I booked and promoted two of my own stand up comedy shows, one in Encinitas at a local popular coffee shop, and one in Laguna Beach at a popular bar. I really enjoy hustling and trying to promote something I care about like a comedy show I am in and producing. I love socializing and meeting new people, just the rush of being a kind of door to door salesman with my comedy act thrills me and makes me feel good and important. Now keeping the gig with the venue to be asked back, having the other comedians or anyone in the audience actually show up is the harder part. The success ratio of the end result of this learning curve is not the easy part. The easy part for me is telling everyone around the area of the show to go see it and promoting it one on one around town. Believe me a lot of comedy shows the only people in the crowd audience besides the bartender or coffee shop baristas and the host promoter is the other comedians. Most comedians are very poor or broke, or do not even drink alcohol, so the venues make not much money on stand up comedians. At these venues I drink the free water, because I do not drink alcohol. At comedy clubs they serve meals and food so I order a dinner item there most of the time.
Right now I am paying my dues as they say. When I first stared out I was excellent and did not need notes of jokes I wrote. I just went up on stage and was myself and told everyone my stories in my unique personality. Now I am chasing the dragon to get back to my original skill set I had when I began at comedy. It is weird that the more you do it the less good I get?
Now I am very depressed and feel defeated. I live at home again with my parents who always yell and shout at me or criticize me. I have no friends yet in San Diego, I am around other people like comedians, but for the last 7 months I have had no buddies or pals. I introduce myself to others all the time, but often never hear back. Sometimes I do hear back, but chicken out because the woman is not a girl but a grown up and I have no job or money to offer at her at this point to pay to spoil her, so I hid and ran away. Younger girls than me are less of a threat because they themselves are still starting out in life and would not expect me to rich or at the point in my life I am not at yet with financial independence and security that I can live and suffice on my own independently. I have little to no confidence in myself right now that I have what it takes to find a way to live on my own and have a good job I can keep for a long time. My personality is almost all removed and zapped away. My dad censors and insults almost everything I say or think, so I have reverted into my shell around my family who I am always around. I had much more of a personality when I was living by myself on my own. But that takes money and my money is all gone and not available anymore. This all reflects me on stage telling jokes.
People like my dad tell me I need to have a thick skin to stay in show business. I had some gigs that were dropped on me where they gave me the spot and scheduled time and then I was told I'm no longer on it. I understand that is how things work...But as a new young comedian trying to get a following and street cred, gigs and spots falling through or not happening to me is depressing, and it hurts the pride in myself....like a rejection. a part of you leaves, the sensative intutative natural side of myself...fades away and a more firm and percise and not emotional but all business side comes out of me to not get destroyed about these rejections. That is why you see so many profession paid comedians in a dry serious stictly business mode mentality at the comedy shows when they are not up on the stage as a character of themselves. In this comedy business you are you own boss. You have to get the gigs yourself, write your own material, teach yourself how to deliver the lines or stories up on stage, you are your own boss but unless you are famous and rich and a big comedic hit with fans who will pay money to see you...you are doing this all on your own and learning along the way. The character you play up on stage is who you are but not really who you are. That funny person on the stage would not be able to handle the business side of things or real life neccesities, so you play to what works up on stage, not pandering, but not truly who you are in that moment in time to protect both your success on stage and off stage in the real world.
People in comedy say that you have to tell the truth on stage otherwise it will seem false like you are lying and pretending and the audience won't buy it....Well this is both true and not true. I don't lie to people n real life....But I have for years said outrageous things to people that are total tall tales about strange encounters with others and weird and dramatic experiences in danger or rejection....I tell them the story and then after they wonder how anyone could handle the situation in the story, and they try to comprehend the crazy story or life experience I shared with them...I then tell them I am jut joking. Things in my life have been hard and tramatic and intense...That is not a lie...My life has not been a fairy tale love story with a happy ending of they all lived happily ever after the end...I wish it was, I even met thousands of cute and very attractive girls I liked over the years hoping they would fall in love with me...did not happen...not even in my fantasies did I have it all or anything really...Well to get back to telling tall tales and outrageous lies on stage. Because I have had to deal with some much rejection and bullying or humiliation with other people I can make something that never happened to me in real life sound like it did actually happen to me when I tell it to someone on stage. I can't ever lie about myself to a girl to get a date or a boss to get a job in real life. People around the world who saw my comedy believed everything I said up on stage in my act was totally true, no matter how crazy or far fetched it was. Crazy things or situations do and have happened to me, often, so I just sell it like it did happen with a straight face...Because well even though the premise to the joke is just bizarre, I had to endure something similar to it in actual real life...so as an outsider who can't seem to fit in, I can pull it off. People around the world are convinced of some of the jokes I said on stage are totally true...Even close friends and peers I see often thought some of my jokes on stage were real things and totally believed it. That to me is more bizarre than my bizarre jokes. Note not everything said on stage is a lie or all made up. My first sets I did in May of 2012 were all real life stories about me chasing after unnatainable girls. A lot of things are totally true, were true, or will be true. Somehow based on miserable experiences I dealt with all the time, if someone told me to tell their own personal horrible or bad experience on stage like it happened to me chances are I could pull it off and maybe nobody would know it was not real. I guess thats a gift, right? Maybe the thing is if I don't believe what I said up on stage and nobody thinks that I look the part, then they don't buy it but consider it my acting...If I look the part of a outgoing off beat clean cut innocent nerd and that joke or story fits me well they all take it as real life.
So right now I'm trying to figure out how far I can push my character of myself on stage and still have it work where the audiences respond. If I get upset mad or angry or raged up ons stage I totally fail and everyone even friends who came to watch hates me. If I get to sad or introverted, and depressed up on stage they also tune me out and hate me up there. So right no it is a balancing act for me on how to sell me and my character and who me and my character is that seems to work. Basically if I am totally clueless, naive, child like, excited and excitable, then I am "adorable" and it really works and works very well. If I a really aware of things coming at me in my stories on stage then my clueless character is going to fail and bomb. The messed up part is that...well...much of me really is clueless and very naive and innocent about others...For better or worse I'm stuck being the little girl shouting out that the king has no clothes from the story the 'emperor's new clothes' as everyone else seems to just go with the naked king believing he was very well dressed in his parade walking down the street. My not fitting in easily and truthfulness of not filtering what I see and perceive even when people prefer lies to their face, both makes me liked and adored by others in real life and burns bridges or dissolves some friendships, kind of like a one trick pony...I'm fun and amusing for a while, then it becomes a gimmick and like an old toy a kid owns they get bored and toss it away because they do not want it anymore.
I'm trying to get myself to the point over time where I can book and promote and distrubute my own shows, events, concerts, and media to make a career, and build and manage other comedian acts to also showcase them for a profit to help them and myself pay the bills adults need to survive. I expect this to take years. But I want my own niche in the comedy market. Right now I do not have brand name recognition. I want my name to be associate with oddball, quirky, unusual, and cutting edge comedy and comedians. then I could still enjoy the hustling and promoting and really fun social side of running a business, and leave the conflicts or BS or politics to someone I can hire to handle all the stressful stuff. I want to do what I love and not be overwhelmed. I think that I can figure it out. With everything I do....I show up out of the wood work...make myself seen and noticed...and try really hard. I always let people know that I am there and interested in doing well and achieve the goal...Be it a lunch date with a supermodel, or a sale of someones old comic books online.