No one calls me “Open Mike.”
Well, it’s the beginning of the Fall semester. That’s nice. It’s not better than the end of the semester, but it’s definitely better than the semester’s halfway point. So, I’d say the beginning is somewhere in the middle, or something to that end.
For the folks who didn’t get a glimpse of the Alligator’s New Student Edition: Howdy, my name is Michael. I’m a sustainability studies sophomore, all of my childhood heroes are white, I have an uncanny affinity for tall, blonde women, I don’t really know the meaning of the words “uncanny” or “appropriation” and when I was 3 years old my mother slipped on a banana peel and fractured her spine. It’s a pleasure to meet you.
This summer I tried my hand at stand-up comedy and got my a-- handed back to me. A hand for an a-- wasn’t a bad deal ultimately, because I learned a whole bunch from writing routines and participating during open-mic nights. I’m not much of a performer — and it showed — but the material I wrote evolved pretty swiftly after the first few weeks. The routines went from strings of one-liners to actual stories with asides, arcs and punch lines. The writing process was a journey. The performance process was not.
Any novice or amateur artist has a hard time getting their art noticed and received. I’d wager, though, that stand-up comedians have it the hardest. Most artistic mediums receive some sort of editing treatment; writing gets an editor or multiple drafts, film gets video editing and both film and theatre get a director’s guidance and supervision. Improvisational comedy gets a free pass because the audience knows the comedy is impromptu and tends to welcome the bizarre spontaneity of even a mediocre performance. Stand-up comedy, however, needs a real audience in order to be edited — a quality few other art forms share.
Because of this, stand-up is, in my eyes, a much more personal art form, but the process of crafting good stand-up requires the comedian to be received, judged and exposed more than any other artist can be. It’s pretty cool, really. Don’t get me wrong: Putting out art is always difficult; you’re taking something personal and hoping it resonates with an audience, which you can’t always guarantee. But most of your time as a novice stand-up comedian at an open-mic night involves awkward silence, insincere delivery and sweating.
The audience plays a weird role for a developing artist. An audience should by no means lie to an artist about the quality of his or her work, nor should they provide any sort of destructive criticism. And most people are polite audience members. Perhaps the hardest thing for a fledgling comedian to understand is that silence is the most polite thing an unimpressed audience member can give to a performer. It sounds pretty obvious when you think about it, but the performer definitely doesn’t catch a polite vibe from any dissatisfied audience. It’s spooky.
This piece has an opinion in here somewhere. Definitely somewhere. Most of my opinions involve asking you to respect comedy, and in this case I ask you to respect the comedians who have it the worst. Of course, I’d hate to assume you don’t, but the sentiment is still there. When you see an artist, anticipate the art to be good. Go in with a positive outlook. I’m under the impression people attend open-mic nights with the assumption that the acts will be terrible. And while they’re usually right, that outlook proves to be toxic for the artists. Any artist, really. And that seems obvious, too. I’m largely unnecessary.
Michael Smith is a Santa Fe College mathematics freshman and is ravished with the level of flexibility he receives in his columns because he’s a copy editor.
