How to Perfect the Art of Stand Up Comedy: Stand Up Comedy 101

Many people believe being a stand-up comedian is one of the most flamboyant and carefree jobs. Comedians are often perceived as overly extrovert individuals that make easy money by just dishing out a string of witty remarks and snide humor. A 5-minute routine, a few minutes of laughter, and an obnoxious sense of humor is the complete ticket to a few hundred dollars.

Lucrative? Quite so.

Easy Money? A huge fallacy.

In order to succeed in any field, you have to have a clear idea what to pursue, and how you go about towards achieving it. You can either set your sights on becoming a comedian actor like Robin Williams and Adam Sandler, or do some stand up comedy routines in TV sitcoms and talk shows. However, it is a general idea that stand up comedy in clubs is the breeding ground of a lot of celebrity comedians. So before you set your sights on becoming a famous Hollywood comedian, it would be best to concentrate on perfecting the art of stand up comedy.

Funny Money

While most people who have a regular 8-5 job, will work for one or two employers, comedians actually work for several dozens of bosses – the audience. While several employees would endlessly complain about their hard to please superiors, stand up comics are faced with a bigger predicament of pleasing every person in the audience or else run the risk of losing their jobs.

Making people laugh is no joke. It is quite a hard feat to pull off especially audiences are very tough customers to please. After a hard day’s work, most people shell out some hard earned dollars for a few hours of entertainment, they would naturally expect the very best. But whether something is funny or not is quite subjective. Herein lies the great challenge for standup comedians – making most people in the audience laugh and have fun.

As a comedian, a couple of onstage disasters in two or more of your performances could spell out the end of your career. The competition is rough, your position in always in a precarious state. You are only good as the last laugh.

With that said, you would realize that although as a comedians your focus would be in your routine and in delivering good jokes, it is equally important to get to know your audience better.

They are not merely nameless faces in the crowd. They are not just ordinary spectators. They are your bosses.

Who Are They?

The ultimate judge for your performances is your audience. You are presented with diverse personalities. To be effective in your craft, you have to have a thorough understanding of the different types of individuals that comprises your regular crowd. This will help you manage them in certain occasions they will be unruly enough and disrupt your routine.

Hecklers

All professional stand-up comedians have encountered a couple or more hecklers during their performances. This is quite expected especially in comedy clubs. However, hecklers are quite rare. It is certainly not a regular occurrence in every stand-up comedy shows.

If you have not encountered hecklers yet, the first time you’ll come across one you will definitely be at a loss on how to deal with them. How would you deal with them?

There was an incident a few years ago when a person in the crowd would not stop the guitar act of a stand-up comic. The heckler got to the comedian’s nerve, which pushed him to smash the guitar over the head of the heckler. Needless to say, the comedian was sued along with the booker and the owner of the hotel he was performing in.

Retaliation is definitely out of the question. They are after all your paying customers. The best thing to do is to ignore them the first time. On the second time try to be polite but if they are still persistent, you can throw back some jokes that will keep them quiet. The audience will most probably be ion your side, since they will also be annoyed by the disruption.

Moaners

Moaners are not exactly intentional disruptors to the show. There are just some individuals who make odd noises that would potentially ruin the flow of you routine. There are people who laugh at odd moments, or make some uncontrollable squeak than would spoil the delivery of your lines or jokes.

If your audience makes some weird noises, by all means tell them so. Being a comedian gives you the license to do just that. This will probably give in a fresh new round of laughter in the room.

Helpers  

Helpers are the few individuals in the room that have the annoying habit of adding their own comments in your jokes. You would usually see them sitting in the front row and would blurt out some comments or their own versions of jokes.

Helpers pose a very challenging problem. They disrupt your rhythm and comic timing. Most of these people are not intentionally trying to be mean but they have the misguided need to help you with your routines.

As much as possible, you pick out on an innocent victim just because he/she is just trying to help. The best thing to do is speak louder and talk a bit faster and just basically ignore them. They will eventually get tired of being ignored.

Delivering jokes is tricky enough without the unwelcome interruptions. Laughter is such a delicate medium. The response of your audience can be greatly affected by a number of things. People who disrupts the show are not only exasperating but they will ruin your show and for other people in the audience.

Keep in mind that it’s YOUR SHOW. You call the shots.  You should keep a firm rein on everything to ensure that you can flawlessly deliver your routine and make sure everyone will enjoy every minute of your performance.

Learn from Other’s Mistakes

Noticeably, novice and amateur comic commit the same mistakes, time and again. Those old hands at stand-up comedies have most probably made the same mistakes and have learned better. You don’t need to go through it as they all did. With knowledge on what to avoid, you will be better prepared to do your stand up routines without a single hitch. Here are some guidelines to live by:

1.      Avoid Filthy Jokes

This is one of the oldest tricks in a comedian’s book, especially in doing stand up comedy shows. Filthy jokes are not at all funny and a very effective way for a booker to cancel all possible bookings faster than you can deliver your punchlines. Tasteless and smutty humor will not get your audience to laugh; instead it will put them off and ruin your entire performance.

2.      Avoid Sounding So Angry

These days, audiences no longer have a keen appreciation for bitter comedies. People didn’t play just to hear someone spat out diatribes and complaints for full five minutes of his routine. Try to keep everything light and funny.

3.      Stop Pacing

There are a lot of amateur comedians who pace a lot. Unknowingly, you are projecting some nervous energy that doesn’t bode well with your audience that they will all somehow absorb too.

RELAX.  After all, this is comedy, no need to work up a steam just to make people laugh. Chris Rock pulls off the angry comic stunt impeccably and effectively. But then you are not him so slow down and exert more energy on delivering your routines

4.      Don’t Smoke On Stage

Not only will smoking put off some members of the audience, it will make you look dumb. Try observing stand up comedians who smoke during their performance, whether its part of their prop or not, it only succeeds ion making them appear ridiculous not and funny. Smoking can also mess up with your timing; so get rid of that type of prop.

5.      Don’t Wear Crazy Clothes

With the sophisticated brand of humor most people normally have nowadays, wearing weird pieces of clothing will not contribute to your comedy. It will only make you look silly and stupid. Besides, you would not want to divert the attention of the audience to your jokes just because they are astonished by our weird fashion sense.

Adjusting to Your Crowd

Most experienced comedians who know better would like to sit at the back just before that show starts. They are covertly watching what types of personalities are in the crowd. Being dedicat5ed to your craft would mean that you are willing to adjust your routines to better suit majority of the crowd.

For most amateur comedians doing some last minute changes are quite unthinkable. There is simply limited time. That may be the case, but you willingness to improvise will help you get to the top and the crowd will appreciate you for it.

This does not mean that you have to change your entire routine altogether. Last minute revisions can potentially ruin your routine. The best thing to do is to keep some nice jokes handy that you can pull out for certain occasions and incorporate it in your routine for that particular performance.

Audiences can be hard to read. The best thing to do is to play it by ear. If a particularly joke has generated   more response from the crowd, be ready to pull out more of the jokes on that same category. This will sustain the energy of the room and keep the energy flowing.

However, this can be a tricky thing to pull off. Most of the time, only veteran stand-up comedians can pull off last minute changes in their routines. It can be very difficult to do, since it would require full command of your routine.

You can either play it safe and stick to your prepared routine, or do some little revisions that help make it a sensational performance. It is certainly more rewarding to watch the crowd holler with laughter and hear some really loud chuckles, all in a day’s work.

If you are still relatively new in the industry, it would be more advisable to concentrate more on perfecting your routine. Through the years, with considerable experience you will be able to master your own unique techniques and will leave you some room for alterations without much fuss.