It's a funny thing, confidence. Some people have it on stage but have terrible material. This guy who performed Wednesday night was loud, aggressive, arrogant, and didn't say a single funny thing for five minutes. But he believed in himself, and even though no one was laughing, he never gave in throughout his entire set. In a strange way, I feel like I learned more from him than any other comic that performed. I want to be that guy but with better jokes (or any jokes, I guess).
Anyway, the big disappointment from my performance was my continuing inability to accurately assess how long my routine is taking.
From what I can gather, the worst thing a comic can do is go over his allotted time. Especially in an open mic setting when tons of people are going to perform, the last thing you want to do is overstay your welcome and piss off not only your fellow comics but also the show host and/or club manager.
As someone who wants to build a good rapport with the guy who runs this thing (there are very few open mics in Atlanta, and certainly none as convenient as the one at the Laughing Skull, which is just minutes away from my house), I am terrified of committing this faux pas.
The way it normally works is, the host will flash you a sign when you are getting close to your limit, and then it's up to you to wrap it up in a timely fashion.
I think I'm overcompensating.
Was it necessary? Probably not. And for the third straight show, I cut myself off well short of the end of my material. I suppose that's not the end of the world, but at this stage of my journey I am in search of information more than anything. I am doing new material each time out and I'd like to see how a crowd reacts to as much of it as I can before I start trying to decide on my best material to use.
I'm sure I'll get the signal again if I really start to go over; meanwhile my premature evacuation of the stage is only hurting myself.
As far as my material goes, I've gotten different reviews from different people. Some thought it was my best stuff to date, while others thought my previous sets had been better.
From my perspective, I was relatively happy with the crowd reaction while I was on stage, but my mood soured a bit as the night wore on and several other comics touched on similar topics.
I often wonder how likely it is that my material is original. Is it possible to come up with something in this day and age that hasn't been covered yet without being a genius like Patton Oswalt or Sarah Silverman? As badly as I don't want to overstay my welcome on stage, I even worse (even more badly?) want to avoid stealing someone else's material, accidently or otherwise.
The laughs were good, but overall I left the night feeling like I need to work on coming up with more original material than what I've been writing of late. Or maybe the trick is just to understand that there are so many comics out there you are bound to overlap with someone else's take eventually.
I wonder if there is a right answer?
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