An entirely different experience for the group tonight - comedy "one-nighter" style at the Fairhaven Pub & Martini Bar in Bellingham's historic Fairhaven district.
Nice-sized crowd, plenty of food and (especially) drinks served. Audiences here are a teeny bit tipsy and a teeny bit talky.
The comics all were up to it - in fact, it brought out some great manic energy and daring choices.
If you click the "more" link below, you can read Peter Greyy's vivid and detailed analysis of how things went down.
L-R: Cy Amundson (5th), Andy Haynes (3rd), Steve Monroe (2nd), Paul Myrehaug (host), Rodger Lizaola (4th), and Jose Sarduy (1st)
Photo by Peter Greyy
Leave it to Bellingham to inject a little crazy into the mix.
Yes, indeed, competition fans...The Fairhaven Martini Pub in Bellingham lived up to its reputation as a challenging place to perform comedy...and a place that really tests the abilities of our contestants to make the right choices, to handle all of the variables, to win over a distracted crowd and still earn scores from the judges... Can you handle the ladies having a conversation in the front row? Can you walk the very fine line of pushing buttons to be edgy but not pushing too hard to be offensive? Is even there such a thing as offending a Bellingham audience? And how do you follow someone who just went on stage and lost their ever-lovin' minds...and got audience approval for having done that?
These are questions that were answered, at least for the night, on Sunday for the penultimate show of Preliminary Week One of the 30th Annual Seattle International Comedy Competition. It was a night where some people needed scores to keep their heads above water. Others knew that if they grabbed one more solid score, they'd be locked into moving on to the next round. And a few people thought they had absolutely nothing left to lose...and let it all hang out on that Bellingham stage.
And, for the most part, everyone got what they wanted.
The top five for the night contained some familiar faces...including Jose Sarduy on top of everything for the third time this week. Rodger Lizaola also made his fifth straight appearance in the Top Five...and Steve Monroe his fourth.
Climbing back onto the podium, was Andy Haynes who went to school in Bellingham and began to develop his comedic sensibilities here...and that helped him connect with this audience while using their rowdiness as a springboard for sharpening an edge that shines when Andy's really hitting his groove.
And making his long-awaited first appearance in a top five this week is Minneapolis' own Cy Amundson. Many had thought Cy was a shoo-in to earn a podium finish on Night Two at Laughs, and his failure to do so seemed to weigh heavily on Cy's mind...and after his efforts to remain professional and do his prepared set for a crowd that only seemed to react to the more extreme, attention-demanding material fell flat, Cy abandoned all pretense...told the crowd exactly what he thought of them. He cried "Havoc!" and let loose the Dogs of War...unleashing the beast within... He thought he'd had this week's infamous "snap set"--where a comic loses all hopes and just sort of explodes on stage... Only to hear the crowd roar with approval...and then, later, get the scores from these judges that he'd been hoping to get all week.
It shouldn't have been such a surprise...as the trail was blazed earlier in the night by Ahmed Bharoocha...who took his own aggressive approach to this room, blazing forth with material that he might have been hesitant to drop in a more sensitive setting...but he did it with such command and confidence that it blew the back of the room up. You could see the eyes of the other comics widened, and fits of uncontrollable laughter and shock rippled forward from them to the crowd and the momentum of Ahmed just not caring about anything but making people laugh earned him some of his best scores of the week and a 7th place finish for the night.
Mind you--the entire night was not simply a slugfest of shock material Josh Gondelman, a mild-mannered shoeshine boy...and I mean that as a compliment, didn't suddenly turn into Katt Williams...and yet, he impressed the audience and the judges to sneak in there between Ahmed and Cy for 6th place.
All in all, those involved with the competition have seen far worse nights at The Fairhaven...and it's important to remind our competitors that "comedy" isn't always nice theaters and patient, appreciative audiences who care about letting you do what you want to do... There's a reason that they pay professional comedians--and that's to work in places like The Fairhaven...where the audience is there--maybe they're not paying strict attention and maybe they're not making it easy on the people trying to entertain them, but they're there to be entertained--and it's up to you to figure out how you're going to get them...
Tonight, I'm happy to say...most of our contestants managed to hold their own and earn a good night's sleep in preparation for this week's sixth and last show of the week...which is taking place at Comedy Underground, Seattle.
If my math is correct...eleven of the sixteen contestants from this week have scores going into this sixth show that leave them in position to grab one of the five slots into the semi-finals. That's going to make for an exciting night of comedy...and an end to a very enjoyable week with an excellent and talented group of comics.