I ended my two-week road trip through Arkansas, London, and Amsterdam in Montreal, where I had the honor of speaking with and working alongside folks at The Gate’s Foundation, helping them, in a small way, engage in some of the most charitable work on the planet.
The trip was a huge success, and then I decided to press my luck.
While walking through Montreal, I passed by a comedy club hosting an open mic. Feeling confident after two weeks of solid work, excellent keynotes, and positive reviews, I decided to walk in and put my name on the list.
I’ve done stand-up many times before, including in places like Toronto and Victoria. I had done well in those Canadian cities, so why not Montreal?
I was given a 15-minute slot, which is a very long time for an open mic, but thankfully I have lots of material. Just before being called to the stage, I decided to do material I had performed in the New York Comedy Festival two years earlier, combined with some new material I had done onstage a few months ago.
It had worked in New York, so I decided to lean into a sure bet.
I took the stage feeling confident and excited.
Then I began to speak.
I have bombed before while doing stand-up. Anyone who’s ever performed stand-up has bombed.
Some certainly more than others.
My bombs had consisted of a smattering of laughs amid enormous valleys of silence, side-eye, and even yawns.
This time was different, for two reasons:
The audience definitely hated me before I had even said a word.
The audience did not laugh once.
Not a single person uttered a single laugh.
I stood on a stage for 15 minutes, telling funny stories and making funny jokes, but the audience of about 60 people just stared at me, wishing I would leave and perhaps hoping I might die.
It was the loudest silence I’ve ever heard.
My only saving grace was that it did not hurt as much as you might think. The first two or three minutes of flailing were tough, but then I began to find the whole situation kind of amusing.
When I started commenting on how terribly I was performing, which can usually garner a pity laugh but did nothing that night, I started actually having a little fun.
Here’s the thing:
I didn’t need to complete my 15-minute spot. I wasn’t being paid to perform, so I could’ve walked off after three minutes, left the club, and never seen any of those people ever again, but instead, I decided to remain onstage for the entire time, trying, failing, and trying again.
I dug in my heels. Decided I would try everything in my power to get a laugh. Persisted when I had no business persisting.
It never happened. Those Canadiens refused to even chuckle at my antics, for what I think might be three reasons:
- Montreal is a very French city. The comics before me were moving between English and French with ease. I was not.
- I am decidedly American in my accent, attitude, and general disposition, and I don’t think Americans are especially welcome in Canada right now.
- Most importantly, I wasn’t funny. Even though my material had worked before, it didn’t work on that night, so I was objectively not funny, at least for that particular audience.
But I recommend everyone who wants to speak to others in any capacity try stand-up and experience bombing at least a few times. The differences between great speakers, good speakers, and ineffective speakers are many, but much of it comes down to confidence.
An audience can sense a person wavering in their confidence, and it will ruin every performance every time.
Learning to bomb is enormously helpful for building confidence. When you fail onstage in low-stakes situations where someone hasn’t gathered large numbers of people to learn from you and paid you money to perform, it can be exceedingly instructive. Surviving a failure like that stress-tests your confidence, forges your resilience, and fortifies your defenses.
Bombing isn’t fun, and I don’t like when it happens, but I can’t recommend it highly enough.
