Practice your material at a solo concert once a month

–You’ve continued to compete in R-1 since winning in 2009. How does it feel to compete after becoming champion?

Nakayama (hereinafter, the same)Up until 2009, my goal was to win the R-1, so I wasn’t able to do it with the same enthusiasm after that. But when my manager asked me, “Aren’t you going to participate?” I said, “Okay, I’ll participate.” That wasn’t good, because it was inertia. Depending on the year, I would normally be eliminated in the third round or something. I think that in award races, you either go for it with a joke that you think will be popular, or you do the comedy that you want to do.

In my case, the year I won, I focused on material that would be funny, but after that, I was neither good at it nor bad. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to not participate, so it was tough. By the way, this year I was eliminated in the second round.

— Nakayama was eliminated in the second round.

I was preparing my material the day before, and after running around a lot, I ended up doing my material on a flip chart with words that no one could read. I knew I would be eliminated even before I did it. So on the day, before the preliminary rounds started, I asked my manager, “I want to do a solo live performance of my material once a month. Please reserve the venue now.”
My enthusiasm was different from that of the other contestants who were seriously aiming to get to the top, and I was angry at myself for not being as enthusiastic, so I decided to do a solo live show every month for about a year to criticize my material.

–You’ve been performing live in March and April so far. Has your attitude towards your material changed?

Now I don’t feel lukewarm about it. Recently I’ve been performing at Yoshimoto’s Numazu Theater, but I have to please the audience who aren’t interested in me, even though there are high-level comedians performing. In that situation, I’m doing some hardcore comedy sketches.

In my experience, the “antonym” flip joke is the most popular, but it’s no good if you only do that. Recently, I was given three performances, and if I have three performances, I want to change the jokes for all of them. There are a few, but there are people who make a point of coming to see me. If I have a 10-minute performance, I change the 5-minute part.

–You held solo concerts in Tokyo and Osaka in January this year, and I was amazed that you performed a total of 20 new skits, 10 different from each other.

Both the Tokyo and Osaka shows are streamed live, so if people who watched the Tokyo show on stream come to the Osaka venue, they end up watching the same material over and over again. If we wanted to eliminate that, we had no choice but to change all of our material.

–Isn’t it rare for comedians to go that far?

There probably aren’t many. In the first place, I was the one who started the idea of ​​solo comedians doing 10 jokes at a live show. Normally, a solo comedian would do about three jokes at a live show. But because of me, it seems like we’re cutting corners if we only do three jokes. A junior solo comedian once told me, “You’re the one who messed it up.” But new jokes are still fun. You don’t know how people will react, and everything is a learning experience.