I originally made an outline where I would teach a little theory, we would do a few exercises, then work on a show for a graduating performance. I had to throw the outline out.

On the first day we introduced ourselves, talked about our favourite comedies, and decided on what we wanted to do. The kids wanted to do stand-up and they were especially keen to do sketch comedy. Their school frequently uses play-acting as a way to develop creativity and social skills. So sketches were an easy step for them. We also did one game from The Improv Encyclopedia.

I am deeply grateful to my TheatreSports training for making this course work. I borrowed heavily from it, as a way to teach the kids best practise and theory for writing and performing comedy. Now certainly some of what I taught went against what Keith Johnstone (the founder of TheatreSports) taught. He was trying to avoid jokes and gags and focus more on characters and spontaneous, collaborative storytelling. I included all of it.

Probably the most important part of TheatreSports, of which I made use, was the swearing in. After forming a circle this is the oath we all repeated at the beginning of each class.

I solemly pinky swear

to support my comedy team mates,
to help everyone shine,
and to remain focussed.

I shall not waffle nor whine,
I shall not strut my stuff at another’s expense,
I shall remember this is meant to be fun, fun for everyone.

So when occasionally no one is laughing or I forget my lines,
I shall be comforted and smile, because it just doesn’t matter.
Laughter and smiles are still to be had at another time or place.

Some of you may recognise parts of this from the Improv Ten Commandments. It was vital to drill into the kids’s heads that comedy is all about fun, and not to worry if they weren’t getting the laughs. If they truly became stuck during a performance, it would be perfectly all right to thank the audience (you ALWAYS thank the audience) and leave. Struggling brings the tone down. An audience respects a performer who knows how to graciously bow out, and are happy to give them another chance at another time. Simply standing in front of that mic shows tremendous courage.

What I managed to fit into the eight weeks:

• Microphone technique
• Building a persona
• How to warm-up an audience
• How to tell a comic story
• Writing jokes using standard joke forms
• Comic timing
• Thanking the audience

This sounds like a lot, but these were done at a very basic level. Also, the kids picked things up quickly. I only had to show them once where to hold the microphone and how to find the sweet spot, and never had to show them again.

Building a persona, how to tell a comic story, and writing jokes were taught with the use of MadLibs style fill-in the blanks handouts. The joke sheet used the most was: Why did the _____ cross the road? To __________! In fact I told them that if they forgot their joke during the joke relay to just say, “Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side!” It would become a running gag and parents would find it funny coming from the kids.

One surprising blank in the kids’s knowledge was that a story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. They understood that a story needs characters and an event, but did not grasp that the characters must be changed by that event. In an avant garde piece you might dispense with story and have characters drift through an endless series of occurences with no resolution, and I believe this is valid, but it’s a stretch for comedy. Endings are what provide that moment where a punchline can be delivered.

So I carefully selected a couple of the more “G” rated sketches from School of Comedy. We watched them and discussed beginnings: Who is in this sketch? Where are they? What are they doing? We discussed middles: What is the event that changes things? We then discussed endings: What are the results of this change? What is the punchline?

On the night of the performance the kids and I were all quite nervous. Nevertheless, we pulled the evening off with aplomb. I knew the kids would be fine. It was an audience of all their greatest supporters: their families! And what’s cuter than a bunch of kids telling jokes? My nerves had more to do with the logistics of the night, such as not having access to spoons for people’s hot drinks.

The funny thing that night was how once the kids started getting laughs for their stand-up routines, they didn’t want to get off stage. They just started improvising new material. I needed a shepherd’s crook to pull some of them behind the curtains.

Would I do this again? I may, but not straight away. It was a little like trying to herd a room full of ferrets, hilariously funny and exhausting at the same time. The kids were great. I learned much about my art in finding ways to communicate it to them. To my Just Kidding Around troupe I say, “Thank you, you’re AWESOME!”

Peace and kindess,

Katherine

Last year I attended the Jeez Louise Funny Women’s Conference. One of the attendees to that conference was the charming Claire Hooper. She gave me the advice that it’s perhaps best to start off by doing a show for Melbourne Fringe before hopping into the Comedy Festival. This seemed like sound advice. However, I had just missed Fringe when I moved back to Melbourne and was keen to make myself known.

Given what a large endeavour doing a solo Comedy Festival show was, I feel it’s important to share what I learned.

