I entered the hall with trepidation. Terrible butterflies flapping about in my stomach. My instinct was to walk out.
It had been a couple of tense weeks at home. My partner had an accident, falling down a flight of stairs (thankfully he survived but it was scary nonetheless). I injured my leg at the gym, and was hobbling about. The usual parenting stress. I felt 100 years old.
It seemed like the world was telling me NOT to get on stage, and not to do this stand-up routine that it had taken me weeks to write. What if nobody laughed? What if it was just complete silence? What if people booed? In that moment, the moment just before I got on stage, I questioned why on earth I was doing this. It was so much easier to sit at home and catch up on the latest season of Yellowstone.
When we get older, we can get rigid in our ideas. We may say things like ‘Oh I’m not funny, I could never do stand-up,’ or it ‘I’m not disciplined enough to write a novel,’ or ‘I can’t run, I’ve never been a sporty type you see’. However the idea of doing things that are precisely the opposite of what you’ve always done is vital as you age.
I’m convinced that the more novel experiences you have the more fun you have, the more fun you have, the less rigid you become. When I meet women who are older than me, the kind of women that are difficult to age as they still have enthusiasm and energy… well, they tend to be trying new things out. They haven’t just got stuck in a rut.
The thing is, it’s easier to just retreat. It takes energy to send yourself out into the world - but it’s worth it and I find that whenever I try something new, I rarely regret it (except I am bad at team sports and I won’t get involved - it’s good to know your limits too).
This desire to stretch myself is also why I attended an eight week stand-up comedy course run by two actresses, Juliet Cowan and Sarah Shackleton. But it doesn’t have to be a comedy course - it could be anything. A new language. Or hip hop dancing. Or singing lessons. Anything that has perhaps always been on your radar, that you’ve wanted to have a go at.
Because what is the worst thing that could happen if you try something that you’ve never done? The worst thing might be that you’re not very good at it, but who cares? Is anyone watching? I mean with stand-up, YES they are watching, but you’re in the same boat, all beginners, all starting out, and all scared out of your tiny minds. At the end of the course you put on a show and each of you goes on stage with a proper audience, in a proper venue and you perform for five minutes.
When I arrived the very first week I was tired. It was a Wednesday evening. Wednesday is usually when I feel beaten down by life. It’s not called ‘hump day’ for nothing. I was secretly hoping that I wouldn’t have to speak. That Juliet and Sarah would talk, and I’d take notes and maybe get to meet a couple of nice people. Then I’d go back to Yellowstone. However, that first week we were tasked to talk to the group. We had to talk about things that made us irritated (this is one of my strongest subjects so I felt comfortable doing this) and we had to get our heads around just standing up in front of one another. I felt self conscious but we were reading from our books so it wasn’t too bad. I knew that doing proper stand-up would feel different.
And who were my fellow attendees? It definitely over indexed on midlife women. Women who had told themselves to try something new, to try the most terrifying thing and embrace it. The first few weeks Juliet kept saying that we didn’t have to ‘try and be funny’ and we were taught certain ways to construct jokes.
Misconceptions
My menopausal brain found it hard to take the new information in and I kept thinking ‘well you’re either funny or you’re not funny,’ but the truth is that stand-up is a craft. It takes a lot of work to look like you’re relaxed and know exactly what you’re doing while you’re taking your audience. I think I’d had this misconception that you just got up on stage and told funny anecdotes about your family, but this is seriously not the case. Not unless those are very polished and also have a punchline, then you’re just talking to someone in the supermarket and it’s not a performance at all.
As time passed, the more I started to think that I would NEVER be funny. I’d been arrogant enough to think I was! To stand up in front of a group of relative strangers (the process bonded us together very quickly and I feel like by the end we were all friends) and to be vulnerable is hard. Much of the writing I do is exposing on a personal level, but I don’t have to look into the whites of anyone' eyes whilst I’m writing a feature. I don’t have to watch their face for clues on whether they like what I’m saying or not. I just tap away at a keyboard, usually with a spoilt cat by my side looking for attention and a pat now and then. It feels relatively safe.
When you’re doing stand-up there is literally nowhere to hide. If you have a strange body language habit then it’ll show up and suddenly you’ll realise that you always play with your hair or stand on one leg. It’s like being under a giant magnifying glass. I’d recently had a tooth removed and I became so self conscious about it that I kept making it even more noticeable by trying not to smile whilst I was performing. I was worried people would think I was a toothless hag! But it just made me look odd I feel. Why wasn’t I smiling? Was I sad?
Motivations
I also realised that I’d walked around for a long time, thinking that this stand-up malarky was something I’d be ace at. Growing up I was often told I was funny. I also do funny content on social media. This would be a walk in the park! Except it wasn’t. I think it was week four when I realised that some of the people on the course were naturals and they made people laugh without much effort. Me… well, it didn’t come so naturally. I felt like my entire neurotic brain was being dissected. I also realised that my life hadn’t been that funny of late. But that’s also a false belief - stories aren’t funny of themselves, they are funny if you own them and ramp up what happened, creating punchy, memorable lines that the audience hopefully will remember afterwards. Good comedians are often those that you think about days later and want to share with your friends.
And what were the motivations of the other people on the course? Esther, in her mid 50s, put it this way: “It’s cathartic for me. I’m coming out of a relationship of 28 years, and I can make some really dark jokes. It has given me confidence. It’s helped me claim some of identity back.”
Joy, also in her 50s echoed this idea of losing yourself a little in midlife, and how doing something new and scary was helping her: “The fear comes from standing up there and being you. You finally face up to being yourself I guess." I also spoke to Dave (who was younger and definitely not menopausal) who said: "Stand-up has taught me that vulnerability isn’t weakness, sometimes it’s the funniest thing in the room."
Finding humour in shame
Each class we shared the most intimate details of our lives and this felt incredibly healing. Another thing I’ve noticed as I get older is that I no longer want to have superficial conversations. I want to either go straight in the deep end or not bother. This is also true of doing something like stand-up. Of course you can create funny scenarios out of small things, but it’s the most shameful things, the things that you try and hide that are often the funniest.
As the weeks went on the performances got more raw. More authentic. I normally hate the phrase but S**T GOT REAL! "We started the course because we believe that looking at the world through a comedy lens is transformative and those skills can be used in every area of life," is what Juliet said when I called her after the course had finished. If we can laugh at ourselves, then we can pretty much survive anything.
What did I do my performance on at the end of the course? Well if I tell you here, I’m pretty sure you won’t laugh. OK, well it was all about an AI Robot who had the face of Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters. You’re not laughing? I guess you had to be there. People did though. I was surprised. And people laughed at all the other performers too because they were all brilliant. They presented themselves as flawed, as imperfect, as messy, as paranoid, as screwed up and as anxious. They peeled back the layers and showed us all their inner worlds. It was a hot, sweltering night. It was exposing. I was more scared than I was before I went into labour (I won’t say it was as scary as being in labour, it wasn’t).
For the first few seconds, I felt exhilarated, mortified, happy, anxious, worried, then calm and finally relieved. Fireworks went off in my head for days afterwards. I was happy that I’d tested myself and not just watched TV instead. I also felt little synapses that had been dormant in my brain were reconnecting. And this is why we must try new things, not just in midlife but at any age. We must do them to remind ourselves of how it feels to be alive. Of how terrifying and beautiful that experience can be.
To find out about more about Juliet and Sarah’s comedy courses, email: info@BureauofHumorousAffairs.co.uk
