I’m at a fitness class at Zayed Sports City and I start talking to this tall, red-haired guy. As we jog along, side by side, he says his name is Erik Thornquist and he has started a group to bring more stand-up comedy to Abu Dhabi because, while there is plenty of stand-up in Dubai, Abu Dhabi is less well served. He began organising events and performing comedy himself.
Interesting, I think to myself. Fast-forward about 10 weeks and I work up the nerve to send him a message and ask whether they teach classes in stand-up because, if so, I’d be interested in taking one.
They did. And one Wednesday night, late last month, I found myself waiting to go on stage and make my stand-up comedy debut.
With five minutes to go before I had to face the audience, all of a sudden I totally blanked. I couldn’t remember a single one of my jokes. Zilch.
How had it come to this? A long time ago I was on an Air Canada flight with my family. This is so long ago that the only video entertainment available was a movie on a tiny overhead screen in the aisle – but there were lots of audio channels you could listen to.
One was a comedy channel and one of the routines it featured was American comedian and actor Bob Newhart’s King Kong skit. He takes on the role of a security guard working his first shift at the Empire State Building – on the same night King Kong shows up. The guard phones his boss for advice.
As was his style for his comedy routines in those days, Newhart acts out one end of a conversation – we do not hear the person on the other end. It was puckish, absurd, clever, hesitant, slow-building and surprising – it was the funniest thing I had ever heard.
When the watchman tells his boss that the ape is holding a woman, there is a short pause for the boss’s unheard reaction, before the guard responds: “No, ah, I don’t think she works in the building, no sir … Well, see, as he passed by my floor, ah, she had this kind of negligee on, you know, so I doubt very much if she was one of the cleaning women.”
Why do I remember this skit and none of the others I listened to during that flight?
Because I identified with Newhart’s voice. It was a voice I could imagine speaking in, being funny in. I could never imagine being a wild and crazy guy or the Catskills vaudevillian type who bullies people into laughing, but I could picture myself being funny in Bob Newhart’s button-down way. I was a bit of a class clown as a kid– this was a glimmer of something better.
Over the years my friends probably thought of me as funny, in the right situation. Not at big parties or dinners, but in small groups, just hanging around. I never gave a thought to trying to be funny in an organised way.
I couldn’t have done it without the classes. Five two-hour sessions on Saturday mornings, run by the Yalla Laughs guys, Thornquist and Jon Boulton, with two other students, Lyndsay Head and Colin Armstrong. The course would culminate in a stand-up show.
What I learnt was that stand-up is a specific type of humour. Things that seem funny when you write them might not translate to a live audience. We found the material we wrote before the course was not the material we ended up using.
Jon and Erik talked about how other comedians work. The first time Chris Rock tries a new joke he says it flat. If it gets a laugh, he rewrites and rewrites it, adding emphasis, gestures and pauses.
I did the same, so that this: “So, the Empty Quarter. Y’know, it’s not like the other three quarters got a lot going on either.”
Became this: “So [short pause] the Empty Quarter. [longer pause] Y’know [emphasis on know, then short pause] it’s not like the other [emphasis on other] three quarters got a lot going on either [uptick on either].” Each week the course led us a little deeper into the water, so that the deep end – the stage – slowly became less daunting.
Still, I was super nervous on the night. The start was delayed, which made matters worse. Friends were there, which helped – though they later admitted they came more in the expectation of having to offer consolation than of being entertained. And then I blanked, which was terrifying. But after a few deep breaths the light bulb flickered back on.
I think my bit went well. You get tunnel vision during any kind of public speaking – but people laughed. The most interesting part came later, when the headliner, Simeon Goodson, took the stage.
I watched him differently than I would have before. I wasn’t listening to jokes and waiting to laugh but instead was noticing little things, such as how he would fill the space between gags, how he connected with the audience, how he seemed to be enjoying himself rather than scared witless.
It made me want to do it again, because I know I can do it better the second time. And I will, on Wednesday night.
Seasoned entertainer Simeon Goodson: ‘I remember that there was laughter’
Comedian Simeon Goodson, who is from Brooklyn in New York and now lives in Al Ain, reveals how he started out in the stand-up scene:
“Every Wednesday the restaurant [in Brooklyn] I worked at hosted a comedy night. The host [Jon] and I struck up a friendship and he would chat with me before and after the shows. I would constantly say I wanted to perform, but when he would offer me the opportunity, I was too afraid to accept. This continued for some months, then one day I decided to go for it.
“I was introduced and came onto the stage. As some of the patrons recognised me as an employee, there was a scattering of polite applause. I told some jokes that I can’t remember – but what I do remember was that there was laughter. There were no applause breaks or people doubled over with tears welling up in their eyes, but as I scanned the room I saw smiling faces and genuine amusement. After the show, Jon came up to me and told me that I did a great job.
“It would be a number of years before I took to the stage again. The next time I did nowhere near as well, but the seed had already been planted. Years later, I find myself still reaping its fruits.”
In the past decade, Simeon has performed at least three more times, in locations ranging from Brooklyn to Al Ain.
Stand-up comedy newbie Lyndsay Head: ‘I was surprised by how un-nervous I was’
Rob’s fellow first-timer, Lyndsay Head, a teacher from the UK who has lived in the UAE for five years, tells us about her experience:
“I was surprised by how un-nervous I was on the night. I was more jittery about 10 days prior to the event, when I had my material written but could not figure out how to present it.
“As a woman, I have always felt there are some great female comedians out there with fabulous content, but they don’t seem to deliver it as convincingly as their male counterparts. Maybe comedy itself requires a public display of arrogance that women are conditioned from an early age to conceal.
“I’ve often felt women make excellent sitcoms, whereby they can be funny in character.
“It wasn’t until I put on my wedding dress and hat [a burlesque black-and-red cherry extravagant affair] a few days before the event that I felt a character forming and decided that this was what I was going to wear. The dress seemed to require a sort of bolshy cockney Adele-meets-Amy Winehouse accent to match. I was then able to deliver my material confidently in front of family and friends and my confidence grew.
By the time of the event, I found I needed the faux cockney diva accent less and more of my own voice came through.”
• Yalla Laughs hosts Beat the Camel, a gong-show-style comedy night, at 8pm on Wednesday, October 12 at Barosa in the Ramada Abu Dhabi Downtown. For more details, visit www.yallalaughs.com
rmckenzie@thenational.ae