The Organisers

You are expected to pay a hefty fee up front in order to participate in the Comedy Festival. With this fee you are guaranteed that your picture and blurb will be in the Festival programme. The programme goes out to hundreds of thousands of people, through The Age and cafe and venue drops. Given the cost of advertising, with this alone you have your money’s worth.

Their marketing company also keeps your press release in a “bible” which can be used by media to determine the shows that interest them for articles and reviews. Then, the festival offers workshops in understanding the Festival process, finding venues, marketing, etc. Finally, they issue comedians a “participant pass” which gives them free and half price access to many shows, and free entrance into the festival club.

The organisers do their best to be of help, but they are run off their feet. So, if you need personal attention, it’s worth being part of groups like The Skirt Network for women. Even just turning up at the workshops is worth the networking, because many of your questions can be answered by the people around you.

Be warned: not all advice is equal. The organisers are very familiar with what does and does not work for the acts they manage. That advice does not always scale down to the newcomers. This may be because 1) it worked in the past when the festival was smaller, and 2) we were contending with a global financial crisis.

I really feel it would be worthwhile having a mentoring program available to first-timers.

Venues

Several sets of venues are available to performers: festival managed, community/arts organisation managed, and willing restaurants/cafes/pubs/etc.

A festival managed venue is not automatically a better space. Some of the spaces are poky and no more central than a number of the “willing”. The advantage to applying for a festival managed venue is that you won’t have to negotiate the contractual agreement with the venue, you will be assigned door staff, and you will be given extra marketing support. If you are lucky, you could score a space within the Melbourne Town Hall. That is the one location which does give you more audience pull. However, you will be required to perform six days a week for the whole festival. This is great when things are going well, but it’s still gruelling.

The other big venues that will offer extra support include Bella Union (Trades Hall), Northcote Townhall, Malthouse Theatre, etc. These community performance spaces can be very well appointed with sound and lighting equipment, front of house staff, and extra marketing. Sometimes they are significantly more expensive as well and may require larger audiences to be worth their while, but this varies. The main issue is whether you can draw a crowd without being in the central festival area. Bella Union has succeeded in becoming its own hub. Others may require more marketing, and appealling to the local audience.

Certain of the “willing” spaces have a good reputation and are well located: The Butterfly Club, Young and Jacksons, Toff in Town. Others have proven problematic for the performers for a variety of reasons. I would strongly suggest finding a good quality venue of this sort BEFORE sign-ups begin for either festival managed or community managed venues. If the others fall through, you will want a back-up that still represents you well.

Do NOT put yourself in the position where you feel you have to take anything in order to proceed in the festival. Give yourself the time to find a place that has friendly management with whom it’s easy to communicate. Make sure the style of the venue suits the style of your act. It’s not worth your while doing a family act at a seedy pub. Put together a clear written agreement with your venue where fine details are thought through such as bump-in and bump-out times, access to a dressing space, etc.

My biggest piece of advice venue-wise is go smaller rather than larger. A venue with fewer seats will look fuller faster and thereby make your audience feel more comfortable that they’ve found a winner. This also influences reviewers who report not only on their assessment of a show, but how popular it seems to be with the general public. Yes, if you are a big success then you might lose a few dollars, but you are still better off leaving people wanting more.

Dates & Times

Because I was set to perform for a Festival managed venue, I continued to think in terms of a six day week when I had to find other performance space. In the end I performed a Tuesday to Saturday week for the entirety of the Festival, but as a newcomer, it was a mistake.

Tight Arse Tuesdays exist for a reason. Attendance during week days is low. If you’re working on a budget, save your money and perform only Friday, Saturday, and possibly a matinee on Sunday. This will force people who are interested in your show to bunch up on those days, providing a fuller venue.

Equally as low is performing on a holiday weekend. This year Easter landed in the middle of the Festival and downtown Melbourne was nearly silent as everyone left town. I attended a performance on Easter Saturday by one well known comedian who attracted only eight people that night.

Hour of the day also affects audience attendance. Festival wisdom says, “If you are good, the audience will find you.” This only works if you have sufficient friends, word of mouth, and reviews for people to make the effort. Even my friends weren’t keen to come to a show that started at six thirty in the evening. It seems like a good hour for families, but most people want to go home and freshen up before going out or at least have a meal first. For newcomers I would say any showtime before eight pm is going to be a waste of your time and money. You have to make it easy on your audience before they are going to give you the odd chance.

Marketing & Reviews

You will be encouraged to spend a LOT of money on advertising.

