Soooo.... how'd that work out?

There's this phenomena that I experience every time I get off stage of... how to put it gently... utter disappointment. I don't know what it is, if it's my body coming off an endorphin high or just the product of a freshly crushed ego, but I always get off stage thinking I did an absolutely atrocious job. I usually can't shake the feeling until I've listened to the audio back at home and hear some of the laughter that somehow didn't quite register while I was on stage. That said, my immediate impression of myself is always much worse than the actual performance, but even still, it's a humbling experience to put yourself through that on such a regular basis.

Now, I'm not going to pretend that my set last night brought the house down or even was near the top of the showcase list. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I was one of the last comics to go on, and it was nearing the end of a full 2 hour show that went through 5 or 6 showcase comics, then the headliner, Edwin San Juan, and then 5 more showcase comics. The comic right before me, though a good friend, got a little ranty and I saw the already waning post-headliner audience get even slimmer. I fortunately had a small posse of friends who stuck around to see me perform, but the crowd was limp and tired of laughing.

The saddest part of it all was that I gave what was probably my best performance yet (I know, I say that every time), but to a Monday night audience that had already given all it had to the comics before. Luckily, I've become an expert at finding the grins and nodding heads in skimpy crowds, and replacing them with belly laughs in my head. I'm not sure if I'm going to post the video from last night. A buddy recorded it, but didn't hit record all the way so the first 2 jokes (which, in retrospect, were probably not that funny) didn't make it on there. It's an embarrassingly quiet crowd, though, and since I occasionally point friends to my YouTube results to get a sense of my comedy, I might just leave this developmental step off of the public list. As painful as it may've been, I still walked away a better comic than when I came in.

A (slightly) new approach...

I'm going on stage at Club Deluxe tonight as part of their Monday night showcase. It's my third time appearing in their showcase, and although my sets there have gotten increasingly better, I'm hoping to make this performance significantly better than the rest. I'm not only pulling out some of my best jokes, I also carefully trimmed back the premise of each and isolated the punchline, keeping the least amount of premise necessary. This will allow me to tell more jokes, and use the momentum to keep the crowd going. Besides, I'm learning that if part of a premise can be removed without hurting the joke, then it's not really a premise at all, it's unfunny fluff.

At some point, I'll want to re-extend these jokes, as a few of them have become only a shade longer than a one-liner. However, for tonight, my goal is to get at least a couple eruptions of laughter without killing the mood with an interminable build-up. I'll be sure to update you on how it goes.

Tonight's Headliner at Club Deluxe: Edwin San Juan

Hecklers

For anyone who doesn't realize it, I just want to set the record straight. Unless they ask a question directly to you, anyone who talks during a comedian's set is a heckler. It doesn't matter what the person says, it's a heckle. Even if you think you're helping, you're not. And this is what gets me, is that people actually feel like they can just shout something at someone on stage. No one would heckle an actor in a play, or a speaker doing a speech, so why do people feel entitled to say something to a comedian? 

I haven't gotten heckled on stage. The BrainWash has an unspoken rule that, no matter how bad the comedian, nobody heckles. Now, the problem with the BrainWash is that people will still carry on and talk as if no one is on stage, but that's just an open mic, and you have to deal with it. However, in all the time I've been there, I've only heard someone make an audible comment about the comedian while on stage once or twice, which is impressive considering how bad they can be. 

The reason I was thinking about it was because a comedian I was supposed to see at the Punchline (John Caparulo) ended up cancelling. Instead of calling off the night, they brought on a fairly well known local comedian who I had been intending to see, but hadn't made the effort yet. His name is Joe Klocek. When I went onto YouTube to check him out, this was the first video I found: "Heckler vs. Comedian Joe Klocek"

It was the most brilliant handling of a heckler that I've ever seen. It was a tremendously dangerous move, but executed flawlessly. I then continued to watch about 2 hours of comedians dealing with hecklers, some more successful than others. What I found was that the best scenario is to respond directly and cruelly to the heckler with a couple of comments. One comment isn't usually effective enough, and if handled well, it becomes a joke and should be drawn out for a few lines. However, too much attention and you risk getting completely off track. I've been taking a few notes on the ones I particularly like, but I get the feeling that it's one of those abilities that, unfortunately, only come with practice.

ps. Joe was brilliant, and it's apparently his style to do a lot of crowd interaction. I highly recommend seeing him if you get the chance.

