Stay in the Box

I auditioned for Readers Digest yesterday at Zanies in Chicago. It was the first time I had performed standup in a few years, since turning primarily to writing. Readers Digest is looking for the funniest comedian in Chicago. They stated in their craigslist ad, which I happened to catch, that participants would be on their site. I thought that would be good exposure for the book.

It always cracks me up how the people seeking comedians audition them completely, utterly, totally wrong. As a comedian, you assume the taping will be in front of a live audience. At the very least, you assume it will be set up like a normal standup show.

Nope. Not at all. Fortunately, I was prepared, though. I got to the audition and it was arranged as follows: no audience, no other comedians watching to laugh, nothing. It was simply a small production crew. You didn't even stand on stage, you stood in front of it. I also learned only the ten finalists would be on their site. Since I had written my act that morning due to my heavy schedule--some big things going on that will hopefully be announced soon--I knew I wouldn't be one of the top ten. They wanted very specific material on topics such as marriage and pets, so I whipped up a few things. The camera was a mere few feet in front of you and they asked you to look straight into it the entire time. I asked them if it could follow me, because I am very animated onstage. They said, "Sure, just don't go out of the box." The box wasn't even four square feet total. Great.

No crowd. No ability to move. Stare straight head. Do your show. In short, don't do anything that has anything to do with standup comedy. With today's technology, I have no idea why they just don't let you email them a clip as your audition for these "searches." That way you can send them a live show which really demonstrates your comedy and the crowd's reaction. Nope, that would be sensible and few things about such auditions are sensible.

It was a good experience and good practice for any on-camera audtions unrelated to comedy, like for a dating talk show... but boring as hell. A bored comedian is an unfunny act indeed.