The street press will be knocking hard at your email door to get you to spend money on space in their Festival inserts. They will even make special offers where you will be spending less during Festival time. Don’t buy into this unless you know the street press readers are your demographic.

Rule number one for marketing: nail your audience. You CAN’T say, everyone; you CAN’T say, people like me. Are you appealing to men or women? Are you dealing with people 18-34, 35-49, 50-64, or children? Is your material aimed at people with a university education? What sorts of jobs do they have? What sorts of hobbies or interests? What movies, books, TV, comedians, etc are similar to your material and who enjoys these? If you are aiming at thirty-something year old rev-heads, the street press will be a waste of your money.

Marketing can do much to sell a show. It can’t work miracles. The Melbourne International Comedy Festival attracts somewhere between 300-400 shows in a period of around four weeks. How do people choose which shows to see? They start with what they are familiar.

Ross Noble, Adam Hills, Paul McDermott, these are all people who sell out instantly. Then come the comedians who people have seen on television, even though they may not be considered A-list: Akmal Saleh, Justin Hamilton, Felicity Ward. Next are the comedians who have gained good word of mouth through local venues or even busking (how the Doug Anthony All-Stars got their start). Then come the people who win awards or get good reviews in the media. They can have a dreadful turn-out to begin with until the media attention fairy hits. Finally, you have the odd individual who just thinks the show sounds like fun from the Festival programme.

Advertising helps to remind people to buy tickets for the “A” and “B” list comedians. Advertising can help “C” to “Z” list comedians seem more important and a viable option for a fun night out. However, general placements are going to be a waste of time for these. If you have a show about plumbing, advertise in a plumbing journal.

Many comedians work hard handing out flyers to their shows in front of Melbourne Town Hall. The hope is that by making a personal connection on the street, people are more likely to turn up to one of your gigs.  I have found that most people felt annoyed at being accosted. I also get the feeling that it makes those comedians seem needy and therefore probably not very good. When the public feels it needs to tighten its purse-strings, you become one more person trying to take their hard-earned money, rather than a good night out.

The most effective means to interest people in an up-and-comer is through publicity, reviews, and Facebook. When people hear you outside of advertising being funny on the radio, television, or print media, that’s when they make the personal connection. To do this you will need to source your media early, write sharp shiny press releases, and learn how to have a pleasant manner on the phone.

Do not be shy about handing out free tickets like a mad person to all and sundry of the media. I would suggest even handing out extra tickets for competition give-aways. Newcomers rely on word of mouth. Let me say that again, NEWCOMERS RELY ON WORD OF MOUTH! Do NOT worry about losing ticket sales. You have to build a reputation first. Though, I will say that it is better to give tickets out as part of a competition, rather than a strictly free give-away. People value a prize more and are more likely to use the tickets.

Facebook is probably one of the cheapest and most effective means of starting up your career as a comedian. Though, this could be done equally well through mailing lists, blogs, and the like. The point is mostly to build up your network of friends, family, workmates, and supporters, then direct that network to come to your shows. If you can get them to write about you in their blogs, even better. This works best among people in their twenties who aren’t as encumbered by life obligations such as family. I also worry that we are turning into a Tupperware sales generation where friends are merely sales opportunities. Nevertheless, the people who love you really are the best place to get a boost.

Festival Pass

The Festival pass is an amazingly important aspect of any comedian’s participation. It is pure gold for developing your career, do not waste it.

As mentioned earlier you get free entrance into the Festival club. Go to the club, buy a glass of mineral water (keep your head sharp), and chat with other comedians. Don’t just network. Just networking is boring and doesn’t get you the support of MAKING FRIENDS. I was actually offered a gig once because a venue manager saw me walk in and all the major comedians said “hi”.

Go to as many shows as possible, from the famous to the not so famous. You’re getting in free or at least at a discount, so why not? Use the opportunity to analyze what works and what doesn’t work with audiences. Pay especially close attention to people who are clearly rising stars and pinpoint what is drawing people’s attention. These are the people who will be showing you what the next wave of comedy needs to look like. Go to other newcomer shows, they need your friendly support and who knows, they may be the next big thing.

If you get nothing else out of the Comedy Festival, you should at least learn something in order to improve. The Festival pass is your magic ticket to a superb education.

Conclusions

For any newcomer wishing to put on a solo show at the Melbourne Comedy Festival: start by building a fan base and think modestly.

