Chapter 6: The Reluctant Debut

  He slipped into the rest room, but Zhou Xiao's face didn't relax in the slightest. Since coming to the theater that morning, he still had one very important thing left unresolved - what would happen if he went on stage later!

  What's stored in my brain's hard drive is basically Japanese drama theme songs, and there isn't anything impressive to show for it. As for what truly belongs to him in his memories, although there are some about Guo Degang's crosstalk, crosstalk and Japan's manzai do have some differences. The biggest difference lies in the rhythm - crosstalk is relatively slow while manzai is very fast. Guo Degang's crosstalk often lasts over 40 minutes with countless encores, whereas most TV manzai will wrap up a long passage of dialogue within five minutes, with one or two people rapidly rattling off lines like a chef chopping meat.

  Moreover, Guo Degang's crosstalk is performed by two people, while Zhou Xiao is now alone.

  Maybe give him a day or two, Zhou Xiao can really turn Guo Degang or some other crosstalk into a single-person comedy, but now with less than an hour to the afternoon performance, it's a bit unrealistic to do such a thing.

  What should I do? For the next few dozen minutes, Zhou Xiao's mind was basically filled with this question.

  Moreover, every time it came to this point, the time passed very quickly. Zhou Xiao hid in the corner of the rest room and felt that before he knew it, there were staff members coming to inform him that the performance was about to begin.

  Helpless Zhou Xiao had no choice but to grit his teeth and walk out of the rest room.

  "If all else fails, just use those old tricks to get by. After this performance is over, I'll make things clear with Uncle Inoue and then do something else." Zhou Xiao thought.

  The performance of the comedians is divided into five groups, except for Zhou Xiao and Sakaguchi, the other three groups are all combination crosstalk, and in terms of the order of appearance, the first three groups appear first, then Zhou Xiao, and finally Sakaguchi as the finale.

  Zhou Xiao came to the backstage, through the curtain, he saw that the audience in the theater was almost seated at this moment, with an occupancy rate of about 80%, which is also a good occupancy rate. Zhou Xiao didn't have much pressure standing in front of people performing, his pressure and tension mostly came from not being able to come up with a good joke.

  "Zhou Xiao, come here for a moment." Just as he was hiding behind the curtain and sneaking a peek, someone patted him on the back.

  Turning around, Zhou Xiao found that the person who took his picture was Uncle Inoue.

  "Zhou Xiao... look... can you swap the order of your performance with Sakaguchi's later?" Inoue said.

  "Swap the order of appearance?" The current order is Zhou Xiao first and Sakaguchi later, but it seems that Sakaguchi wants to perform before Zhou Xiao.

  "Why change the order?" Zhou Xiao asked in puzzlement. This order had been decided on a long time ago.

  "This isn't his recent popularity, is it... and your recent situation hasn't been good either, so..." Inoue trailed off.

  Listening to Uncle Jingtang's words, Zhou Xiao nodded slightly, so that's how it was.

  It's been said before that Sakaguchi's recent situation is not bad, with ten years of accumulation and a recent TV appearance, the number of viewers who came to see Sakaguchi has increased significantly. On the other hand, Zhou Xiao's recent situation is not good, after the freshness of his debut wore off, many of his jokes have become stale for audiences, and his creative ability is also not great. The initial burst of popularity was just a small explosion based on years of accumulation. It can be said that if Zhou Xiao had faced Sakaguchi ten years ago, he might have had a chance to win, but now the young Zhou Xiao facing the already established Sakaguchi can only be crushed by him.

  And if the order of appearance of the two people is adjusted, it would be a disaster for Zhou Xiao. Originally, his comedic skills were already insufficient, and he had to perform after Sakaguchi, who was in top condition, making him the final act among the five groups of artists, which put immense pressure and demands on him. Not to mention the current Zhou Xiao, who doesn't quite understand these things, even the previous Zhou Xiao would have a high probability of messing everything up.

