A Self Observation From 4 Months In Standup Comedy

Lacey Artemis
5 min readFeb 16, 2024

After 20 plus years as a musician who never performed live, I’d missed out on SO much. The similarities and differences are interesting.

I’ve started to notice something interesting.

Despite being a musician for over 20 years now, I never performed music live. Not because I didn’t want to, it was a combination of factors.

1. The music I composed was too layered to perform by myself (and I didn’t want to bother anyone to be my backing band.

2. I was never a good singer, not even close (and was always self conscious)

3. I also had MASSIVE stage fright. My hands would literally start to shake and sweat at the thought of playing guitar in front of strangers. Obviously it’s hard to play guitar with sweaty shaking hands. It felt WAY too vulnerable, even though I DID want to do it.

But because I never performed live, I never got to meet other local musicians, and I think that was a huge missed opportunity for sure.

In comedy, while you CAN write jokes in isolation, record yourself performing them to your phone and post online (like you can with music), it’s NOT the same as actually going to mics and getting live feedback from the audience (and sometimes kudos from the other comedians/host). It would also be a very different thing to perform a 5 minute song that people don’t really seem to be vibing with, vs performing 5 minutes of comedy that absolutely no one laughs at.

Are shaky hands still a problem in performing comedy? Yes, and no.

During my first ever set, the one I did as part of my class at Bad Dog Theatre, I managed to barrel through around 3 mins of my story BEFORE my brain realized ‘holy crap, you’re actually on a stage, in front of a bunch of strangers, and you’re PERFORMING’, and my hands started to shake, not severely, but I felt it.

But it didn’t really matter, because I’m an animated person and I am a ‘hand talker’, so it’s much easier to ‘hide’ or blend it in. But I remember thinking to myself after that performance ‘okay, if I made it through 3 minutes this time, next time I should be able to make it through at least 3 and a half or 4 mins, and then I’m basically through most of a standard 5 minute set anyway’.

In my second on stage performance, I did not shake at all, but I’d had a few chances to practice on zoom, so my confidence and comfort were both up.

I still think I’d get shaky if I was playing guitar and trying to sing, because that’s just DIFFERENT. But with comedy, I can lean INTO that awkwardness and make it a feature rather than a bug.

With a guitar, unless I’m doing parody/prop comedy, that’s not the case. I also feel like my ‘style’ of music is far less ‘universal’ than the comedy I can write. ie it feels much easier to write a comedy set that I enjoy/want to perform that I think would work in more rooms than not, than it feels to write a song that I would enjoy playing over and over even if it was more ‘mainstream’ style wise.

But back to my original point — I’ve gone to a few open mics now, and it makes me realize what I missed out on with music.

Because I’m getting to see these other people perform, and each has their own unique delivery/style, vibe, ‘genre’ if you will. And some of them are a style or genre that I really enjoy, and others I can still appreciate the jokes even if the ‘genre’ doesn’t ‘land’ with me in a way that elicits my laughter. Same way as I can appreciate the technical ability of a blues guitarist even if the actual music itself doesn’t resonate with me as much.

Side observation — Given that my most preferred style/genre of music tends to be heavy metal or harder progressive rock, yet my natural comedy style is much more silly, and pun/wordplay based, those feel like VERY different styles, and I think maybe part of me thinks they should be more aligned.

I mean, I have always enjoyed and appreciated what Weird Al Yankovic does, and I’ve written a few parodies myself, but always preferred to write ‘albums’ of rock/metal songs. Musically, that’s what felt most natural in that context. And comedically, I can be darker like heavy metal, but that’s not what feels best and most natural for me in the context of comedy.

I guess I’m Punny Wordplay Barbie on one stage and Post Metal Barbie on the other.

No one is going to laugh at everyone/everything. But yeah, I’ve made a point at each of my shows to go to at least one of the other comics who I enjoyed, and just say ‘hey, I really enjoyed your set! I hope to see you again’. And likewise, a few of them have said that back (yay!).

Heck, I even have aspirations of hopefully hosting one or more shows in the future, so knowing more local comics and the ones I enjoy most, but also knowing the different styles to have a good variety will be helpful.

And I realize that as I keep going, I will see some of these people often, and probably even become friends. Maybe we’ll hang out and workshop jokes together. That would be awesome.

Comedy is obviously a very social realm, and people enjoy chatting/hanging out. As someone who was much more introverted for most of her life, I almost can’t believe I’m part of this now. It’s like I got to trade lives with someone else.

And that’s just in the comedy space. I’m also just getting into the film and television world as well, so before long I’m not even going to recognize my life anymore compared to what it was even 2 years ago.

And that’s really cool. My ‘old life’ wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t me living it to the full potential. I made a focused effort for a good 15 years to get over my shyness and social awkwardness and my fear of rejection, because I wanted nothing more than to connect with people. I’m so glad i’m getting to see the rewards of that effort.

Lacey Artemis is an artist, writer, comic, storyteller, musician, and more. You can find all of her work online at www.laceyartemis.com.

--

--

Lacey Artemis
Lacey Artemis

Written by Lacey Artemis

Perpetually curious, creatively inclined extrovert. Ponder, write, repeat. she/her. www.laceyartemis.com

No responses yet