For the year before trial bits of your show at a diversity of venues. Put on a solo show in an outer suburb and make sure a local reviewer turns up. Offer your services to charities.  Melbourne Fringe is an outstanding place to develop a reputation. Collect email addresses on a clip board you always have on hand.  Carry cards/flyers on you and don’t be shy about talking yourself up.

Don’t expect to make money. I know, that’s a heartbreaker. But your first time is likely to be more of a learning experience than anything. That shouldn’t put you off, because every step is valid. And if you do break even or make a profit, be sure to celebrate.

Set an achievable goal that helps you to grow as a performer and feel good about yourself by the end of the Festival. These can be goals such as: better able to interact with the audience, improved improvisational skills, keeping energy levels up.

The piece of advice I would like to push most strongly is form a team of comedians. You can do sketches or just divide an hour in four or five pieces. You then get Comedy Festival visibility while spreading the load and learning at a less costly rate. Think about all the groups that went on to form television shows. Cooperation will move your career forward faster than anything else I know.

Repeatedly thank everyone who helps you with your show: crew, venue, Festival organisers, audience. They need to know their presence meant something. Feel free to throw out all my advice, if you have a strong sense something else would work better for you. Finally, be good to yourself and have fun!

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

The festival itself was charming. I watched open dog trials where little scruffy moppets up to proper sheep dogs jumped through hoops, walked over bridges, ran around gates, etc. They had two Scottish marching bands. For the first time ever I watched Morris dancing live. That was amazing. I’ve heard people joke about how twee Morris dancing is with its bells and ribbons, but if you take the bells and ribbons away, you’ve got healthy men practising hitting one another with swacking great poles. I think it’s a cunning way to disguise the fact you are learning a martial art. And of course lots of tasty flavoured almonds were available everywhere for munching.

The performance hall is a small space attached to a basketball court. A number of young dance and music groups were presenting their stuff all day there. While my impro group warmed up in the green room, I had the pleasure of watching a group of zombies and Michael Jacksons costume up and head onto stage.

Last year we had separate children’s and adult’s beginner impro classes. This year for the intermediate course, our instructor combined the two classes. Even so, the adults and the children tended to keep to separate groups, which I found a bit silly and therefore started mixing it up. Eventually, I was doing more with the children. For our performance the two kids who were participating and myself agreed we would all wear tie-dye t-shirts. We kind of became a team.

When our time came Kyle, Daniel, and I did such TheatreSports games as Genre Replay where we created a story, then did it over again in three different genre styles such as comedy, horror, and opera; Emotional Replay; and Stunt Doubles where any time two actors in a scene were about to perform an action, they would call out “stunt doubles!” and a couple of stunt doubles would do the action in as extreme and outrageous manner as possible, then call back the actors.

The one game I played exclusively with the adults was Slide Show. For several public performances of this I’ve been dobbed in as the person telling the funny story about the still image my compatriots form. It’s nice having your team say, “Can you do the storytelling, you do it so well.” Again I received laughs for my performance in this. I’m going to have to figure out how to do impro storytelling for a standup routine.

I feel I’m still having a tendency in my performances to go straight to the top of my emotional range and staying there, rather than varying things. I was pleased with how I made reasonable use of the performance space, finding good motivated reasons to move up, down, and side to side (forward and back was done, but a little problematic with that space). Overall the day was great fun and a success. Congratulations to the rest of our dedicated team of comic actors and a special thanks to Jeff and Anne Simmons of ImproNow!

I’m looking forward to learning and playing with a new TheatreSports group in Melbourne.

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

I’ve decided not to worry about announcing my current open mic gigs, because  I have a list I’m working my way through and am never certain what night I will be attending and whether I will take on a particular crowd. Nevertheless, once I have settled on a few favourite places, I will keep everyone informed.

Last night’s escapade was at Billy Bob’s BBQ an open mic event held at the Grace Emily. I did not begin very impressed. The stage and the audience space is small and the room gets noisy quickly. Even so, as the night progressed my opinion shifted until I began feeling intimidated.

As the open mic event was about to start the place filled up to standing room only with largely twenty-something year olds, though certainly some thirty-somethings were hanging about as well. I was the fourth person to register myself for a slot that night. Bill, the organiser of this open mic, mentioned that they would really like it if more comedians such as myself turned up. This seems to be a common litany.

Other open mics do attract exceptionally skilled performers, this one like the Rhino Room, brings in quite a number of professional as well as amateur musicians. The music ranged from mainstream to funk and hardcore rock
and roll. I stood their thinking, “What am I doing here?” The switch in energy to spoken word could potentially be death on stage.

