“I Have to Be Funny” - Review by Sean Contris

My First Night of Standup Comedy:

My first performance of stand up comedy took place at a bar that was called the Prickly Pear. I didn’t prepare, and I wasn’t ready. I had a few jokes in mind, something about being 20 and single, maybe something about my sex life, but nothing concrete, nothing written on notes and without single clue in my mind about how to do this. The task is simple enough, get up on stage say some things and as Donald O’Connor would say, make em laugh. However, if it was just that easy everyone and their dog would be a stand up comedian. I walked into the Prickly Pear a half hour before the mic started. I saw two people who looked too young to be bar hopping at 5:30 in the evening, so I figured they had to be comics for the mic like myself. I sat down beside them, and they immediately asked if I was there to perform. They greeted me with kindness, both looked to be around my age and actually looking back on it, seemed quite nervous. I asked them who they were, and how long they had been doing standup. The answer varied between the members of the group, but the one who seemed to be running the show said “three years.”  By the time the mic started I would probably estimate there were around twenty of us, and I swear only in comedy can you find a group as diverse as this. Aside from the initial group of people that I had met when I walked in, I could scarcely find a similarity between me and the other members of the audience aside from the obvious, “we are gathered here in a room to make strangers laugh.” Performances were based on luck of the draw, thankfully the show was not sold out and all of us were guaranteed a place. It slowly dawned on me that the Prickly Pear, as a part of the New York school of comedy called The Laughing Buddha, everyone here was here for the same reason, to try out comedy, to work on it. There was not a single member of the audience that wasn’t there to perform. With this in mind, they called me name and I took the stage. The stage was in the back of the bar, and was bare with the exception of a mic and a stool. After watching Marc Maron perform I realized that I would probably be more comfortable on the stage if I had something to sit on, at the very least it would stop me from visibly shaking on stage. As I said I didn’t prepare, and it slowly dawned on me that I should have at least brought a few notes with me. The first thing out of my mouth was a simple statement, “This is my first time doing this. So I’m dogshit, I apologize ahead of time.” I said and was greeted with thunderous applause and cheers from the audience.  I was allowed five minutes, but didn’t use up all the time. I ran through some jokes that I had been working on for a few days. I decided not touch on my sex life, but choose instead to stand by some old comedy cliches meaning airplanes and being single it was to be. Did I get the biggest laugh of the night? No, but I got a few small laughs, and I didn’t fall on my face so therefore I consider my first open mic a success albeit a small one