A guide for self-improvement — minus the report cards, plus some bruises.
Think you’ve mastered adulthood? Think again. Smarten Up is a guide to doing life a little better — or at least, a lot more interestingly. From testing your comedic timing and sword-fighting finesse to weaving your way toward mindfulness, we’ve rounded up dozens of classes, workshops and weirdly satisfying ways to flex your brain.
Go on — learn something new, bruise your ego a little and come out smarter for it.
I performed my first comedy set almost four years ago at the Black Dog’s Underdog Comedy Show. In one sweaty hand I clutched my notebook, the pages damp and wrinkled. In the other, I grabbed the mic off the stand. Then, acting coy and nervous, cracked an off-the-cuff joke about this being my “first time.” (Get it?)
Laughter rippled through the room and into my bloodstream. I was hooked.
I then spent the better part of the next year doing open-mic comedy sets in between bartending shifts, scribbling jokes in my server’s notebook and only once mixing them up (turns out a Reuben sandwich with a side of fries isn’t much of punchline). I got some stage time but couldn’t break through to being an open mic act, so I signed up for the Grindstone Comedy Theatre standup 201 class — skipping the beginner level thanks to my “independent study.”
A lot of comics call comedy classes a scam. Talent happens five minutes at a time, they argue, and the only way to improve is by getting on stage over and over again. And there is truth in that: Nobody can teach you how to balance six shows a week with your day job; stay energetic when you’re performing to two people at 12:30 a.m.; or be funny when all you can think about are the text messages on your boyfriend’s phone that you weren’t supposed to see. But comedy school did teach me how to become a better comedian — just not in the way that I thought.
Comedians humble themselves onstage. We share the worst parts of ourselves — the cruelest observations of our own insecurities and mistakes — hoping the audience will feel the shock of relating to my bad habits and flaws. It took the class for me to realize how valuable it was to carry that vulnerability off the stage. And nobody appreciates it more than other comics. When they see you can fearlessly devour yourself, you’re welcomed into a sordid world where laughing at each other, to each other’s faces, is the greatest show of love and respect.
Over the years, my comedy friends have let me sleep on their couches, invited me over for the holidays and have never failed to help me up after a fall — once they’re done laughing at me.
I know they’ll mock me for writing something so earnest, but here it is: If it wasn’t for the support of these maladjusted, alcoholic weirdos, I would have given up a long time ago.
$477, three-month terms every Jan., Apr., Jul. and Sep., grindstonetheatre.ca
