Sep 27, 2015

POST-MORTEM, DAY FIVE

Be fearless.

In the 1990s, I was part of a couple of different radio sketch comedy groups. With the first, I was so nervous about performing that I did very little behind the mic (the fact that we were recording at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation headquarters did not help). With the second, Dead Air, I had no choice.

Dead Air was started by four writers; we had several auditions to get actors (and one for other writers, but that didn’t pan out). At the first recording session, we found that the female actors were amazing, but the male actors? Meh. We didn’t ask all but one of them back to the second recording session. But, of course, that left us with a huge hole in the cast. Three of the four writers ended up performing. Including me.

At first, I was given small straight man roles. But Scott, the unofficial director, must have seen something in me, because he started giving me crazier roles. This was a gamble, inasmuch as I was (and remain) a quiet, laid back person. To both our surprises, I rose to the occasion, giving some truly crazed performances.

To do this, I learned an invaluable lesson from famous comedians (people like Jim Carrey and Will Ferrell): be fearless and commit. No matter how bizarre a character is, you have to be totally committed to the character’s reality and you have to have no fear of falling flat on your face or looking ridiculous. If there is even a shadow of fear in your performance, the audience will sense it and you will lose them.

How does this relate to something like the Inkshares/Nerdist contest? Well, I always hated asking other people for favours. As people who have been following my personal history will appreciate, I never wanted to impose on anybody because I didn’t feel I deserved anybody’s support. I suspect asking for help does not come naturally to a lot of people, who fear being turned down. However, you cannot expect to do well in a contest of this type if you have that attitude.

So, I tried to be fearless. I asked everybody I knew for help. I asked a few people I knew only tangentially for help. I asked complete strangers for help. To my delight, most of the people I knew were happy to help, including some that I didn’t think I was especially close to. People actually like helping others – who knew? A couple of people I knew explained why they felt they could not help, which was cool. Others didn’t respond, which was fine. Most of the people I cold contacted didn’t respond, but that’s understandable; when I start getting requests for help from strangers, I don’t honestly know how I will respond. For me, it’s actually really important that I was able to act against my personality to help my career.

One thing I realized is that you don’t get what you want out of life if you don’t do everything you can to get it. That doesn’t mean you have to be a jerk. But you do have to be fearless.