Bombs Away! A Study of the Abject Horror of Failing in Standup Comedy

Originally published March 4, 2009

It was a normal Treehouse open mic, just like the several others I had performed at and done quite well. But this night turned out to be much different. For those of you who don’t know or never cared, I do standup comedy. I have been doing it quite a while now with much success. I started doing some performances at a bar in the deceptively dangerous town of Bridgeport, Connecticut. From there I was able to get a gig at the Good Life Café here in Carlisle. For the most part I felt the crowd there liked me. Most of the people there were there to see a folk music group and I went on during the intermission. Some of the older people seemed horrified at some of my more lurid material, but I got a lot of laughs. Unfortunately, I have not been invited back.
Running out of venues to perform at, a friend suggested I should perform at the treehouse. I was a little reluctant to perform there since I thought it was mainly a venue for music. Plus, I wasn’t sure how a group of people who take sustainability so seriously would react to my material. Environmentalists are notorious for having no sense of humor. It was a little strange going to an open mic that didn’t have a microphone, but I killed anyways. After a few successful performances my confidence had increased substantially. I even began to refer to myself as “bombproof”, not in conversation, just in my egotistic internal monologue. It was only a matter of time before my hubris got the better of me.
I went to the treehouse only to find that not a single person I asked to come see me perform showed up. This was a little disheartening but I wasn’t going to let it get to me. Once I got up, I began with one of my successful opening lines and I heard an unusual sound afterwards, silence. This lack of laughter completely threw me off. I went on with more previously successful material only to hear more silence. The feeling I had was like the awkwardness of a long pause in a conversation. If you multiply that awkwardness by fifty, that’s how I felt. The worst was when I tried some new material that was focused on how ridiculous anti-Semitism is. I said something along the lines of “Now I’m Jewish…” Suddenly I was interrupted by a person who laughed loudly and deliberately at my saying this. A heckler, a Jew hating heckler. I should have torn into him, asking him how long he had been a member of the Nazi party and the like, but instead I froze up. I finished my set and proceeded as quickly as I could to the exit. Two people stopped me to say it wasn’t as bad as I thought, but that was little consolation.
There is no way to describe the pain of bombing on stage. Especially when you question your comedic ability. This was very problematic for me since comedy is pretty much the only thing I’m good at. After a little research I discovered that bombing is inevitable. Every comedian there has ever been has bombed at one point or another. This was very reassuring, and now I am more concerned with trying to redeem myself. Despite the soul crushing pain of the experience, all in all it’s just a bump on the road.