I am a comedienne at heart, and I am striving towards doing an open mic night myself. I have a basic outline of material and am very strong in improv and quick witted, good delivery and excellent memory and retention of my material, because it is based on my everyday experiences and life situations.
I think that this will be an opportunity for you to face your fears and feel really good about challenging your anxieties. I am a natural extrovert, don’t have a shy bone in my body, however, that initial walking out on stage is scary and intimidating even for those of us that are confident and outgoing. I am having the most trouble with my intro. and wanting to have audience participation.
Maybe a good choice for you is to follow a strong audience participation theme.
I plan on doing my stand up routine for an outdoor audience at a local cafe that caters to the river rafting tourists in my community. I have decided after my initial “opening” that I am going to stage a ” coolest river sandals” contest, I am going to ask my audience to hold up their feet and take applause-o-meter votes on coolest river sandals, then offer a token “prize”, to be determined. lol
I think the better prepared ( rehersed) your routine, the more confident you will feel.
Bottom line, when tackling our fears it always comes down to just DOING it!
Congratulate yourself for taking this step, every little step promotes more confidence and like anything, the more you do it, the easier it becomes.
GO BABY GO! ;-D