Frustrations of a Beginning Comedian

Frustrations of A Beginning Comedian
By Jerry Corley – founder: The Stand Up Comedy Clinic

Yesterday, I received a call from a beginning comedian who I saw perform at a comedy class graduation show. She was stressed, “I did my first show at an open mic and it didn’t go that well. I’m supposed to do one this week and I’m thinking of canceling. I don’t feel good. What happened?” She proceeded to talk about how she actually caught a cold after the performance and questioned her ability. I thought about what I should say to her to calm her down or ease her frustration. At the risk of sounding off with a petty and unoriginal cliché I said: “Everything you’re experiencing is normal.” So much for originality, right?

It’s very common to have a great show at a graduation performance of a comedy class and then not have a great one at a regular open mic. At a graduation show, everyone in attendance is aware that the comedians are all new and, therefore the audience is incredibly supportive. All the comedians are fresh, eager and excited about their first show and the audience feels that. It becomes a mutually generated energy between comedian and audience, audience and comedian. The goodwill from both sides turns into a wonderfully supportive environment where new, mediocre comedians will get laughs and new comedians who are above average will get laughter, cheers and applause. Most humor is the shattering of predictability, expectation or assumption. An audience’s expectations of new comedians is very low, so if they perform anywhere above that level, the expectation was shattered. Therefore the audience response is going to be very favorable. On the opposite end, if the audience expected Dave Chappelle and they got a line-up of new comedy students, the reaction would be completely different.

In your graduation show, your first joke out of the shoot works and you get laughs. It loosens you up and you’re in the moment. You’re instincts are alive and you can feel every impulse and every instinct. You feel free to quip off script. You can hear the voices saying the lines a split second before the words come out of your mouth. You can hear the inflection and feel the emotion. You’re alive and you know it’s going well. You can actually feel that you’re in the ‘groove’. Joke number one: Laughs. Joke two: more laughs. Joke three: laughs and applause. You close the set; applause. You’re on top of the world!

Then comes the open mic...One of the most difficult transitions a new comedian can make is going from the very supportive graduation show to the vapid, sometimes hostile open mic. It’s very different from the graduation show and few teachers of comedy have experienced performing at one of these, let alone sat as an audience member. I’ve been there performing many, many times and continue to go back, because the experience is worth it. Being able to stay in your game despite the distractions will make you a better comedian; stronger, more focused and faster on your feet.

Tiger Woods is without exception the world’s greatest golfer. When he was just a boy learning golf his father, Earl Woods, would barrage Tiger with verbal distractions and annoyances, sometimes demeaning him, while Tiger was trying to play. The purpose was to force Tiger to sharpen his focus so that soon those distractions and annoyances were mere sounds that barely existed outside Tiger’s world of concentration. Now, nobody who watches Tiger play could even imagine anything taking Tiger out of his focus or out of his game.

Some open mics are great. They are supportive and you really feel like you can connect with an audience. Many however, are like the environment that Earl Woods created for Tiger when he was pelting him with a verbal assault. They are distracting and noisy are there so you can get stage time and become familiar with your material somewhere outside the comfort of the workshop or your circle of friends. You can begin to gauge your material on a smattering of laughter and applause rather than a reaction from a full audience (like the graduation show) who are, for the most part, focused on nothing but you.

In the end my advice to her was to get right back up on the stage and do it again. There is a reason we call it a work out, because each time we step on stage, we learn to address our acts, our material, and ourselves. We learn about audience dynamics, human nature and performance technique. When I was working out with weights regularly, I had a personal trainer. On the days when I didn’t feel strong and couldn’t do all the reps my trainer used to say, “Just keep working, even on the bad days, it’s all money in the bank.” Every step you take with stage time at this point in your game is ‘money in the bank.’ Going from zero to funny is a process, a marathon and not a sprint. “Practice, practice, practice” and “get back up on that horse” may be clichés, but in this business and with this art form they are time-tested clichés that work.

Jerry Corley is a 20-year professional stand up comedian. He was a contributing writer for the Tonight Show with Jay leno for 8 years and teaches a comedy workshop in the Los Angeles area.