Melissa's Place

Amateur Comedy Night

My cousin is “in comedy” which means she’s a comedian-in-training. She’s a first year student, however, she’s already taken the initiative to start a sketch show every Monday evening at a local bar. Last night was her last show of the season, and since I hadn’t made it out to any of the subsequent shows and I really wanted to show my support, it was my last chance. So I piled Mark into the car, we picked up my brother, his girlfriend and his friend, and we went to the show to support her.

There were many amateur comedians – some did skits and others did stand up comedy. I could never have the courage to make myself as vulnerable as they did that night so, for that reason, I truly applaud them and their efforts. However, despite the fact that I love my cousin and found her skits to be very enjoyable and funny, there were other parts of the show which were very difficult to witness. I defined, in my mind, several different kinds of laughter that night. Allow me to explain.

The best kind of laughter is spontaneous. It surprises even you. Suddenly you notice yourself laughing, it’s not premeditated laughing, it’s pure reflexatory laughing and it’s genuine and takes no effort. This laughter happens easily during very, VERY funny presentations or when the asshole who’s been tailgating you for seventeen blocks gets pulled over by the cops.

Then there’s the more forced laughing. It’s when you’re sitting on the edge of a laugh, anticipating something funny, and worrying slightly that it won’t come. This kind of lying in wait of a laugh can be very draining. During an amateur comedy night, you can find yourself in the state of anticipating a laugh for quite a long time before it occurs. When you’re this nervous, even a moderately funny occurance is such a relief, that the laugh can get forced out as if you’d just opened a flood gate.

There's also painful laughter. Not the fun kind of pain that you feel in your jaws or your side when you’re laughing whole-heartedly straight from the belly. No, painful laughter is work. When you want to encourage a slightly less funny amateur comedian into not running off stage and giving up on his dream and into trying another joke, all the while knowing that it’s possible you’ll need to exude a painful laugh in reaction to every successive joke thereafter, that is painful laughter. It sneaks out sometimes when the rest of the audience is quiet after a joke that no one understood.

Embarrassing laughter surprises you at the worst possible moments. For instance, when grandma farts at Thanksgiving dinner. Or at church during prayer time, when someone asks you to pray for the zookeeper who was trampled by an elephant.

I found this analysis of laughter, as it came to me last night, to be actually surprisingly humourous. And for a second, I wondered if it might hurt an amateur comedian’s feelings to read this blog. However, like everything else, we must walk before we can run and we must float before we can swim (I might have made that one up) and, I suppose, we must be not funny and then only moderately funny before we can be sincerely and absolutely side-splittingly funny.

Cheers to those who persevere through all the types of laughter in the audience!