We Did It, Joe

Dans ses écrits, un sage Italien
Dit que le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.

(In his writings, a wise Italian
says that the better is the enemy of the good.)

  -Voltaire

My brother is a very talented game developer and he likes to participate in game jams where you create an entire video game in a weekend. And after they’ve made the games they take some time and eventually create a “Post-Mortem” where they reflect on what they did well and what they would do differently in their game. I thought it might be helpful for me to reflect as well on the first official performance of my one-man show. Also, did you like how I used a pretentious quote at the start to make this dinosaur musical seem intellectual? I copy pasted the quote from Wikipedia.

What is a One-Man Show Jurassic Park Musical?

I constantly find myself more and more appreciative of the immediate feedback loop that’s baked into standup comedy. When I was in high school I wrote plays and I’d spend hours compulsively writing and rewriting the same scenes over and over, only to realize during readings that the scenes made no sense. Or were irrelevant. Or the humor in the scene wasn’t where I thought it was. Dozens of hours wasted without the calibration of the audience.

Art exists sort of like quantum particles, we can’t know where they’re positioned until they’re observed. Comedy is like schroedgingers cat: until we open the box there’s no way to til whether a bit is alive or dead.

Anyway, this is all a pretentious and long winding way to say that after four years of waffling I finally performed the first iteration of my one-man show this past Friday. Paul Platt presents Paul Johnson Is Jurassic Park the Musical finally exists outside of my mind and drunken rants delivered to half interested girlfriends.

In game-dev they do something called Post-Mortem’s, where they write out what they learned from creating different games for game jams. I thought it might be helpful for me to reflect as well on the first official performance of my one-man show. Also, did you like how I used a pretentious quote at the start to make this dinosaur musical seem intellectual? I copy pasted the quote from wikipedia.

So what did we learn?

An Hour is a Long Time

Whenever I produce a show I like to suggest having more comics do less time. With attention spans being what they are the novelty of new performers is such a boon when it comes to retaining audience attention. But when you do a one-man show believe it or not you can’t do that.

After my first time doing a dry run of the show in my bedroom I called my best friend and just shouted “AN HOUR IS SO LONG” a dozen times.

What I decided to do to combat this was instead of switching between comics I tried switching between formats. There was music, standup, audience participation, some storytelling, some video, and more.

I decided at the last moment to add a slideshow element to the show so that there was something for the audience to watch and this was a success in some ways and a failure in others.

I didn’t have enough time to practice with it to make it smooth and excellent. I also didn’t have enough time to make sure it ran without a hitch, and there were a lot of technical difficulties that made the show suffer in some ways. Even though a lot of people said the technical difficulties and my reactions were some of the funniest parts of the show.

When it did work the powerpoint was awesome. It’s the closest you can get in a one-man show to acting off somebody. Lots of elements got laughs just from the transition from one slide to the other, or from me yelling “NEXT SLIDE” because my clicker didn’t work.

The slideshow allowed me to show off flattering photos like this.

Music and Standup Are Different

I didn’t start performing music at all until the last year and change. I remember about three months into my weekly performances at the lovely Evening Muse open mic, I drew one of the final slots. Now, when I perform comedy I have a couple of beers. And if I’m going last at an open mic I have more than a couple of beers.

And so I ended up being five beers deep on stage trying to remember the chords of Chaos Theory of the Heart and trying to remember what rhythm was. After my set the host patted me on the back and told me he’d done the same thing when he started. I wish he hadn’t said that, because up to that point I was drunk enough to think that I had just crushed it.

Music is very different than comedy. You have to be on tempo, you have to be in key, you have to remember the lyrics. Comedy to me feels more like Jazz where you can improvise and if you hit the wrong note it can be part of the song, it can even make the set.

I need to get better at playing music. When I play in my bedroom it sounds good, but it’s hard for me to play piano freely when I’m on stage because I don’t have the experience to goof around. A lot of great musicians can get drunk on stage, I cannot.

Not that I was drunk on stage by the way, it’s just a metaphor for how I can’t half-ass music. I need to practice and refine these songs more to do a good job.

Paul Platt Songs Vs Paul Johnson Songs

I think the music in PJIJPTM is challenging to pull off. Because part of the charm is that the songs are a little bad and written a little poorly, but also they need to be engaging and sound good. It’s a hard line to balance, especially in a show that’s about 40% music.

I’m thinking it may be time to rewrite some of the songs in the show. Either to rewrite them or more clearly define the differences between the Paul Platt songs and the Paul Johnson songs.

