TL Comedians Thread

Meh, I was just in the middle of writing a huge post about doing stand up for the first time but I suddenly realized like maybe two people would actually bother reading it/following it, so I'll try to boil it down to a couple key points.

1. The audience is not going to jump all over you if you aren't funny. Seriously. Oh, I know, you've dreamed up this shit in your head where you bomb and they fucking heckle you and you end up pissing off some redneck and getting your ass curbstomped or whatever ... ain't gonna happen. Assuming you're doing an open mic at a club, the people definitely want to laugh, but they more or less expect everybody to be pretty bad. Even if you are ungodly bad, they're just going to think "oh well, that one wasn't good but maybe the next guy will be!" And don't forget that lowered expectations means more and bigger laughs should you actually be funny.

2. The only real way you're going to have a truly "bad" experience (meaning people actually talk shit at you/get pissed) is if you act like an asshole. And you're not going to interrupt a bunch of people trying to have a good time in some person's club to be an asshole, so you've got nothing to worry about.

3. To go along with point 2: all the people at the club want from you is for you to follow their rules and not be a dick. No, seriously, the staff would be happy if you're hilarious and making people piss themselves, but even if you get no laughs at all you'll almost certainly be welcomed back later if you just do what they ask (which generally consists of: be in the "on-deck" spot, don't go over time and don't use whatever words they don't want you to use). Granted, that may not hold true in certain venues in NYC or LA (or self-aggrandizing venues in some of the high-density areas of Florida or Texas) but if you can follow the rules and not be an asshole I guarantee you can get stage time somewhere (unless you're somewhere where there are no stages ;p).

4. All that was aimed at pointing out how even if things go horrible it won't be that horrible, but the truth is it's unlikely that any of that will happen. I've spent a good amount of time on stage (mOnion definitely has me beaten on stage time, but I've got several hours of time myself, which is no small feat when new comics tend to get 2-5 minutes per appearance) and I have never done a set where I got zero laughs. Despite performing to less than ten people on a few occasions (which is incredibly daunting when you're used to performing to ~150 in the same room) and blanking out in the middle of my act a couple other times (one of those in front of the club owner and multiple time New York Times bestseller author ... that night was ownage T_T). That doesn't mean there were lots of laughs, by any means, but if you get only one laugh in your first time on stage and it doesn't make you hungry to get back on stage then stand up probably isn't for you.

5. If you're doing a bar or something like that then there are certain differences, but all of the above still stands. The odds of you getting no laughs greatly increases and bar patrons tend to be less intune with delicate jokes like witty turns of phrase or lengthy word play, but they tend to laugh harder when they do laugh so it's really not so bad. I do strongly advise against interacting with the audience if you're doing a bar and don't have much experience, though.

There, maybe that's short enough for people to read but still contains something useful. If you'd like something more specific, you can ask, though obviously different venues and parts of the country do things slightly differently (I'm in Florida, which is extremely comic-dense so my experience may be tainted by more comic friendly [or more comic-unfriendly] practices).

Obviously Day's stuff was good but I haven't watched mOnion's yet (I didn't ignore you to go watch Day's stuff; I saw his a long time ago). I'll make a note of it and make sure I do so later, though, and I'm definitely looking forward to newer stuff, as well! Always a fan of those who support and perform live comedy, so I'll be sending you tons of good luck vibes on the 14th, man. I hope that shit's wrapped up by the 16th, though, man, cause I've probably gotta report for jury selection that day and I'm gonna need that luck for myself. ;p

As for me, I haven't done stand up in almost a year now. Did my first open mic in late 2007 and did quite a bit of open mics, bars and guest spots from then to late 2008. Tapered off from there. The thrill of getting a laugh is, obviously, still incredible, but the time and money strain of the traveling have put me off it for quite a while. I intend to get back in to it at some point, though probably more as a hobby than anything, but I suspect that's a ways off. No videos of myself, so you'll just have to take my word that I'm bad, instead of letting me prove it to you. ;p

Yeah, competitions are kind of a different monster, though. I've been to some "friendly" FSU v UF competitions that got more than a little heated, and I've heard some serious horror stories from some true competitions. The atmosphere is less like a night on the town and more like a football game when you make you get in that situation and we all know how easily phrases like "you suck" get thrown around at sporting events. In a club or a bar, the odds of group heckling are really low (unless there's some special group there; was talking to a touring headliner a couple year's back and he was doing a set in South Carolina and said something about the KKK ... only to find that there were two length-of-the-room tables worth of Klan members in the audience. Fun times.) and the concern is more with a single drunken idiot and they tend to be unable to keep up with the rapid changes of personnel at an open mic. ^_^

That said, if you do get heckled early on, it makes it easy to write off that performance ("I was about to kill 'em when that jerk spoke up. Next time, I'm gonna make 'em laugh so hard he can't say nothin!)" Getting heckled always sucks, but when you don't have the experience to know you actually were sucking it's easy to shrug off.

I've been heckled (typically by other comedians, oh the irony! I remember one time [didn't happen to me, but I was there] when a friend of mine was hosting and the headliner started reaming him out hardcore. This was at a Comedy Zone, and the headliner was subsequently banned from all Comedy Zones, but still. For myself, I've had to deal with a mouthy host once or twice and drunken early-goers at open mics a few times ... it's an especially shitty situation since you'd expect them to know that just doing your routine can be hard enough) but rarely, and I think the odds of somebody getting heckled in their first show are basically nil if they don't act like a jerk. From my own sets and watching plenty of others I feel like it's drastically more likely to get heckled once you start incorporating the audience in your act and it's somewhat unlikely that someone just starting to perform is going to be doing much of that.

Actually that's a good point to mention for people: keep in mind that when you give the audience the ability to talk to you during your show, they're probably going to decide they have the right to say whatever smart thing that pops in their mind. If you can handle what comes at you from there, it's one thing, but people can be unpredictable even for very experienced comics and once you lose control of the audience it's hard not only for you to get them back under control, but for anybody else in the place to do so. Yeah, some crowds are just bad from the start though those tend to be obvious before you even get close to the stage, but most "bad" crowds get that way because somewhere along the progression somebody on stage started something they couldn't control and let the idiots take control. It's best not to play around with the audience unless you know what you're doing.

As a note, that doesn't mean every audience is going to go south on you if you mess up trying to interact with them, and it's not me trying to say that getting the crowd involved is a bad thing, but it is me pointing out that if you are going to start interacting with the crowd you should understand what can happen and be careful when there are going to be people performing behind you that you aren't screwing things up for them (unless they deserve it, of course).

That probably sounds a lot scarier than I intend it - I'm not aiming this at anybody or trying to say a style is bad or that a learning comic shouldn't experiment with crowd interaction - but it mostly just boils down to know what you're trying to do and have a plan for getting there and don't go too far too soon. Also, understand the venue and situation: if it's an open mic with ~15 contestants who got 5 minutes each and you're contest #13, then yes, by all means, fire up the crowd, but if it's a festival with a ton of people and there are three hours worth of people performing after you...it's probably a bad idea to go playing around with the crowd too much. Make 'em laugh, by all means, but don't let 'em talk.

Meh, another long post. It's just I see a lot of new comics see the guys on TV or the headliner at the club talking up the audience and think they can do it too and yeah...no. It's definitely something that needs a lot of practice to be good at and, most of the time, it's no big deal if you try to get them involved and fail, but sometimes ... not so much.