Lauren Peate
For my Stand up Comedy performance, I have two acts. One is a stand up performance, and the other is a group sketch.
Stand up routine:
Initially, I wanted to do a whole stand up routine based on a night out. I wanted to include all the antics that you do on a night out, as I thought it would get a good laugh from the audience and every one had been in that situation and could relate to it. I wrote many pages on this act, and when I discussed my ideas with Daniel, I decided that some of my ideas were quite cliché. So I spent a couple of days coming up with some new material for my act and decided I would instead write about 'the morning after. I decided I would adapt a hungover character and play it as though I've literally just jumped out of bed after a night out, where of course I would have on the attire from the night before (ruined dress, bad fake tan, ruined make-up and a bed head). I talked to a few of my class mates before performing my routine. They suggested some small puns to me that I could include in my piece and gave me suggestions for my character. For example, fake cigarettes, a can of beer, interaction with the audience etc. Although I thought I had come up with a solid routine, I was really struggling with an ending to my piece. After a lot of thought and deliberation with my class mates, I came up with a small joke to end with. I wasn't really satisfied with my ending, but because I had changed my routine so short notice, I felt I had a rushed ending. However, after performing my act fully in a rehearsal, which was the first time I had performed my act in front of an audience, I felt much better about my piece after getting a good laugh from the audience.
Sketch:
Before I got into a group to do a sketch, I had already written in my notebook what I had in mind. For my sketch, I thought it would be a good idea to re-enact child birth, seeing as though most of our audience would be parents, I thought again this would be something they could relate to. When talking to Jess and Danielle, I discussed my idea with them and they really liked it and we decided we would perform this as a three. Beth then joined our group and we began coming up with ideas for our sketch. Due to sickness, I was off for a full week. When I returned, the sketch had changed. Beth, Danielle and Jess decided that instead of re-enacting childbirth, we would play children. They explained to me that the three of them would play the babies and I would play the mother. I thought this was a really good idea and could really make the audience laugh. After weeks of planning, we began buying props for the babies such as bibs, bottles, baby food, and the set. The set included a box, which was given to us by Jill. the box would be covered in sheets, and decorated to make it look like a child's bed. On the box, we attached 3 baby doll bodies, without the heads. We then cut out holes at the top of the box, where Beth, Danielle and Jess placed there heads. We incorporated chop sticks to place inside the arms and legs of the dolls for the girls to be able to move the arms and legs and embrace the character of a baby. After many rehearsals of playing as a Mum, which we decided would be a 'typical, single alcoholic mum', I suggested I try and play the father instead. After just one run through of me playing a Dad, we all knew straight away it worked a lot better, and looked a lot funnier a girl playing a full grown bearded man. Jess brought in different types of beards and moustaches for me to try on, and I brought in some of my Dad's clothes and my dads size 10 trainers, which looked hilarious on as the trainers were way too big. We also added a 'baby pooing' scene were we added in a lot of chocolate sauce and talc powder, which made the set very very messy, including the already messy babies with milk and food all over their faces and sheets. When we had a big rehearsal, we got a huge laugh from the audiences from some of the lines I said, the voice I put on to play a man, the audio included into our performance (inappropriate music but very funny), and the hilarious gestures and facial expressions from the babies. We never made any mistakes during our piece and every time we performed it we thoroughly enjoyed it, just not the tidying up afterwards!
