5 Steps To Get Over A Bad Gig

It’ll happen to all of us.

We’ll have a truly awful gig. Not just a bad one where the audience didn’t
laugh as much as you wanted or you screwed up the punchlines and lost your
train of thought. But rather a truly psyche destroying gig where nothing went
even remotely to plan as you tried your best to make strangers laugh when they
clearly didn’t want anything to do with you.

This will happen to every comic. If it
hasn’t then you’re either too new to comedy or your material is so sure fire
hack that it’ll work anywhere or both.

After such a gig you’ll genuinely question
whether or not comedy is what you should be doing and definitely whether you’re
even funny at all.

Now of course you should continue. If you
had a vested interested in pursuing standup beyond that of a hobby before the
gig then you should keep going. The problem now is how to get over the hurdle
of a setback as quickly as possible.

So here are the best ways to get over a bad
gig.

1. Sleep on it.

Like straight away.
As soon as you can get your head on a pillow. It shouldn’t be too difficult. A
bad gig is a truly exhausting experience and you’ll feel drained. This is
important because it separates you from the event so that it can’t cause any
further damage.

2. Reassess.

The next day you’ll
wake up and it’ll be the first thing in your mind that comes crushing down on
your day. But you need to put things in perspective with these questions.

Was it a bad
gig? I don’t mean your performance. I mean the many factors that go into the
quality of a gig.

Was it a good
venue?

Was there
adequate lighting?

Were they a
“comedy crowd” or a soulless corporate audience still thinking of pie charts
from the day before?

Did the MC do a
good job, was there an MC at all?

Consider these
things and ask yourself if you even had a fair chance at doing a good gig to
begin with.

3. What could you have done differently?

This is
a really important step and is key to not only getting over a bad gig but
continually improving as a comic. You as a performer need to understand that
every human is capable of enjoyment and laughter. There are limitless words that
we can say to evoke emotions and ideas in others. This means that we all have
the potential to make others laugh. We just need the right performance.

So it’s never
appropriate to say “the audience were terrible” or if you genuinely tried that
you were terrible. There was a miscommunication with your intent and ideas but
you need to bear the responsibility for the gig because there’s someone else in
the world that would crush it. There’s not a bad gig around where another comic
somewhere in the world couldn’t completely destroy. The goal is to become that
other comic.

So look over the
whole gig. Your set, the age and demographics of the audience, yours and their
expectations and the reality and see how they match up. Then adjust
accordingly.

4. Don’t let it
hold you down.

One bad gig can
easily snowball into five if your confidence is shook. Now the people who saw
you bomb have forgotten about it the only person remembering it is you. If you
let it get into your head for future gigs then you are consciously allowing
yourself to bomb and only you are to blame.

5. Get back on
the horse.

You won’t feel
better straight away, but in my experience the single most curing remedy for a
bad gig is an amazing one. The only way to have an amazing gig after a bad one
is to just keep performing. You may have trouble mustering the energy to do it,
so go back to writing if you need to.

You can’t get
out of your head entirely. You just need to separate yourself from it as much
as possible. Do as many gigs as you can and let time pass. But only do gigs
that you feel up to the challenge of.

If you’re
performing that same material then change it up. The order, the pacing, the
rhythm your pronunciation and tone to get out of the rehearsed mindset. Put
your brain on the backfoot and your funny will be allowed to come out in new
ways.

That’s all you
can really do, just know every quality comic in the world has had too many
awful gigs to count. At some point in our career we are always going to be the
comic bombing harder than he’s ever bombed at a fundraising corporate to a
bunch of people in their 60’s eating three course meals at a 5 star restaurant
because we all know that’s how you end poverty.

And then they
won’t pay you after.

I guess what I’m
trying to say is,