SO YOU THINK YOU ARE FUNNY EH? #SIMUKAWORKSHOP

Apparently, there is more to Stand up Comedy than what meets the eye. I always thought one just got on stage and said whatever came to mind and voila! Comedy night.

I went for the SimukaWorkshop this weekend and well, I must say, it was quite eye-opening. Would you believe that comics actually go through years of practice to get to where they are – studying other comics, going around comedy clubs botching it up like mad and having workshops? Handle! All that just to learn how to go on-stage and make people laugh? INCREDIBLE!

So I got to the workshop some five minutes after it had just started and to my horror, I had just settled in when I was called to go up and participate in a game of comic advertising that was being played. People would go in twos, take a random object and in turn advertise it as if in a commercial. The twist was, it was impromptu and you had to be funny. The lesson was, don’t think too hard, just be yourself. Easier said than done I tell you.

The next game was a sort of pimped up broken telephone. Each person had to say a word out loud, right up to the last person and the aim was to construct a humorous sentence. The lesson here was, ‘don’t try to be funny, be funny’. Honestly, I’ve got lots of respect for comics after this experience because being funny is HARD WORK!

My favourite of all the games we played was where you had to compliment the person seating on your left in one round and then turn that compliment in to an insult during the second round. Lol! You would never believe how dissing each other can be such fun! Crazy moments for sure.

In between the games, there were presentations by Simba The Comic King and Doc Vikela and to say I enjoyed myself would definitely be the understatement of not just the century but the whole MILLENIUM! Who would have thought there were actually theories and techniques and the whole lot to stand up comedy? Definitely not me.

I liked that the workshop was small and intimate, oft times we were paired up which made everybody feel part of the team. The games were involving, making the experience not only fun and casual but also a kind of intermission between the presentations. They say 45 minutes is the most any human being can take at a time concentrating on something. Well Simba and Doc made sure we never got around to too long doing the same thing. That was super creative, informative and entertaining; it felt like a private stand up comedy show because we had some of the country’s best comics all to ourselves for a whole 3 HOURS!!! Learning doesn’t get any better than that!

The lessons learnt were invaluable that my public presentations are definitely going to be having lots of spicing up. You just wait and see! And I’m sure the up and coming comics who came are also going to be upping their game as well. Some of them are going to be curtain raising for the Thursday night Simuka Comedy show at Book Cafe. Let’s see if they got something from the workshop eh.