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Yeah, you're funny NOW. Your the life of the party your drunk and nearly unconscious friends think your a riot a legend in your own pajamas. But it's one thing to make some of your slightly buzzed friends laugh at a party. The more pissed they get the better you sound, your amazing memory (two thousand six hundred and seventy two jokes) is making you look like a cross between Robin Williams and Rich Little. Every joke you tell is done with a new and amazingly clever accent and you can even do reasonably accurate impressions of the characters in your jokes. In short your a fucking hit. |
It's
a whole different ball game to get on a stage in front of an audience and
do stand-up comedy. The very first thing you'll discover is that there
are very few comedians who actually tell jokes. That sort of comedy is
not really popular these days. audiences as a general rule will have heard
almost every joke you can tell. Today's comedians do routines or sets.
These can take many formats the one liner is the best example a collection
of one liners woven into a story format. Comedians also tell stories or
relate real life. What's going on in the comedians life or how he feels
about his work, his friends or even his mother.
To do any kind of live performance, you need to have a strong ego and nerves of steel and possibly the biggest balls on your street. Yes even if your a female comic the term is not literal.
To do stand-up comedy, you need to
be virtually insane. (Just as a side issue it is a known fact in the industry
that almost all comedians have some sort of problem.) Part of the reason
most successful comedians even entered the business is due to some childhood
trauma. Like not being understood by ones peers, being the little weedy
guy and so on. Some where early in, life we discovered that humor if used
properly can be a weapon as well as a way of being noticed and standing
out from the crowd. OOPS SORRY this is a comedy course not a phsyc course!
Don't expect to be brilliant.
Almost everybody bombs their first time ("bombing" means that you didn't make 'em laugh . . . in the world of stand-up, that's not good). Here's were the INSANE bit really comes in most normal sane people would go NAH NOT FOR ME I died a miserable death, it felt like shit and they hated me, Im never getting back up, this is a mugs game its for the birds. Comedians however say all this, Then they are back on stage the very next night. There's some thing inside of them that makes them weather fifteen even twenty really bad gigs and still keep coming back. |
So here's another important point about performing comedy something you will know instinctively if you are a real comedian NO MATTER HOW BAD YOU ARE, YOU WILL GET BETTER. It may take ten shows but something will click between you and the audience you will get them. No matter how bad you think you are, or your material is it will start to work if you work it. Simply put the secret is, do as many gigs as you can.
Which brings me to bad material is there such a thing?
Well yes and no, Iv'e seen comedians on the stage starting out who I thought were never going to amount to anything three years later they were kicking ass and doing the big spots. Their material may have been shit but it was their material, to them it was clever, funny witty, and good. The material didn't change, they did, they became expert at that material and through performance skills learned to make an audience feel the same way.
On the other hand.
Iv'e heard brilliant material performed with no style and no real function. The material gets lost in the lousy performance. No one can teach you to perform you have to do that yourself, you need to get on stage as much as possible take a professional attitude learn from every mistake you make and keep doing the things that work.
Then there are comedians who aren't doing their characters correctly.
Like the guy who tries to be another
"some mothers do ave em" and has the wrong body shape to carry the part
off. It is unbelievable to the audience, sure he may be a good actor but
he's acting the wrong part ( he has miscast himself) or the crazy zany
body movement guy who is build like a professional wrestler, it just doesn't
come across as believable so the audience wont believe it, its that simple.
Therefore part of this course is about finding the real you. How do you
find the real you?
Once again the answer is do
it, do it, do it.
Constantly doing it will give you another strange super power the ability to read an audience. Most comedians learn from the very first set how to read when an audience has had enough of them, reading when they want more or what direction you need to go in is harder and takes practice.
How much practice should you have?
Ok we got the on stage practice out
of the way just keep getting up until you find your way, but what about
the off stage practice this matters even more its where you design and
perfect your style and most importantly GET TO KNOW YOUR MATERIAL.
Stand-up comics spend hours every
day working on and perfecting their routines, while walking driving eating
sleeping. Going over and over and over the material YES EVEN YOUR FIVE
MINUTE TRY OUT ROUTINE.
There's a very unique thing that
happens if you've mumbled your routine a hundred times, it changes, your
brain gets bored and starts adding bits in, they come out through your
mouth almost on instinct. Your routine grows and becomes funnier and more
natural as your brain tries to figure out ways not to be bored.
How do I practice if Iv'e never done standup before?
Start thinking right now about your first gig we will deal with how to actually get that gig a bit later, right now pretend that you have one. Another important thing you will have to do is watch a bunch of comics performing their acts. But don't stop at just watching your favorites. Whether on stage, TV, or videotape, watch as many comics as you can. Study their techniques and get a feel for how they construct their jokes. DO NOT COPY THEIR MATERIAL. You can copy or imitate a style of performance if that style is genuinely YOU. You can even do a similar type of material but never ever do another comedians material truth is you probably wont last five minutes in the business.
BUT WHAT IF THE MATERIAL REALLY SUITS THE CHARACTER IM DEVELOPING?
Ok you can do similar material you'll
need to re write and make it totally unrecognizable from the original source
doing this can often create completely new ideas anyway. But do
not perform any VARIATIONS you come up with. This is the
unwritten sin of standup. Later we will deal with writing your own material
and the various methods used by comedians to achieve this.
While studying the pros, try to determine what type of comic each one is. This will be of tremendous help when it comes to defining your own style if you can label a dozen other comedians then you just might be able to label yourself. Failing that ask someone else to label you. Ego being what it is and comedians being the egos that they are, they all like to think they are a little different from all the others, in reality most of them are not, somebody will be glad to label you. Best to ask some-one who thinks they themselves cant be labeled, they seem to be the ones who are quite apt at finding labels for others.
Here are a few basic comedy types.
observational comics examples: Jerry
Seinfeld, Janeane Garofalo
impressionists examples: Dana
Carvey, Mike Myers, Rich Little
Next Lesson coming soon...
Something to think about till then.
Next you need to
determine your emotional attitude as always you can best achieve this by
looking at others Richard Lewis is a man in perpetual pain. Denis
Leary is as hostile as you can get. What is your emotional attitude? Are
you zany, cynical, deadpan, naïve, or a bizarre combination of all
these traits? Don't pick the emotional attitude that you think is funniest;
pick the one that matches you. You're funniest when you're honest.
After becoming acquainted with veteran personalities, you'll get a better sense of how to carve a niche for yourself in the biz. In time, you'll naturally gravitate toward the comic persona that works best for your humor.
Please Note: This comedy course is made of of various parts of other comedy course's around the net as well as a lot of our own information and observations. Plus those of many of Melbourne top comedians. It is a continuing and growing effort. We want your comments and input so if you think you have something to add go to the info page.
COMING SOON PART TWO THE SECOND bit...
