, I could post up gigs, and perhaps it would help with arranging gigs in other cities.
Im going to have to do it, amn’t I. So i need some nice photos, someone to film a couple of my sets, someone to design a semi professional looking profile page, and to bite my tongue wen people use phrases like “addy” Oh, and also, sooner or later some school pupils will find it, probably some horrible ones likey to find a way to hassle me about it.
Fair enough.
Isn’t it weird how easy it is to fill in a five page “what kind of pirate are you” quiz, but how hard it is to fill in a two page application?
Similarly was getting a little down about the lack of gigs I have lined up, until I realised I needed to sort it out, noone else.
Bearing this in mind I have emailed the woman at the stand, which is what worked last time, and also asked my friend Jools for the email of a semi-professional comedian that has a crush on him, and who has been banned from the stand, (he’s v. funny, but also very close to any and all bones.) Hopefully he can give me a mental map of the non-stand world of glasgow comedy. The stand and Jonglers are the only two full time comedy clubs in glasgow, and Jonglers is not really a place for emerging comics, and besides is a disgusting pit which I have been to once and almost developed a rash. I don’t know if jonglers everywhere are the same, but this one really was some lowest common denominator craap.
Well, I went on a stand-up comedy course a couple of years ago. Viv Gee, who is a professional female stand up, runs it at the Strathclyde Uni Evening School. There was a gig at the end of it, but confidence took a major didp for various reasons and I didn’t sort out any other gigs, and kind of gave up on the idea, but was really jealous of my friend Jools, who was out there doing it, with debateable sucess, but that’s not the point is it? He was doing it.
Eventually I realised that if this is the criterion on which I am jealous of someone, thier ability to say “fuck it” and go for something, then it’s not nessisarily how good I am that I need to work on, it’s my ability to put myself out there and just go for it.
So, I have
I started doing open mikes at the stand, which is the majot comedy club in Glasgow, just wee five minuite slots, and they’ve gone ok, not amazing, Ive done two now. The first I was phsically shaking through, and forgot everything, and forgot I’d written it on my arm.
The second the club was pretty dead, but the resonse was pretty good. Susan Calman a female stand up I really admire said I should try to get a gig at Sistars, the stand’s all female night, and I have been recognised in the street once. But this is more to do with standing out like a sore thumb than being any good.
S during the glasgow comedy festivalEva Mackay who des the bookings at the Stand, forwarded me an email about tthis BBC stand up course. One the back of that I told to apply for a writers briefing, and did, and got a place, and submitted some stuff, this is a two weeks ago now.
Thwn I went away to plant trees somewhenre with no computers or mobile signal for a week, and when I came back, there was a email from the BBC saying I had an appointment with the producer of one of the radio shows! I don’t know which one, or what he will say, ut I am massively excited.
