Comedy - a most misunderstood art

If there is one artform that is truly polarizing, it's comedy. One man's pun is another man's fart joke -- what you might find hilarious, I may find unfunny, or worse, in extremely poor taste.

Right now I'm in the creative process with an amazing choreographer working on a light entertainment/comedy routine that I hope will get me through the next season and a half.

Thus far, we haven't choreographed one step of this thing. That so far is due to travel, timing, and prior commitments.

The biggest issue though, is in creating the character. Stuff like the dress, apron, props and all have been easy. It's the song itself that's the problem.

The song I have picked out has two things going on, first is the development of character and then a storyline. Both are hilarious. Both take an awful lot of time. And US Figure Skating gives me a 1:40 perform in, and the song itself is over 5 minutes long.

So the problem becomes, how to fit it all in. The first cut I did had too much character development and not enough story. Dan understood the need for both, but his version feels choppy and frantic. There's also the problem of character development: after playing an unattractive character last year, I wanted the emphasis to be on WHAT the character does and less on how unattractive she is. But I don't want my ego to get in the way of what could be a fantastic program.

The challenge as a competitor is to be able to sell the character to the audience without being self-conscious and without confusing them. You don't want to play it safe, but you don't want to offend either.

I hope all this thought is worth it. I hate to overthink something that should be lighthearted and fun, because to do so robs the idea of being fresh and spontaneous.

Argh!