JT Tsuchiya: Personal Pilgrimage Final Reflection

Final Reflection

Proposal Excerpt: “Stand up is, in my opinion, the most vulnerable type of performance there is. A stand up comedian is on stage, representing his or herself and nobody else. The stand up performs jokes that he or she wrote and is solely responsible for the audience reaction, whether it is uproarious laughter, vicious boos, or, worst of all, nervous, polite giggles. I have performed improv onstage before, so I don’t think my resistance to try stand up is a simple case of stage fright. It is the deeper, more personal fear of presenting a routine that I worked on and that represents my point of view, and having that routine be totally rejected. As much as I am afraid to face it, the creative pilgrimage that I would find most rewarding would be testing out a small stand up set around the various open mics in Los Angeles.”

First Reflection Excerpt: “After practicing in the mirror for several days, I performed my material at Fifth Quarter in October. I was extremely nervous. I had been continuously tinkering with my material to create what I felt was a funny set, but I had no input from outside sources until I showed a friend only hours before the Fifth Quarter started. After all my practice I was confident that I wouldn’t mess up any lines, but the thought of putting myself out there and performing onstage still made me very anxious. However, my set ended up going great.”

Third Reflection Excerpts: “Last Friday we spent English class making mandalas, a meditative and reflective exercise that both offered a welcome break in my schedule and reflected the latest development in my pilgrimage project. I say this because, a little over a week before making mandalas in class, I did stand up at an open mic at the UCB theater and completely bombed. This was my first time performing stand up in front of a crowd of strangers rather than my classmates. I performed the exact same jokes as I did at fifth quarter. There I got solid reactions on all my punchlines, laughs where I didn’t expect any, even an applause break. At the open mic I got probably three laughs total. To say it was a humbling experience would be an understatement.”

“What does any of this have to do with mandalas? Well, as soon as I started making my mandala in class, I knew that I wanted to include the Yin Yang symbol. This symbol of Chinese philosophy is not only aesthetically pleasing; it is representative of a powerful idea. The Yin Yang, a perfect circle divided equally into dark and light, illustrates the concept that seem like polar opposites are actually inextricably intertwined, even complementary. Night and day, fire and water, laughter and silence, all these are part of one system. So far I have performed stand up twice with the same jokes, once to uproarious success and once to undeniable failure. Both of these results are integral to my journey as I begin to perform stand up. The knowledge that one of these results cannot exist without the other is reassuring; it that eases the pain of bombing, even if only slightly.”

Summary

This pilgrimage project has helped me make serious progress in my journey of starting stand up. I’ve flirted with the idea of performing stand up comedy onstage for much of the latter half of high school. However, I’ve always brushed off these thoughts as something I’ll have time to think about later, pushing back my first foray into stand up further and further. But using this pilgrimage assignment as a way to finally try stand up was the perfect way to hold myself accountable and make real progress. Because of academic pressure and other time commitments I was only able to perform stand up twice, and as stated in the excerpts, one went well and the other went poorly. However, at the end of the day, I would not classify these two outings as one success and one failure. I went out to perform stand up for the first time in front of my peers. I succeeded. Then I went to perform stand up again, this time in front of strangers. I succeeded at that as well. Even though I completely bombed the second time, I went out of my comfort zone to perform comedy in front of people who have no idea who I am, and I’d count that as a success. Even though it felt much better to have my jokes do well at fifth quarter, the knowledge that I took a risk to perform my set at an open mic is much more valuable in the long run. It proves that I am on my way to legitimately trying stand up rather than just performing for my friends. I hope to continue to refine my set and try open mics soon. If not during second semester, definitely over the summer. My pilgrimage in the journey of stand up is only beginning, but at least I’ve started.