Mark Maier
Comedian, Improviser and Award Winning Writer
The Voice of His Gremlin
“You really want to try this?”
When the voices say ‘this isn’t working’, it makes you just want to do something else. It makes me side-track, which is bad because I think you need to work through the voices.
You have to have them [Gremlins] as comedian, you have to have the self-doubt and the insecurity; you have to have the voices. Without them you go on with a false confidence. It would be like a pilot saying, ‘I’ve done this before, go ahead a blindfold me’ … As long as they don’t manifest themselves on stage.
Just relying on past experience and your past knowledge of doing stand-up isn’t necessarily always going to be good enough. So you’re always kind of starting again.
I record all my shows and was watching a recent gig back. You’ll want a laugh every 15 or 30 seconds; this is kind of the norm for a comedian. I listened to 4 minutes with 2 laughs in it. It was so cringy and you feel so alone.
The good gigs stay with you for an hour, the bad gigs stay with you for weeks. It’s like public humiliation.
Not having the opportunity to try stuff out, just trusting myself and having no-one to bounce ideas off - that feeds the Gremlin.
The voices will make you sharp; make you question what you’re doing. Is this as good as it can be? How do I want to deliver this?
Push your self out of your comfort zone, you should always do the things that you’re most afraid of because that is where you find the most creativity.