My Stand-up 1

This I performed during the spring of my Freshman year at my dorm's coffee house. Me and two other people were the only stand-up comedians, I was the only female one. Coffee House is plagued with poets, generic angsty, faux-activist, wannabe poetry--oh, and a few good musicians, so we were the shining light in between poems discussing how bad the world is and depressing stuff.

I was taking a lot of classes at night during this time (yes, theatre majors have labs too) and I didn't want to memorize a whole new act. So I decided to write "poetry." Stereotypical poems that were friggin hillarious and parodied every other "poet". I signed up as a poet, I wore a scarf, and I kept a straight face. I spoke in my "empowered woman" voice. People thought I was doing poetry at the beginning, then they started listening to the poems. And they realized I was actually doing comedy and satirizing all of this free verse poets that would dominate coffee house.

Towards the end, they were cracking up. This was my best stand-up act of that year. And this was my first foray into anti-comedy.

Now, if you have read my post about modern comedy genres, you would know that this is anti-comedy that is a thinly veiled satire of politically correct beat free verse poets. Other than that, the poems were just funny.

This proves that anti-comedy can work, and can be used to convey different forms of comedy underneath it, satire being the most affective way, without blatantly telling people its a satire. Remember, anti-comedy is comedy without presenting itself as comedy. Did you enjoy it? What worked or didn't work? Leave comments!