My Obama Set

So, although I've still been doing my weekly set at the Brainwash, I've neglected blogging these past couple weeks so that I could devote more attention to the fact that our country is asserting it's will to progress past these hellish 8 years that we've (surprisingly) endured.

Recently, I have been toying with the idea of doing my 5 minute sets on a single topic. If you look at your comedy albums (we all have a few, don't we?), they are broken up like a music album: 5-10 minute chunks, all with a clever name that alludes to either the premise or the punchline. Very rarely will you ever see an hour-long show filled with one liners or single laugh jokes. Instead, they are crafted stories that have many punchlines, ideally stacking one laugh on top of another until the crowd is rolling in their seats.

This is tough to do. Really tough. Especially for a short set, since if the joke isn't going the way you want it to, it's that much harder to bail and get to the next one. Nonetheless, open mics are made for screwing up and learning, so I've been pushing forward in acquiring this necessary skill. My set last Thursday was, easily enough, all Obama. Having one main topic made transitions easy and seamless, and there was plenty of material to go around.

It came off well, and I would say that I got as many laughs as I normally do so I was pretty happy with the experience. I probably won't do that every week, though. The thing I'm most afraid of is having too many jokes that seem forced because I'm constraining the subject matter. Instead, I'm looking through my current jokes and trying to group them together when I can. I then try to jot down a few more ideas, funny or not, that relate to it and see if anything comes to mind. It's going okay, but I've also been trying to evolve and improve my best material. I've managed to combine the two activities by taking my best jokes, partnering them with related jokes, and hoping that a couple of great ones will help carry the rest. We'll see how that goes.

Repeating Jokes ad infinitum

I understand that in the world of professional comedy, a comedian will typically have a set routine that they do night after night as they tour around. The jokes are well tested and proven to be funny nearly every time. You can't really expect anything else from them; it's not like we would be surprised to find out that a musician plays the same songs for their shows. A joke is much like a song, it's carefully crafted to produce a response, and timing, rhythm and tempo are just as important in comedy as it is in music.

For my purposes, however, it's a little painful. I'm not touring the country, I'm playing the same venue week after week. And it's not like we're pumping through audiences, either. The most likely audience for me is an audience of other comedians, they were there last week and will probably be there next week. My thoughts are to at least have enough material so that you're not repeating anything more than once out of four times at a given venue. Even then, I still think you should re-write it, tweak it, or add something that's going to make it funnier. Until I tell a joke that has people rolling on the floor the entire time, I'm pretty sure I'm not done with it yet.

That brings me to the flip side of the coin, which is listening to the same jokes from fellow comedians week after week. It's painful, annoying, and these aren't getting any funnier with age. You should of course try it out a few times since the mood of a given audience on a given night shouldn't be the final word on what's funny and what isn't. However, my thoughts are that if you're going to tell the same joke over and over in exactly the same way, it better be comedy gold. If it ain't, then keep working on it for your own sake and the sake of the audience. If it is, then put it in your back pocket for a while and try out new stuff. That's what we're all up on stage for anyway. Not to tell the same joke a hundred times until you find the right audience, but to tell it in a hundred different ways until you finally tell it just right.

Building a Set from Scratch

So, as a new comic, I've been working through a lot of material. Some of it good, some of it bad, and some of it really bad. I understand, however, that a big part of working through a joke is just running through it over and over. Testing it in front of crowds, tweaking it, taking parts out, switching up the order, etc. I've been hestitant to repeat jokes too often, out of courtesy to the few consistent friends who come to show after show, but also because it would bore the hell out of me. I don't want to tell the exact same jokes week after week. On top of that, I'm not working toward just the perfect five minute set, I'm eventually working toward, in theory, a killer 45 minute full set. Not to say that it will happen any time soon, but you may as well shoot for the stars in the hopes that you'll at least hit the moon.

Here's what I've been doing so far to achieve that. 

