Goodbye Lima

The finals in Peru were incredibly competitive and everyone who participated was quite professional. In the end, a professor of stand-up comedy won and a famous actor came second. I didn’t win but had a really great time with my routine. There are still a couple things that I think I could’ve worked on to make the routine even better. The first problem I encountered was the fact that I didn’t have an ending for the routine itself. A joke is a lot like a storyline and you have to have a beginning, climax and resolution with the punch line being the resolution. I didn’t have a punch line to close my routine. It wasn’t a fatal mistake but it still meant that the routine wasn’t as tight as it could’ve been. Secondly, my rhythm in the routine was off at times; I would say a line too fast or didn’t allow the audience to laugh enough before moving on to the next joke/line. In other words, I went so fast that at times I didn’t let the audience laugh enough. Thirdly, it just wasn’t a win night but it was still a good routine and I did enjoy myself. I have a copy of both routines, so if you speak Spanish or if you just want a copy of the DVD, let me know by posting a comment and I’ll be sure to give you one.

So what was this routine about? I used my experience at a Nicaraguan club (see previous post: Nicaragua Take one: Lights Camera, Action) and took it to the point of the absurd: I said that I thought that the power outage was actually a pause where the DJ lets the audience sings one line in the song and then puts the music back on. Obviously, since it was a power outage the music didn’t come back but the audience kept on singing. They even started singing whole new songs and then half an hour later when the power came back, the music miraculously started playing the exact same song at the exact same point that the public was singing. I also said that a Nicaraguan womyn explained to me that the Nicaraguan public education system teaches its citizens to sing and to continue singing when there is a power outage. Although I didn’t win,, the audience did laugh and I still feel good about having participated because I really felt like I was performing among real professionals who knew what they were doing and had a lot more experience with the craft. I hope to continue doing stand-up so Peru was just a starting point for a skill that I hope to certainly develop.

My time in Peru differed from my time in other countries because instead of interviewing comedians, actors, cartoonists, I used my time there to put into practice everything that I had seen in the previous countries I had visited. My aim was not to simply study humour, rather it was to produce it and to see if I had what it takes to actually be a ‘humorista.’ So I started taking improv classes and it helped me to come up with new ideas on the spot when I was doing my stand-up comedy routines. I don’t have a deep analysis of the humour industry in Peru but I can say that stand-up was one of the hardest things I have ever done and the new knowledge I gained about humour was from my own personal experience of seeking to make others laugh instead of observing people who make me laugh. Not only is it no easy task but also you have to be prepared to fail and to let yourself be vulnerable to your audience and to equally congratulate yourself when you get not just a burst of laughter but even a smile. A smile is an appreciation of a joke and so don’t feel bad if instead of dying with laughter someone just smiles because it still means that they have appreciated your joke. So I left Lima with the knowledge that I can actually produce humour and hope to do so again in the future.