Colin Quinn on why it's key to have fun onstage
"If you’re not going to bring your personality too, you might as well just hand out books."
Colin Quinn, on the Fly on the Wall podcast, talked about finding the right amount of performance/salesmanship/having fun-ness while onstage.
Try to charge them a little bit.
I always had this weird thing about comedy where it’s like: “You shouldn’t be trying to cheat and smile and win them over. Just do your material.” So I always had an attitude that didn’t incorporate that, which then I wasn’t even enjoying it.
If you’re not going to bring your personality too, you might as well just hand out books: “Here are my jokes. Everybody read them and I’ll sit on stage and after an hour, time is up and we’ll just leave.”
But also, you don’t want to overdo it. I worked with a lot of 80’s hacky people that were just all fake. We all resented it when they’d go up there and they’d start laughing and the crowd would start laughing. And it was all this sound and fury signifying nothing. And then you overcorrect the other way and just go: I’m not gonna move.
If you’re in NYC, Colin’s got a new one-man show called Small Talk running March 30 - May 6, 2023 at Greenwich House Theater.