As the fourth performer came and went and I wasn’t called up, I started to get nervous. I was told Bill rearranges the performers for a smooth flow of styles. So, I decided not to worry about it. As the night wore on it looked like Bill was going to put me up last, if at all. One woman was trying to reassure me, but I was on the verge of tears and going home. Just as the thought shot through my head, Bill touched my elbow and asked if I wanted to go next. Talk about last minute saves.

I started by reading my ninja poem. Just the title had the room cheering. I swear, I could have just said the word “ninjas” repeatedly and kept some people happy. I then read “Will Play for Cheese”, which has consistently been a pleaser with the musos. I didn’t bother to read any more, but the room erupted into applause and Bill made a joke about dropping his cheese. After chatting with a few people, my sense is that I am welcome back and I think I will return.

Oh and yes, I was the last open mic performer that night. Oh well!

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

The Joiners Arms open mic night is run by Corey Stewart. He also runs open mic at the Daniel O’Connell and is establishing a South Australian Open Mic Network. This is wonderful news. He has made my life immensely easier by
finding, supporting, and advertising many available venues for practice and performance.

Corey seemed genuinely pleased to have me come in as a spoken word artist. Evidentally, they haven’t seen anyone of that nature for a year and a half. Which is about the length of time since I saw spoken word at The Gov. For some
reason comedians and poets have focused their efforts at specialised venues. The problem is that in so doing we have less opportunity to have our stuff heard and we aren’t getting practice with a broad audience. I told Corey I would
encourage the comic and literary communities to start mixing it up with the musicians again.

The Joiners Arms is a cosy venue: yes, meaning small, but also warm. Despite the size the place is clean, well-kept, and the acoustics are good. People could actually hear me this time.

I was warned to turn up by at least 7:30pm for an 8:00pm start. I lost my way getting to Joiners and arrived at 7:40pm. This was sufficiently late that I was booked in as the second to the last person for the night.

The music was largely mellow folk and blues. I was delighted by how much of it was original material. However, the laid back quality of the night had me worried that my humorous poetry might not fit in. Miraculously, Erica Graf placed herself in a slot just before mine. Erica is an exceptional guitarist and I would guess has had considerable classical training. Triple J Unearthed gave she and the band Last Night’s Dream top reviews. Her performance had a lyrical playful quality that helped immensely in getting people in the mood for what was to follow.

For my own set I read “Ninjas Ninjas Ninjas”, “Will Play for Cheese”, and “Candlelight”. People laughed at the ninjas poem. The musos appreciated the sentiment in the cheese poem. “Candlelight” was something I did precisely
because this wasn’t a comedy venue. It’s a heartfelt piece about hanging on in dark times.

I was only three lines in and the entire room went dead silent. I continued reading with my whole guts, then when I finished, received big applause. I have to admit, I was gobsmacked. Afterwards I had a number of people tell me how much they liked “the angel poem”. One of the performers made sure to point out how rare it is to get a listening room like that.

Now I’m a little confused. I thought maybe I was being precious talking about finding my audience. Maybe I just needed to be better (which is probably still true). I find my audience and it’s not at a comedy venue. My humour heads more toward the Garrison Keillor/Jim Henson stuff, so it’s gentler and sillier than  is usually presented at comedy venues.

With comedy you can find a nice clear path to some form of commercial success (I’m talking about making a living, not selling out). With this, if I start putting my focus where my audience is, I have no idea where I’m going and I really need to find a way to support myself doing what I love. I suppose the answer for now is do everything, since I’m still developing. Let me know what you think.

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

At the moment The Rhino Room is THE open mic night for budding Adelaide comedians. They have so many hopefuls lining up that you’re doing well if you can get two spots a year at that venue. I’ve been toying with starting my own venue with a slightly different flavour to its comedy. I also thought it might be good to just show up at other open mic nights, even though they may not emphasise comedy.

So, it was back to The Gov. I checked the details for their open mic night online, then turned up. This was not the same event I experienced more than a year ago.

I brought with me two lyrics/poems. Everyone was helpful with getting me onto the board for my moment at the mic. Let me tell you it was a weird night to be at The Gov. Pink was playing at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre just across the street.  I ended up being the second person up and after the third group, the pub just emptied out, as most of the customers hussled off to the concert. So, it was musos playing to musos. Though, it was more than that, this wasn’t so much open mic as jam session.

