THE 3 BEST THINGS TO KNOW IN OPEN MIC COMEDY

When starting out in comedy expect to learn a lot of different things. Expect to get overwhelmed with “rules”. It’s not just about being funny. Get that idea out of your head. Everybody’s funny. There’s no logic in thinking you’ll make it just by being funny. If that were true every third person you know would be a stand-up comedian. The next thing you need to do is embrace the open mic level. You’ll be there for a long time. It’s the apprenticeship level of comedy. Don’t do a handful of shows and then email every booking agency in the tri-state area asking for feature time. You’ll embarrass yourself. And there are a million more rules. But of all the rules I learned the hard way the three below are the three I wish I had known from the beginning.

DON’T GET MORE TIME, USE MORE TIME

What so many beginning comics do wrong is ask for more time. I did it when I started and I’m still embarrassed that I did. “Give me ten minutes”. “I can do a solid fifteen”. “I’m ready to feature”. Believe me, this is the wrong way to understand what time means in comedy. Take the five minutes that you are given and stay at those five minutes until you are 100% satisfied with those five minutes. Every time you go up use those same five minutes for the same routine and do it over and over and over again. That’s the time you need, not the time you want. Every open mic comic should be going onstage to learn how to figure out the rhythm of their jokes and to hit their punchlines just right; not to headline at their nearest club. Write five minutes of material and then go up there night-in and night-out doing that same five minutes until you’ve got it EXACTLY where you want it. The only way to know what needs to be removed or added is to perform it confidently and in front of different crowds. You need to learn when to add pauses, what facial expressions get the most laughs, how to lead in with the right set-ups, etc. It may take you thirty minutes to get those five minutes just right. It may take you three thousand. But once you have finally perfected those five minutes THEN you can work on the next five. That’s how you build a strong feature set; five minutes at a time. The goal for an open mic comic isn’t to get more time. The goal for an open mic comic is to use more time.

MEDIOCRITY BREEDS MEDIOCRITY

Probably the most unfortunate reality with open mics is that terrible performers are going to be at them. A lot of these guys are going to think they’re the second coming of Carlin. And most of them will be in cliques. It’s easy to get sucked into those cliques, too. But don’t. These open mic comics will talk shop with you. They’ll invite you to shows with them. And you’ll probably become friends, too. This is the WORST decision you can make. Because there is going to be a time when you bomb. I guarantee it. And it will happen with the newer material that you’re not confident in yet. You probably won’t deliver it properly and you probably won’t get many laughs. But you WILL get uproarious laughter from the back of the room. Those are your friends in your clique. And instead of accepting that your material isn’t ready you’ll convince yourself it’s not the material that’s the problem; it’s the crowd. They don’t “get you”. You’ll also find yourself laughing at your friends and their jokes when the crowd isn’t. And you’ll believe that the crowd doesn’t get THEM either! It’s not you guys. It’s these idiots who came to the show. But the cold reality that you have to accept right now is mediocrity breeds mediocrity. If you continue to hang out with these guys you’re never going to get to the feature level. Who CAN’T make their friends laugh? It’s your goal to make the audience laugh. The artistry in stand-up comedy is getting a room full of total strangers to “get you”, not your buddies.

AVOID SHOCK COMEDY

Telling jokes that can be considered offensive is standard operating procedure for new comedy writers. It’s easy to do. And it gives you courage. When you’re in front of a sea of people it’s completely natural to be nervous. And when you’re new to stand-up your brain convinces you that you only have two choices: fight or flight. You can either run away with your tail between your legs or you can fight these people head on. And that’s why so many open mic shows have so many performers saying such terrible things. I’m not going to repeat the topics here; you can fill in the blanks. But ninety-nine times out of a hundred these performers don’t even mean what they’re saying. It’s just that natural fight instinct taking over. Most open mic comedians tell themselves they need control. And to a degree that’s accurate. However, society teaches us that control is aggression. And sometimes that’s true, too. Just not in comedy. Remember, you wanted to be a comedian because you love making people laugh. Not because you want to hurt them. That’s why the comic gets the pie in the face, not the crowd. The audience wants to watch you get in and out of jams. They don’t want themselves or their opinions to be the victims of your cruelty. And they definitely don’t want to hear you say terrible things because you “can”. If you want to be a comedian - if you REALLY want to be a comedian – then if your jokes don't work out YOU take the pie to the face, get off the stage and re-write them until they do.

Now it’s your turn. What do you know now that you wish you knew when you started?