1) Never tell the same joke twice in the same way. I'll, of course, tell my best jokes more than once, but I try to understand what was funny about it and why. I slim it down over and over, taking out anything that doesn't build to the punchline. I also try to imagine what other punchlines could work, and see if I can work that in somehow to get additional laughs. 

2) Change the surroundings of a joke. I try to write transitions whenever possible, and I don't expect a transition to be hilarious, just effective. If it gets more than a chuckle than that's just a bonus. However, When you pair up jokes in different orders, then you get two potentially new jokes out of it: the transition into and out of the joke. Sometimes, just the juxtaposition results in new jokes that I wouldn't have thought of otherwise. 

3) Loosen up the timing. Oftentimes, I just am not pausing enough. Even if I go up with a joke that's practically unchanged from the time before, I try to change the rythm and add pauses where they weren't before. It often works just enough to get an intermediary chuckle during the buildup to the punchline.

Does anyone have any other ideas to try?

My First Showcase

Last night I performed in the comedy showcase for Club Deluxe. It was the first time I've ever been chosen to go on stage. Up until last night, it had been only open mics, and the only qualification for getting on stage was showing up. Of course, Club Deluxe may not be the talent gatekeeper for all of San Francisco, but it was a small step in a good direction, and it felt pretty damn good.

The show was decent, not my best, but decent. I had been sick as hell the two days before and my fever had broken literally the night before the show. Whether that was an excuse for my timing being off is questionable, but it was surely a contributing factor. Another factor may have been that I had a huge group of friends arrive, which was both reassuring and slightly frightening. 

I don't know what it was, but the jokes just felt a little off. The pauses weren't long enough. The punchlines weren't punchy enough. The set just didn't come off quite as I had imagined. There were a lot of chuckles, but not a lot of big laughs. Don't get me wrong, it could have gone worse, and I was certainly better than at least half the other people that got up there, but all I can do is learn through obsessively replaying the video and then do better next time. 

There was one drunk, obnoxious girl in the audience who spoke throughout the entire showcase at normal volume or above, and she had been made fun of by multiple comics but just hadn't learned her lesson because she talked throughout my first joke. You'll see me take a quick dig at her right before my second bit, and I'm still debating whether it was the right move. In any case, share your thoughts about the performance if you have any. 

Slow the Hell Down

So I don't know if you've noticed from my videos, but I need to slow my delivery the hell down. I've gotten a million times better than when I started, but I still need to just take a breather and chill the hell out when I'm up there, and I need to do it in two ways. 

First and foremost, I need to give people time to laugh. If there's one lesson I'm learing over and over, it's that people won't laugh out loud if you're already halfway into your next joke. It's almost as a courtesy; they want to hear what you have to say next. On top of that, if you really lean into a pause, it not only gives people the chance to laugh, it also cues them to start laughing. 

Secondly, I need to slow down my rate of speech. I've always had a problem with this, and it's only amplified on stage. If it's not keeping people from understanding me, it's definitely keeping people from following a story. The faster I talk, the more people focus on the overall concept and less on the details. But the damn joke is in the details! 

I've been given all sorts of techniques for how to do this, but the problem is not just actually speaking slower. I've done public speaking for quite some time, and when I'm in front of a podium my words come out measured and clear. However, I'm not expecting a response until the end of my speech, and it's not likely that people simply won't applause. 

On the other hand, when I'm on stage doing comedy, naked and hiding behind a mic stand, I'm expected to make people laugh, loud and often. If you go more than 30 seconds without getting a laugh you start to wonder if people are still with you. If you're at a minute with no laughs, you better hope you've got a hell of a reward at the end of the long road you're taking your audience down. This sort of pressure can make me rush through jokes, and if I don't get a laugh, I start getting a little nervous which will make me go faster.

To get better at balancing this, I'm practicing my bit more before going on stage, and I practice pausing where I expect people to laugh. I can practically hear the laugh track in my head, and I keep that rythm on stage. Even if people don't take my cue, I look like I'm just having fun, and am totally confident in myself, whether they laugh or not. Projecting that type of image allows me and my audience to enjoy myself more.