The routine

So I was trying to come up with a new "piece" for the little stand-up gig, and I (somehow) ended up focusing on Aliester Crowley (sp on both, see what an expert I am?) - back in my youth, I read a lot of stuff about him, and some of his "automatic writings", and read the whole "Golden Dawn System of Magick" - I can now, with hindsight, sat it was all BS.

Crowley though himself to be the great beast, and the end of the world --- not just a simple fuckwit with bad hair. He "discovered" how he could "celebrate the dark gods" via masturbation. He created a tarot deck that was kinda cool, but very much a rip off of the (damn I forget now, must research more) deck. Anyway.

So the comedy idea is "Home for the Holidays, with AC". It involves all the expected puns and cheap jokes - but they all depend upon the aud knowing something about this guy and his sick life. (Did you know he was on the cover of Sgt. Pepper? I did).

A few tests with the online aud didn't go well. No idea who the guy was, couldn't spell "cabbala" to save themselves. Thought "Golden Dawn" was a star of salacious motion pictures. Byork. I've got a full 20 minutes about this byork and I can't use it because my audience is culturally lacking.

OK, so I was thinking I could handle this in one of these ways:

- write it as a play, with parts for mother, father and myself. Give the mother and father parts to members of the aud (Liz and James, most likely) and prompt them when to read a line. Good because it involves the aud, bad because it's difficult and hecklers can't annunciate at all well. Plus complex, I'd have to keep closer track than usual of the dialog.

- write it as a story instead, and send it out for multiple rejection letters (since eds also have no idea who AC is)

- write it as a musical! Err, no, scratch that.

- hand out a little bio beforehand, so people know of which I speech. Seems like a good idea, but in reality no-one would read it.

- do an intro. Give a brief, five minute bio of Crowley - done seriously - before the gag act. Hope that this is enough.

I'm going to go with the last of these, hopefully with a wall-projection of images. My only issue is how do I make sure the aud knows this -is- real, and not made up BS? Still working on that one.