I hadn’t practiced my loser face. And I actually watched the Golden Globes. Not that anyone had seen it, in the back of the dark cellar of the only comedy club where, as another comedian said this evening, pointing to the wall, the moss was growing inside. I was just hoping to be called up and announce into the microphone like Demi Moore that for the first time in my life I finally something won. Which would have been a lie, because I was once reader letter of the week in the NCRV guide when I was 11.
I was in the quarter-finals of a major comedy competition in Utrecht and was not among the five who were allowed to go through to the semi-finals by the audience. And exactly what I had already been warned about happened, by others, especially by myself: I still thought it was a shame. I couldn’t immediately put things into perspective: a year ago you had never been on a podium, you survived the preliminary round in your very first competition.
No, analyzes came: I started to struggle, maybe that was it, an improvised joke about the MC didn’t work, way too difficult, why there, why now, you stupid prick. You played too fast again, make people laugh, no, but you were afraid again that you wouldn’t make it within six minutes, right, with your dungarees. Or the other extreme: you really got a lot of loud laughs, how did you not notice, was it the place in the line-up, did other people have more of an audience?
Far too dramatic for something that was essentially very simple: you couldn’t do more than play. “You always have to think about what you want to get out of competitions, other than continuing or winning,” said a wise, other comedian earlier in the evening. “What good advice,” I said, then skillfully ignored it.
A friend, a comedian himself, said when I first started in the open-mic circuit: “You should continue to see it as a hobby.” He meant: you play for drink tickets, you go to vague places where every laugh disappears in the sound of the football match that is on at the same time – if you want, expect too much, too quickly, then comedy can be quite miserable. He thought. No, I said: I don’t even have the time to make it more than a hobby. And yet. You’re constantly with other comedians. One is working towards an audition at Comedytrain, the other is preparing his first full-length show. He is in the final of the Leids Cabaret Festival, she becomes a regular comedian in Haug. It’s hard not to get infected by that. How long can you maintain that you do something just for fun?
After the quarter-finals I hear that the best number six will also advance to the semi-finals. We won’t know until later. I think it would be better to quickly mentally say goodbye to that possibility. At least that’s what I tell everyone.