The awesome adventures of Jack Chi: Killing it at The Stand Glasgow

Yesteday I performed at The Stand Glasgow. It went amazing. Probably my best show since I started and it felt like a real gig, very professional.

The Stand is like the Yuk Yuks of UK. There is a club in almost every city in UK. By the time I arrived at the club there was already a long line trying to get in. So I said goodbye to my friends and went through since I was performing. I quickly chatted up some guys staying at the front of the line and they let me through without any fuss. The banter at the start with this group will come into play later in my act. I checked in with Hazel the tech and she explained the situation to me. There was a backstage area where the comedians hung out and I dropped off all my stuff and got to meet the other acts.

The atmosphere was really friendly and everyone was so nice. Some of them were trying to be professional comedians and have been touring around open mic circuits for a couple of years. I could definitely feel the tension and nervousness with some of the comedians. I however was quite calm and collected as I got to know some of them in detail. There was Steve and Pedro both from Edinburgh who traveled just for the night to Glasgow to do this gig. There was the MC who has done lots of shows and did a great job of warming up the crowd with his banter. There was a bf and gf duo from Dublin, a high schooler doing his second show, and a props act from England. Of course there was the headliner who was brilliant.

So the format of the show was everyone gets either 5 or 10 minutes on and a light a minute before your time was up. There was 2 intermission and I was up first after the first intermission. In the meantime I watched some of the other acts with my friend. The crowd was really supportive and gave lots of laughter for all comedians. Steve was first up and did especially well. The worst one was probably the highschooler but in all honesty I was just impressed he performed since he was so young. I know I definitely didn't have the guts to talk to random strangers when I was in high school, let alone a room full of people. There was probably around 150 people packed into the room and it was a sold out show with standing room only.

Finally it was my turn to go on! I was waiting patiently in the back for the MC to finish his banter and intro. The hallway leading up had some very cheeky graffiti that said things like: "give up you all suck" and "abandon all hope". I had felt calm and collected in the break room but that hallway and the waiting definitely got to me. Taking tips from my Psychology training I danced, and spread my arms out far to make myself into a confident posture prior to going out and that really helped a lot. Right off the bat I was off to a good start and got lots of laughs. I played up the race card in my act and was fuckin rocking it. But unfortunately I didn't time my performance correctly and missed the light so they actually played music to let me know my time was up! I definitely got the one of the biggest laughs if not the biggest out of all the open mic performers. I will post the video up when I get home. I really liked this performance because I was connecting jokes consistently with minimal setup time. I definitely botched some of the delivery and was talking a bit fast. So I will have to watch that in the future.

After the performance I chatted with the other acts and got the contact info of Pedro and Steve. I might meet up with them in Edinburgh since they have a practice gig for fringe festival the biggest comedy festival in the world.