Stand-up — Rookie Tips

Whether you are just starting out doing stand-up or are on the brink of making that first time appearance on stage, here are some tips that I think will be helpful.

Buy comedy books and read them! Understand the theory behind why people laugh and it will help you structure your material in the right way for the stage. Telling a joke at a party which gets a laugh does not mean that same joke will get a laugh when performing stand-up.

Carry a pen and a piece of paper everywhere you go, or even better, a mini voice recorder. Most of your new material will come from sudden and spontaneous observations you make in your everyday life. If you think you will remember it until you get home, you are wrong, and you will lose a lot of sleep over it!

My favourite comedy book:
Zen and the art of stand-up comedy - Jay Sankey

Just search for them on amazon.com if you want to buy one.

In general, there are lots of useful books written on comedy with rules and guidelines on how to write good comedy, which many comedians read to get better. These are useful, but don’t forget, rules are meant to be broken! Do something unusual and be remembered for it, and most of all, get famous and paid for it!

I remember reading a book on comedy written just a few years ago where they said to never under any circumstances use pictures or powerpoint when performing. Do you think Demetri Martin read this? No, he went out and created his own niche and is famous and a genius for doing it.

See Demetri Martin here

It’s hard to not be nervous before you go on stage, so try this highly recommended exercise:

—The moment before you go on stage, say to yourself ‘I don’t give a shit how this goes‘.

This will hopefully calm you down and help you give off a feeling of relaxed confidence during the moments on stage as you take the microphone before you start speaking, and also through your first bit, and the audience will warm to you easier.

Try not to memorize what you are going to say and repeat it word for word on stage. You will sound like a broken record and/or a bad rookie and lose the audience before you’ve even gotten to your first punchline.

Never ask the audience for an applause! I repeat, never ask the audience for an applause. Don’t ask me why, just don’t do it. Bad comedians do this to compensate for stinking.

For some strange reason they think that it gets the audience on their side. It doesn’t. The audience is waiting for them to be funny, and they are not interested in clapping their hands for no reason. A good comedian earns the audience’s applause with good, funny material.

You don’t want give the impression to the audience that you have bad material and need an unearned applause for no reason just to feel better, do you?

Don’t ask questions to the audience just for the sake of doing it and because you see lots of the other comedians doing it. Too many comedians (of all levels, believe me, I’ve seen it!) do this and audiences are tired of the superficiality of it.

Example: a comedian is going to tell a bit about being in a relationship and before they get into their bit they ask the standard question “How many here tonight are in a relationship? Clap your hands.” And then they go nowhere with it in terms of interacting with the audience and expanding on it further. They get a clap, but it’s an empty clap, and they distance themselves from the audience more than they know.

If you ask the audience something, as a whole or to an individual, have a purpose that leads to a laugh. Don’t get them clapping just for the sake of clapping.

5 minutes is 5 minutes. Especially when starting out as a stand-up comedian, keep to the time you are given on stage. If you are too nervous on stage to keep track, have a friend blind you with a laser, throw a pie at you, anything! Get off in under 5.30! Comedians, especially rookies, who go over more than the time they are given, quickly create a bad reputation for themselves amongst comedians and club organizers, and will find it very hard to get more stage time.

Rookies tend to worry more about not bombing than keeping to their time, when in fact they should be doing the exact opposite. Everyone bombs, even the best of them now and again. Audiences, other comedians, and especially club organizers all know it.

As long as you keep to your time, you’ll probably get more stage time. Stand-up is like a learning to ice-skate. With practice you get better. However, if you repeatedly don’t stick to your time on stage, you’ll find that it will be harder and harder to find ice to practice on, until finally your left stuck in the summer holding a pair of useless skates.

Listen to the other comedians who are on stage before you, there might be something they say which you can reflect on in your act! This is especially good if you still haven’t decided what to say first. Audiences appreciate comedians who can make these kinds of reflections. It gives the impression of being good, observant, and ‘spontaneous’ funny (one of the best kinds of funny!)

If you bomb, don’t worry. All comedians have bombed at one point or another, even the best of them. Tomorrow is another day. Material which works with one audience might fall dead with another audience. It can be like the weather - can’t be predicted. Even the best of them, after many years of experience, can come across an audience they just don’t click with. Lick your wounds and believe in yourself and your material.

If another comedian bombs or consistently stinks, or you just don’t like another comedian, don’t talk about them behind their back, especially to other comedians! You never know who is going to be running that new, most popular club in a few years and if they know that you think they stink, you can kiss any stage time there good-bye.

Comedians who stink have a funny, disproportional tendency to compensate by starting their own clubs so they can perform, and stink as usual, on their own stage as much as they like. Yet the downside is that maybe that club will get popular and be the one you would die to get stage time at, and they will still be the ones who decide who performs and who doesn’t, despite how much they stink.

Get business cards made. No matter what level of comedian you think you are, you never know who is sitting in the audience and might like your act and wants to pay you an obscene amount of money to come and perform at their next company party or their mom’s 70th birthday.

It’s so much easier, and much more professional, if you have a business card in your pocket with your contact information that you can give to them after the show rather than writing your phone number on the back of a beer-stained bar napkin.

A good, cheap site to order cards at is www.vistaprint.com (tip, sign up for an account and click the box to receive email offers, wait a few days, and eventually you’ll get email offers from them to order free cards where you just have to pay for the postage costs).

Get a website done, when you’re ready to make some money consistently.

This site is made by jbdesign.nu

Most gigs that pay you money will be at company parties, events, conferences, birthdays, weddings, reunions etc… Having a website will make it much easier to find you.

When choosing a domain name, choose one which is catchy, easily recognizable, and one which won’t limit you if, for example, you get famous and want to start marketing yourself in our countries. (I understood, when it came down to two choices, that nobody outside of Sweden would understand kanadicken.nu which is why I chose joestandup.com as my domain).

If you can’t afford to have someone do a website for you, you can easily create your own site for free using Google Sites (www.sites.google.com). You’ll need a gmail account to log in with. If you don’t have one, have a friend you know who has a gmail account invite you to create an account. Before you decide on a web hotel, check around and see if one of them has a coupon for advertising free using Google Adwords. (www.adwords.google.com).

If you are not sure what to charge for a gig then ask another comedian who is about the same level as you what they charge and that’s probably about right.

If you need to travel and/or spend the night somewhere, don’t forget to tell the customer that these expenses are not included. Food and beverages is usually fixed for you in combination with whatever event it is that you will be performing at.

Brake a leg! — Joe