But I also know in standup, there's nowhere to hide. You get on stage and you deliver, or you are eviscerated and you are thrown into a pile of bodies at the bottom of a mountain.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Onstage, there's no hiding; you either can or can't act. There's no second take.
It's a very unnatural environment to be in, up on a stage. So you put up defenses to hide. Like looking at the ground with your hair in your eyes, or being tightly wound and quite aggressive and uncooperative, as I used to do.
When you are on stage, you don't see faces. The lights are in your eyes and you see just this black void out in front of you. And yet you know there is life out there, and you have to get your message across.
Stand-up is the kind of gig that'll show you where you're at.
You leave part of yourself on every stage you're on. How could you not live in the air somehow?
I gravitated toward stand-up because there's no overhead. I mean, literally, there's no overhead: Often, you're outdoors performing in front of groups of people.
When you're doing stand-up, you want to stand onstage and, to the extent that you can, uncomplicatedly entertain.
The idea of doing stand-up is terrifying to me.
You have to open up on stage.
With stand-up you can just be yourself on stage. And ideally, you can't see the crowd most of the time - it's just lights in your face. But I still have had terrible stage fright.