  "I'm also helpless... Who made him acquainted with the person in charge here? I'm a manager, but actually, there's not much difference between me and a janitor. We can hardly communicate at all. And now he's become half of the backbone of this theater, so his words can't be ignored..." Mr. Inoue explained to Zhou Xiao with some embarrassment.

  "It doesn't matter, just change it then!" Zhou Xiao said without much consideration.

  "Eh? Is everything all right?" Inoue asked.

  "No big deal, it's just the order of things!" Zhou Xiao'an comforted, but in his heart he was thinking: "Anyway, I'm not interested in being a comedian, this last performance, let's just get it over with."

  When the two were talking, the first crosstalk duo had already taken the stage. This was a duo consisting of one fat and one thin person. After watching for a few minutes, Zhou Xiao found that the jokes of the two people basically revolved around the fat man's body type, while the explosive point of the crosstalk came from the thin man's embarrassing moments. The fat man's occasional counterattacks were quite laughable.

  Watching the performances of these two people, Zhou Xiao also gained a lot of lessons and experience. Although he no longer wants to be a comedian, these experiences will surely come in handy wherever he goes.

  The performances of the first three groups of comedians were over very quickly, and after their performances ended, the theater entered a brief intermission. The only two performers left to take the stage were Sakaguchi and Zhou Xiao.

  In Japan, manzai routines are usually limited to three to seven minutes, but in this small theater, it is rare for a performer to perform only one routine when they appear on stage.

  The reason is simple, when you go on TV, the TV station may not give you too much time, because there are many people waiting to go on TV and they don't lack one person's appearance. But in a small theater, the theater originally didn't have that much funding to invite artists, so with fewer artists and more time, each group of artists' stage time increased accordingly. However, having more stage time doesn't mean the jokes have to be long, most artists still perform three to five jokes within about 20 minutes on stage.

  After the performance of three groups of artists, more than an hour had already passed in the two-hour show time. The audience is always stricter on the performers who come out later. No way, they have been sitting for over an hour by then.

  During the intermission, Sakaguchi also came back to the backstage again.

  Sakaguchi, who was standing at the edge of the backstage, looked at Zhou Xiao with great disdain: "Hmph! Wait till I go on stage later and learn a thing or two. Let you see what it means to be a comedian. But I reckon even if you watch, you won't learn anything!"

  Sakaguchi's provocation had no effect on Zhou Xiao at this time, he turned his head and looked elsewhere, seemingly not caring about Sakaguchi's appearance.

  However, when Sakaguchi came on stage, Zhou Xiao didn't turn a blind eye to the show. He stared tightly at Sakaguchi, as if he wanted to learn all his experiences.

  Sakaguchi's solo act has a bit of a manzai feel to it, and with his hilariously disheveled appearance, the most common type of comedy he does is playing up the image of an overworked office drone who's always getting taken advantage of but still manages to find some joy in his misery. This office drone looks like he speaks in a soft, gentle voice, and as Xiaotao watched Sakaguchi on stage, she thought to herself: "The audience down there probably has no idea just how arrogant and overbearing this timid-looking guy is when he's offstage."

  It's no wonder that Sakaguchi is in good condition, and for the twenty minutes on stage, although there wasn't any earth-shattering laughter, the audience below was clearly still very happy, and the sound of laughter often came from backstage. Don't think that comedians performing in theaters can always make the audience laugh so hard they're crying; people who can really do this every time are already famous and don't need to be stuck in a small theater like this, wasting their life away. The punchlines of most performers in small theaters won't get much laughter.

  And such laughter is already enough and can be considered a success.

  When Sakaguchi ended his performance and walked off the stage with a triumphant expression, Zhou Xiao was already ready to go on stage.

  At this point, he had no other choice but to perform those few segments from his memory.

  P.S., thank you very much for Kunsha's first reward. At the same time, I would also like to thank Mengchu for his reward.