Jokes were made that they were doing karaoke, because they had a black book of songs. People would sign up to do a song as singer or musician, then a group of other people would bung together in order to create something musically glorious. I even sang a little backing vocals. Mind you, I could have sung along with the romantic guy, I could have sung along with the edgy guy, but no…I throw my towel in with the guy playing the ukulele. Gads, I’m hopeless.

My lyrics went down fairly well. It was fun being the belle of the ball when some guys started talking about how they might set them to music: “I can hear that happening in D major.” The thought of collaborating with someone on music excited me.

Some people were a little suprised by my reading and they asked why I had come. I pointed at a poster on the wall and said, “Well, you advertise for poetry readings as well.” It was hilarious seeing a whole table of musos turn as one to look at the poster. “Oh yeah,” said one woman, “I’d forgotten we do that.”

The musical highlight of the evening was a group of soul/gospel singers who turned up late. They did “House of the Rising Sun” and “Mustang Sally.” The musos were falling over one another to back these guys up. I was over the moon with their bright big sound. It reminded me of that night with Jamaica. So after their set I spoke to one of their lead singers, talented vocalist David Ari Michos. I’ve been seriously thinking about doing a show at next year’s Adelaide Fringe, and do I ever want these people in it. I’ve begun the wooing process and emailed David today.

I love it when things turn weird and wonderful. Stay tuned as I check out a few more open mic gigs.

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

I had to quickly write a new routine Friday a week ago when I discovered the place had limited multimedia capacity. That’s when I dragged out Mbulu for an encore performance. He is after all the coolest soft toy on the planet. However, juggling him and a microphone filled me with dread. Fortunately, the venue did have radio mics! Unfortunately, they were homemade and involved a coat hanger around the back of my head that eventually started to dig into my skin…ouch.

We pulled numbers out of a hat for our performance order. I pulled the number six. That’s the same number Patrick McGoohan’s character had in the 60s TV show The Prisoner. So when the organiser asked, “Your number?” I responded with a line from the show, “I am not a number, I am a free man.” Now I thought this was going to be a private joke. But it turned out we had a Welsh comedian who grew up near where that show was filmed, and he cracked up. Ah, nice way to start the evening.

As number six (I’m still not a number) I was in the first group of comedians and it was nice being put in the hottest set from where all the winners came. It meant the audience were in a good mood when they came to me.

You are all probably wondering: did Katherine Phelps win? No I did not win the audience favourite award nor the judges award. But with creative things like this, just because you didn’t win doesn’t mean that you lost. Though I’ve
written plenty of published humorous books, stories, articles, screenplays, etc, I’m pretty wet behind the ears when it comes to stand-up. When Mark invited me to participate I thought, “Great! More experience.”

So, for me the real question is what did I learn? What worked? What didn’t work?

Mbulu worked before we even stepped out onto the stage.  The idea of poetry didn’t work as well for a suburban audience (this wasn’t a city venue). But might still work at other venues at which I’ve performed. My first couple of poems had people interested: they were attentive, unlike during a couple of acts that died. However, I didn’t get a lot of laughs. My last poem Ninjas Ninjas Ninjas got huge laughs.

If I was serious about winning, I probably shouldn’t have used entirely new and untested material. But I didn’t want to play it safe, I wanted to know what worked. This audience was great, because they were informed we were largely
beginners and therefore sympathetic, and they were discouraged from heckling. Also, it was largely made up of supporters for the various comedians.

When I went out to the foyer during intermission for a bottle of water, I had a number of people approach me for a chat. This was a very good sign. If I had failed miserably, people would have avoided me. Also, people obviously felt I was approachable and likeable. ACE! BIG WIN! Those are keys to an enduring career. I also had the word “original” tossed at me several times. I love “original”; it just needs to be connected with “accessible” and “funny”.

I’m not certain whether I want to work this routine further or move onto something else. It might be fun to work up a few more sure-fire poems. I have resorted to Mbulu a) because he’s cool (did I already say that?) and b) because
I would dearly love to have a comic partner. Backstage I was, as ever, riffing off the other comedians and laughing until it hurt. I would love to bring that to the stage. I’d love to do a modern George Burns & Gracie Allen act.

I also keep feeling that I haven’t really found my audience yet. I need a Lano & Woodley crowd and standup venues get more of an Otis Lee Crenshaw crowd. I’m more on the family end of things, and families tend to go to full shows. So, I’m already working on a show for next year’s Adelaide Fringe. Stay tuned.

Mbulu and Katherine before the show

Peace and kindness,

Katherine