Stand Up and be Graded - Maren Bjerkeng
It is a Wednesday afternoon, and the three 2nd year comedy students Sam Lutitt (22), Joe Marsh (19) and Xander Owers (20) are sitting in an empty teaching room on King Alfred Campus at the University of Winchester. It is sparse and abandoned-looking, so we drag some chairs out of the corner and gather up in a circle. The three boys have agreed to be interviewed by me, a 2nd year Creative and Professional writing student ahead of the show ‘Stand-up and Be Graded’, which takes place in Theatre Royal on Tuesday 12th March at 7.30 pm.
How did you get into comedy?
Sam: I wouldn’t have done anything else, I don’t think I could do anything else. I got into comedy by doing whatever gigs I could. For my first one, when I was eighteen, my Uncle told me there was an arts centre where I lived that hosted an open mic night. That was my first ‘proper’ gig. It was really bad. All of the other acts were musical and at the time I didn’t know that doing comedy at a music night was a really bad idea. In addition, the man introducing me, did not only horribly mispronounce my name, he chose right then to tell me, and the entire audience, that it was the first time anyone had ever done comedy there.
After that I was introduced to Bryan Lewis, he took a chance on me and gave me a 5-minute spot. I wasn’t getting paid, but it was really great to have free stage time as sometimes in clubs you have to buy drinks to get stage time. I started to really enjoy the high I felt after performing and would go up as often as I could.
Joe: It’s kind of similar for me. I couldn’t have seen myself doing anything else. I interviewed for other courses, but I knew that I wouldn’t have been satisfied unless I was doing this. And I’ve been performing comedy, plays, musicals, pantomimes since I was about nine, but I only just recently got into stand-up through doing the course, and this will be, by far, my biggest gig. It will be quite a challenge, but I’m looking forward to it.
Xander: I have always been a big fan of comedy in my free time. I spontaneously chose drama at GCSE, I started to love that, and I realised comedy is my thing and carried on from there. I didn’t know what to do when I finished school, so I had a gap year and I found that office jobs are extremely tedious, but luckily, I came across this comedy course.
What did you do before you began your course here at Winchester?
Sam: Before I did comedy, I was doing a 2-year Btec in Public services. 6 months in I realised that comedy was what I was actually passionate about. It would still be a year or two before I discovered you could study a degree in comedy, though.
Have long have you all been preparing for this show?
Joe: We’ve known about it for a few months, but only been doing this stand-up module for this semester and preparing for the show since mid-January. We have all been working on different stuff, workshopping and rehearsing, and we’re slowly getting to the point where we have got our performances down and we’re pretty much close to being ready for the show.
Are you preparing scripts for the show or do you improvise?
Sam: I write a set list with the different topics I want to talk about. And then if I want to work something out, I write it out. It just makes it easier to remember, ‘I have to hit this point, this point and this point’.
Joe: Everyone is different, some people go in and have a point they want to make and then just ramble on about it, having an idea of where they’re going. Some people, like me, like to write down a script and learn that. But there is always room for improvisation and change.
Xander: I script word for word as well. But in every gig so far, I have come across a moment where I’ve forgotten where I am, and it hasn’t gone very well. Yet, I am continuing to do script so maybe I should change that.
Is there anything particular that you’ve taken from the course?
Xander: The joke can always be taken further. You can always tweak it, it’s never perfect. That is the underlying message of every lecture.
Joe: Sometimes you go too far, but then you just to take it back. It’s always good to see how far you can take it.
Xander: In addition, I think a skill that we’ve all developed, I certainly have, on top on how to write jokes and be funny yourself, is how to pretend to laugh at other people's jokes. People say jokes and I laugh, and I mislead them to think it was good.
The show is three weeks away, what will you do in the weeks to come to prepare?
Xander: Panic. And then write a few jokes last minute.
Joe: We’ve all been practising so much stuff that we could just lift it and put it straight in to the show if we’d want.
Sam: I think for now we’re all in pretty good shape.
When the day comes, and it’s about five-ten minutes until you go on stage, what do you do?
Sam: I can’t talk to anyone or have anyone talk to me. I have to be left alone.
Xander: I like to stop being as smiley and cheerful as I normally am offstage, and I go into a deadpan sarcastic sense which I am onstage.
Joe: I will just sit back and run the lines through my head. I am quite calm before I go onstage. I try not to think too hard. It’s called stand-up and be graded, but we’re not actually being graded. So, if it goes wrong it goes wrong. It’s the performance three weeks later where we’re getting assessed, and we’ll probably be more nervous for that one.
So, this upcoming show will be a way for you all to try out your set before your assessment?
Sam: Yes. Depending on how it goes we will be doing the same for the assessment or do some changes. Which is a good reason to try it out now for ‘Stand-up and Be graded’.
Joe: It’s nice to do it in front of a crowd to see how they react and if it works or not. It should be a good night.
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