How-to find your own voice?

[Phil]

...practice practice practice. Work work work. Yes I know the answer to this one (I'm looking at you pg :-) and I promise I'm not looking for any shortcuts. But I'm still curious - for those of you who've found you voice...any tips/advice/thoughts?

The way I joke around with my friends/family/co-workers is verrrry different than how I am on stage. I feel like that's not really ME up there. Now I realize that's not always a problem, many comics are totally different on stage than in real life. And some comics have created a fake character on stage.

Could "finding your own voice" mean "being yourself" up on stage? Like taking that guy who jokes around with his friends, and transporting him on stage? Or is "finding your own voice" more about creating a completely new person (not necessarily a character)? Or (let me guess...) it's totally different for different people?

Go ahead and please poop on my latest thread...

[KevinLee]

"Do what you think is funny, not what you think the audience will find funny" -Anthony Jeselnick

[Phil]

"Do what you think is funny, not what you think the audience will find funny" -Anthony Jeselnick

That sounds like really good advice.

[pg13]

That sounds like really good advice.

Of course, Anthony does act like an arrogant douchebag on stage.

pg--crossreferencing threads is go!--braintree

[Phil]

Of course, Anthony does act like an arrogant douchebag on stage.

pg--crossreferencing threads is go!--braintree

Heh.

Nahhh...okay he may not be humble, but not the kindof arrogant douchebags I'm thinking of.

[ErikNielsen]

I'd throw a bit of an addendum on that. "Do what you think is funny, not what you think the audience will find funny -- but if the audience doesn't find it funny, don't keep doing it that way."

And yeah -- don't worry too much about this. If what is funny on stage is only one aspect of the jokes you make off stage... well, that's normal. A lot of the jokes you make off stage are in-the-moment kind of things, not worthy of being written down. Or they don't match what you're doing on stage already; you can sell them with your friends, because you've known your friends for years, but that's different. Like, if you get a laugh from your friends by momentarily pretending to be an arrogant jerk about something, okay. Your friends know what you're doing. But if you bring that on stage, and nothing about the rest of your stand-up suggests an arrogant jerk, you're just going to confuse people. Those guys don't have context.

Ultimately, the persona as it stands is made largely of jokes. So once you have the right jokes, you see the sort of shape they make, and you proceed from there. It's not really a thing that can be manipulated consciously -- best to go where the material takes you, because when you get down to it, the material is what matters. And if, having worked from the material's guidelines, you find problematic disparities in how the audience perceives you, well, you figure out how to work around them on a case-by-case basis.

For example, when I was starting out, I had a bunch of absurd shouty jokes, and a bunch of quieter jokes about how I was depressed and women didn't like me. Both worked on their own, but they sometimes clashed with each other. So a couple years in, I decided to have some absurd shouty jokes about how women didn't like me, and I wrote them, and so the gap was bridged. It's usually that kind of thing. Sometimes you'll have to drop a joke if it isn't in your voice. Worry about that when it happens. Maybe write a sketch or something around the joke. Things can be done.

[klorjne]

From the advice thread:

I know this question will probably come off wrong, but here's what I've been struggling with right now:
A lot of times a "comedic persona" is discussed on AST. I know it's basically the angle you write your jokes from, and I know it's supposed to be something that comes with time. What I'd like to hear is if you guys developed yours as an extension of yourself, or as something separate, almost like a character?
EDIT:
and I don't mean you're a "character" necessarily, like Larry the Cable Guy, but if you ask a certain way and say things that aren't how you are offstage.

I think a great deal of it is usually an extension of yourself. A really distilled and pure extension of certain aspects of yourself.

I think that sometimes it is partly an extension of your joke writing process. I think I might have mentioned it before but I was lucky enough to do a show with both Tony V and Brian Kiley. Probably way before I was ready to do anything of the sort. I talked with Tony V after the show about the 80s Boom and comedy in general. He said there were two types of guys: People like Kiley who wrote really solid jokes and let the jokes dictate how they carried themselves onstage and guys like himself who let their personas affect the jokes they wrote.

[JayP7]

I remember a thing with Patton where he was saying that the day he realized he'd kinda found his voice was when he was joking around with the other comics off stage, hearing his name being called, going up on stage and noticing practically no difference.

so.... yes.

[ASR]

I haven't even found my voice off-stage.

[CaptainBreakfast]

I remember a dana gould interview in which he said that the weird part about doing comedy when you are young is that your onstage voice is morphing so much more because your offstage voice is changing so much as well.

I find that to be true for me. I find myself writing a joke that sounds as clear and true as god's whistle, and two months later looking at it and going "What the hell was I thinking?."

It's difficult to have constant change go on in your frame of reference for the world, but I hold hope that one day it will stabilize to something I can call my own voice and worldview.

[ASR]

Being a kid sucks I want to be grown up!

[Alex Mac]

I think ASR just found his voice.

[ASR]

It was right behind the refrigerator the whole time!

[AliasRomanian]

This if my first post huurrrrayyyyy. I've recently been doing this thing at open mics where I just talk, then tell a joke, then talk some more. Always taping my sets and seeing what people were laughing at the most. I started doing this after I found out that people were laughing more at my reaction to a joke rather than the joke itself.

[Phil]

I had a show last night. Was completely exhausted from hosting this two-day event at my work, but I've been essentially performing in front of hundreds of people for two days - So I got up on stage both exhausted and confident. Had some serious fun on stage, I was just being "me". I need to do more of this somehow.

I need to start paying attention to myself when I'm telling jokes to friends/co-workers. Like when I'm in the center of attention, I need to think about how I'm telling a joke then, how I'm delivering a joke, my hand movements, my timing, all that stuff...

When people first get on stage, they know they're funny with their friends, so they think they can do the same shit on stage and get laughs...then they die. So they create some other "character" which gets laughed. But in reality, they were right the first time, but not experience enough of something. I dunno.

I've almost create a character of myself on stage. It's some cross between Daniel Tosh, Todd Barry, Patrice O'Neal, Brian Regan, Mitch Hedberg, and there's a bit of me in there. I need to continue to remove those other guys and find myself.

[bullshitzer]

Finding your own voice is just that ,your own voice. It's the person who makes people say hey you should be a comedian. It's the real you. Well maybe not the real you that might be too scary since most truly funny people have a dark side. Don't act like your someone else that;s what actors are for be funny and that means being you.

[Vercetti]

I remember a thing with Patton where he was saying that the day he realized he'd kinda found his voice was when he was joking around with the other comics off stage, hearing his name being called, going up on stage and noticing practically no difference.

so.... yes.

That's so true. Over time you just start to feel natural onstage. I think it's a combination of that and figuring out what kind of jokes pertain to your point of view and interests.

I'm sure the notion of finding your voice means somethng different to everyone but that's what it means to me.