Small Town Gigs

I did two gigs over the weekend with a pro headliner, Patrick Maliha, and a few amateurs.  The shows took place in Vanderhoof and Prince George.  Surprisingly, the first show in Vanderhoof was the better one.  I think it's because it's a small town and there's not a whole lot to do on a Friday night, and stand-up comedy is kind of a novelty.  It's not like Vancouver where you can go out and watch live stand-up comedy every night of the week.
The show in Vanderhoof was put on by the Kinettes, the female version of the Kinsmen.  The show was sold out.  The audience was expecting to see the headliner, they did not know about us local comics.  So I was a little bit apprehensive about the show.  Not only that, but there were very few Native people in the audience.
But my little jokey-jokes went over okay, better than I ever expected.  I didn't want to leave the stage.  I did material that I normally reserve for just Native audiences, and they got it.  They were right there.  I was expecting to get heckled and it never came.  In fact, one guy even yelled out a joke!
One of the Kinettes said they had been getting a lot of compliments about my performance.  That felt good.  A lot of people came up to me and thanked me for the show and said I was really funny.
I even got an offer to perform at a stagette!  Hope it works out.
I was feeling really good about the next night in Prince George.  But when I found out there was going to be more local comics performing, it meant we all had to do less time than the night before.  That sucks.
So I tried to race through my material in Prince George.  It still went over well, but I had to cut out a lot of material.  They still laughed in all the right places, but not being able to do as much time meant the audience wasn't able to get to know me better.  I was able to do one new joke about the offer to perform at the stagette party.
They say you learn more from bad gigs than good ones, but I learned a lot from these two gigs.  I learned that my material is accessible to all people, not just Native people.  I developed most of my material in front of mixed audiences, Native and non-Native.  But when I do full shows of all my material, it is in front of a Native audience for the most part.  It's good to know that my jokes can be enjoyed by everyone though.  I'm looking forward to my next gigs.