On Monday I wrote a comedy sketch based on my experiences of the cancer bereavement group and performed it on Tuesday night with other people in front of an small but select audience, one of whom was an established stand-up comedian. He liked it but said it was really two central comedic ideas and most comedy sketches need to concentrate on one. So there you go: two for the price of one!
I used my experiences of talking about Flash and about Mum, to create the sketch. No one realised how true to life it was. They seemed to like it and find it funny, which was the main thing, and the actors said there were some great lines in it and that they'd enjoyed speaking them. Music to my ears, as I'd enjoyed writing them.
OK it might have been somewhat black humour, being about cancer bereavement, but boy it helps!
There were four characters in it . It was about the lives of these four people and the different backgrounds they all came from. I played one of the main characters myself and my acting was praised as well.
I can't say the process of writing it or acting it out in front of a live audience was easy, especially as it is so soon for me after bereavement of both my Mum (five months) and of dog (two weeks). It really did beat sitting alone feeling sad though. The sound of a group of people laughing at something I wrote, was really good.
It wasn't all laughter, there was some criticism, which sometimes comes as a shock if you are sensitive. I think the two situations in the scene led to some confusion. But it's nice to think all round that you have maybe too ideas than too few! To me it was just the way the story went.
This was a first for me, people had always said I should try comedy and this was planned before my Mum died, so I went for it. I did wonder how it would pan out in front of a bigger audience, but that's for another time.
And now for something completely different ...
