November 2024
This is the first post in a series of three on Manon’s experience learning and performing stand-up comedy. View the second (21 November), and the third (28 November).
By Manon Ceridwen James
In October 2021 I ticked something off my bucket list – I went on a stand-up comedy course. The north Walian comedian Kiri Pritchard Mclean put on a 2-hour course in a tepee outside Anglesey Sea Salt’s building (it was during lockdown) to raise money for Welsh Welcome, a local refugee charity.
There I learnt about the rule of three, the importance of really being yourself, and of starting with your best joke and finishing with your second-best joke.
Like most things, though, you only learn something by doing it, and so on Saturday 29 January 2022, a group of us who had been on the course did our first ever five-minute set. It was horrifying. It was exhilarating. And I caught the bug.
Since then I have probably done around nine or ten sets in local comedy nights or festivals (and even a clergy residential), and because I do them so infrequently, each time is as horrifying as the first.
Why did I push myself to do this? Well, I’ve always found public speaking hard. This is a problem when you are a priest and a lecturer! However I found from my first sermon onwards that, scary as it was, there was something very rewarding and compelling about sharing what I thought God might be telling us that week. In my teaching too I love bringing along a group of people with me on a journey and seeing a light come on in their minds. It is as addictive as getting a belly laugh in a late-night comedy club.
For me it’s all about human connection. In stand-up, a comedian might say something we’ve secretly thought but didn’t have the courage to say it. Or we can laugh at ourselves, at something funny that’s happened to us, and learn not to take ourselves too seriously. (Didn’t Jesus say something similar about the importance of forgetting or denying ourselves?) Humour is about some of the most important things in life – truth, joy, relationships. It teaches us to look at life and ourselves differently.
====
Manon Ceridwen James is an Anglican priest and contextual theologian based on the north Wales coast. She is Dean at the St Padarn’s Institute, the theological training institution of the Church in Wales, Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Wales, Trinity St David and Canon Theologian at Newport Cathedral.
Her research interests, teaching and writing are focussed on feminist theology, Welsh theology, theology and humour, as well as trauma theology. Her most recent performance of stand-up comedy was at the St Asaph Music Festival Fringe, and she has also published a poetry collection, Notes from a Eucharistic Life (Cinnamon Press).
.Ian Macdonald, Tutor in Mission here, will lead a course on preaching and stand-up comedy on 5 June 2025. Contact us on courses@sarum.ac.uk to be notified when tickets are available.
Leave a Reply