A Career in Stand-Up..

I'm often asked when teaching my stand-up comedy classes how I have it in me to actually make someone interested in performing stand-up funny. Truthfully, I have no such skill. That's a skill each student brings to the class. 

I have yet to meet anyone who has ever taken one of my classes and privately said to myself, "where the heck did they come from?" Generally, those who believe a stand-up class is something they want to take do so because they already know they're funny. Chances are their friends or family or colleagues know they're funny. They already have the ability to make people laugh. What we do in class is we review the tools required to turn funny things said into a viable stand-up act.

Sounds easy, right? Sure, what's easier than having fun? What's so challenging about telling jokes? Well, truthfully, it's harder, much harder than you might think. For starters, when a comic is performing, he or she is expected to be funny. OK, that goes without saying but the audience isn't always willing to play along which means a comic needs jokes and plenty of them. 

My first rule of thumb, be prepared. Have your act mapped out. When you break into comedy, you will struggle to find clubs or producers willing to give you more than 5 minutes of stage time. That means you need 5 minutes of material and you better come with 5 minutes of material if you want to perform there again. Not 3 minutes, not 7 minutes. This is a structured business, they want you on and off so the next comic can get his time, then the next. 

This means, rehearsing. Practice your act in the shower, in front of the mirror, while driving, while walking down the street. When you can, time your act; our phones have timers built in, use them. Have your punchlines spread out so that you're hitting them with regularity. Exhaust that 5 minutes, know that 5 minutes. You may become bored with it but those 5 minutes are what you do. Each audience is different. What's old to you is new to them so practice and perform that act with enthusiasm as if it's the first time you've ever uttered any of those jokes.

From time to time, I run across new comics who tell me they just want to "wing it" like Robin Williams did or maybe like Don Rickles. Well, maybe they did "wing it" but that took years and years and years of perfecting material and stage presence. In short, that takes a long time!

So, you want to be a comic? You can do it if you play hard, work it hard and play it smart. There's nothing funny about comedy when it comes to performing comedy. It's a business and like most businesses you need to train for it by being prepared. That's rule number one.