The Paul Johnson songs are supposed to be bad and a little hamfisted. I need the Paul Platt songs to standout and be stronger so that it becomes clear that everything I’m doing is a decision. Paul Johnson needs to feel like a bit of an idiot so it becomes clear I’m telling a story.

The Storyline Needs Work

I think to really bring the whole show together I need to embrace the silliness of the storyline. And that means doing stuff that isn’t just saying what’s happening, I need to show it too.

I’m working on a new song called “I HATE TIMOTHEE CHALAMET” that I think will properly spell out the divide between Paul Platt and Paul Johnson further.

Theatre and Standup Are Different

Overall I think the primary mistake I made was treating this show like it was a standup show. It’s not, it’s a piece of theatre. With standup I can fumble my way through because the only goal is to be funny; this is trying to do something a little more complicated and requires a more deliberate hand.

My friend Johnny Millwater always says he likes to show the brush strokes on his work, and I do too, but I think there were too many brush strokes here. A lot of the appeal of the show has been the DIY element, but I think the show needs to appear DIY, rather than be DIY.

A tech rehearsal and a director would have improved the show dramatically, and will improve the show dramatically for it’s next showing. This hiccup stems from a personal fault of my own where I’m unwilling to ask anybody for help, but I need to get over this if I want to make something great.

I need to start treating this show like what it is, which is a piece of theatre. And I need to commit to the various accoutrement that comes with it; Tech Rehearsals, a preview, a director, rehearsal time within the space. Maybe even doing a run of shows?

Audience Participation Was a Hit

The audience participation element of the show was very well received. I think one of the advantages I do have in trying to do something theatrical is that I am still a standup comic, I can think on my feet and I can make the audience have an authentic in the moment experience.

Basically, I have two audience members come on stage and read dialogue that I wrote for the Jurassic Park musical, and eventually it devolves into stuff I’ve clearly written about myself. It did really well, and next time I want to have even more of that element.

The improvised and impromptu elements of the show were surprisingly some of the best received sections. I improvised a verse at the end of the medley about how much I hated the powerpoint for not working and multiple people brought it up as their favorite part of the show. Performing is weird.

Standup was not a hit

I did five minutes of standup in the show. It was not a hit. I mean it did well because the jokes are funny, but it was definitely subdued from everything else that was going on. I always pictured the show as a third standup, a third storytelling, and a third music. I think the standup is going to have to change or at least be baked into the storytelling section.

I Am So Supported

I had a really good turnout. Around 60 people with minimal advertising showed up, and all I could feel was how grateful I was to be connected to so many wonderful people. There were also people who didn’t know me there! I think the pitch of the show is so unique that it draws people in.

Somebody came in who was a Jurassic Park super fan, he was all decked out in Jurassic Park gear and he came up to me and was super complimentary. So exciting!

I ran into the woman who helped me with Tech, and one of the big bosses of the venue at the restaurant I worked at. She excitedly told the man that I had “packed” the venue. That’s the piece of information that is most correlated to my longterm success. Performing is like governing, you can only do it through the will of the people.

I want to do this again

If I could do that show 30 times I think I would have a masterpiece. But to perform the show 30 times you need hundreds of people who want to see you perform.

For a long time I’ve resisted posting stuff online or advertising myself because I don’t want the attention, and I don’t want to be a celebrity I just want to do the work. But now I’m realizing that to get to do the work you have to have an audience. If I had 100,000 followers on Instagram I could reach out to any venue in this city and book a show and perform it tomorrow.

Work begets work.

I’m a Hater In My Bones

I know almost everything I’ve written was about how I disliked different elements of the show, but that’s not really how I feel about it. A post-mortem is an examination of a body to discover the cause of death, not to compliment how nice the body was before it died.

I received a lot of compliments about the show, and everybody enjoyed it. I got like according to my roommate a “45% standing ovation,” which is almost half.

Somebody told me afterwards that this is the “Most New York” thing he’d ever seen in Charlotte, and I was really touched by that compliment. This was a workshop show, but it felt really exciting to do and to be a part of.

Overall

I give it a strong C+. But two weeks ago I didn’t have anything at all, and now I have a C+.

I’ve been working on this show for four years and the fear that it wasn’t perfect prevented me from creating anything at all. This year my motto is “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.”

Years have gone by with this idea floating in my head and now I have something concrete and actionable to improve on. In the next couple months I’ll perform it again and it’ll be better, and then I’ll do it again and it’ll be better. This is the first step in a long line of improvements on this show.