Open mic experiences

[funkyrhino]

I had a rough time as a host tonight. And older crowd in their 50's, some in their 60's etc and a few younger audience members. I went 12 minutes with very minimal laughs. There was no feature. The headliner was a comic named Brett Leake who has facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy; super nice guy who said he really loved my jokes but told me not to beat myself over not doing well tonight when the crowd was super tight. But it's the 3rd time I've been up in front of an older crowd and each time I've gotten a lackluster response. Like I said with younger audiences from 21 to about 35 they really like me. But once it gets beyond 50 and more blue collar like they just simply don't find me that amusing. I've just come to accept that. I still have 4 more shows to go this week.

[drieux]

Thanks for the sound advice, gang. My frustration really comes from wanting to be further along than I am, but one of the maddening and yet fascinating things about standup is that it manages to give you a blow to the ego when you need it the most, I find. I think I'm going to continue jumping through the hoops, albeit perhaps a little more sparingly than in the past. Thank you to everybody for not advising me to use racial slurs and storm out in a huff. I'll save that for a later date.

[funkyrhino]

So far this week hosting I've learned many things. Had two back to back well received sets after having a lackluster Thursday night. I then realized the Thurs night crowd was tight and somewhat unresponsive. The Friday crowd - same age range but this crowd was very warm and responded very well to my set.
One thing I learned though (and this may just be my experience) is that an somewhat older crowd likes to be talked to and what I mean by that is they like you to say things specifically to them and/or their little group. Where as when I've done younger crowds they seemed to respond very well to just jokes being told. Also with the older crowd - the simpler the better and staying on the tried and true path (relationships, work, children, etc) seems to be a formula of success for them though it wont' separate you from the pack.

[funkyrhino]

And as the week comes to a close all I can say is I did it! In front of a senior audience, packed house I pulled it off even after they told me I wont be hosting but instead bumped up to the middle act. I took out every curse word of my jokes and I made it work. I didn't absolutely kill but I did entertain them for 15 minutes and they all congratulated me after the show. It felt good, now back to writing. I learned so much this weekend, including the fact that I can do 95 percent of my act clean.

[drieux]

Been very frustrated lately. I'm finding that an awful lot of booking inquiries are being met with, "can you bring 15-20 people?" for shows that are happening midweek and are unpaid, and when I (honestly) respond that there's no way I can guarantee that many, they either never respond again or go into the rote playbook of "you need to step up your game" bullshit that nearly every shitty producer of comedy shows seems to have adopted lately to offset the fact that they'd rather pressure the performers to sell tickets to their families and friends at $20 a pop instead of put together a good show and advertise/promote themselves. There seem to be only two routes these days: do an endless succession of open mics in front of other comics and never get anywhere, or promise somebody that you'll get 20 people (friends and family, always) to buy tickets to the show and then either continue to tap those people to keep showing up to your shows or, when you inevitably fail to get those people to come, get the same routine about "step up to the plate" and yada yada. Like most comics in my situation I don't mind making posters, flyering, sending out e-mails, etc. but that doesn't always translate to butts in seats.

This whole process seems to be tied on quick results and instantly diminishing returns, as the people who can talk 20 people into showing up are often brand-spankingly new and, therefore, usually terrible. Getting a crowd filled with people forking over $20 to be disappointed is not a great way to build your show for the future. And really, if you have an audience of people willing to fork over that much to see you, why aren't you just putting on your own shows?

I'm thinking my best bet is to put my money where my mouth is and start producing my own thing the way I think it should be done, so when I fail at that I can finally have enough sadness and failure built up to stop all this comedy nonsense and go be a fully productive adult and watch Leno and shit.

[funkyrhino]

I started my new job 3 weeks ago and since going back to the 9 to 5 world I have yet to write a working joke or perform as much open mic as I'd like. It's frustrating. When I get home I want to lay down instead of write. And then when I go up I have nothing but premises with no resolution, choppy verbiage and flat punch lines.

[ErikNielsen]

I think there are a lot of intangibles I wouldn't know not being from the area but I'd probably take it as a sign to do it a little more sparingly. While you retool or bring them a new act.

Not to dredge this back up, but this happens all the way up too. My manager was talking to the booker at a late-night show... I showcased a few months ago, did well, and they asked me to send them a tape of the same jokes in a different order. And then things shut down for a few months. They were still interested -- but I was on the back burner. No real progress was being made. The booker saw me at a show a few weeks ago, doing some new material, and now things are moving again. Who knows how fast, who knows how soon.

But still... bookers want to be excited about you. They don't say "all right, this guy can fulfill the requisite expectations -- he's in." (Unless they have to.) They say "this guy is funny, he's got that new joke about that date he went on, people will want to see him." If you've proven that you're competent, now you have to prove you're moving. Get up there and give them a reason.

[nixonjames]

Well said Erik and validating. I'm working on 5 new 4min chunks for a 'new jokes' segment I'm doing wednesdays in August. Feelin solid about my short game but it's still got a long way to go and to do..

It definitely sounds like it's worth waiting til your ready and then trying to strike the iron while it's hot as completely as you can. Gotta go get some dates after a decent break from the studio after that exact 'lack of excitement.'


@Rhino
I hear that re working ft and still doing comedy. It's a rough go. The only headway I've found is to do those things they tell us to do as kids. 8 hours of sleep, 6 glasses of water, no drugs/alcohol. Also when I'm working I tend to try to go out Sundays then only 2 days a week (hopefully with a double up) and generally I can manage 2 workday nights and a sunday and get 15-20 minutes on the mike that week. I forget where you're at if Sunday's an option for time but that's the best I can think. As for new stuff, writing on stage is the only thing I can really manage when I'm workin that much a week.

[funkyrhino]

The last two open mics have been pretty decent. What I've been doing now is using my Sunday lazy days to write jokes that I normally have done through the week. So now by Tues (first open mic night of the week) I'm working out the stuff I wrote Sunday.

[nixonjames]

Also my process more consists of hashing a topic in my head over and over and whatever sticks I then brainstorm and talk out all my ideas on stage then edit after the fact. Makes it more interesting to try different angles, perspectives, jokes, etc. Lot of time I'll either end with a new really strong short joke or start with my usual opener, then talk about new stuff til I start to lose them, then do something solid to end usually trying to do a few new or edited lines.

I'm in my head more and just crap it all out in the form of freewrites and whatever holds me for more than a few weeks is worth working on. I also usually lack the motivation so that's why I do the whole 'new jokes' segment for a month cuz it forces me to really work through some of these for 4-5 min at a time.

I wish I could work on a joke and have it be done... what's working now is spending 6 months+ fidgeting with an initially strong premise til a block of 3-5 min is ready to showcase.

[Burnside]

What I'm finding – or at least the way I'm thinking about it currently – is that learning stand up is an iterative process. You need to find your voice and you need to develop good material with that voice, but there is the chicken/egg problem that you need to perform material in order to find your voice which means you need to write material for a voice you haven't really found yet.

It seems that most aspiring comics – based on my open mic experiences – work on honing the material they've got month after month even if it's not very good. I too repeat many jokes and bits that I know are mediocre, because I think I can make them slightly better or because I reason that practicing with material which I know gets some laughs is better than trying new material each week. But (I'm only 6 months in) it feels right – despite the fact that it feels wrong – to give all my material upon birth an expiry date of about 8 weeks, simply because I know none of it's great and what's the point in doing something if it's not great?

This approach would seem to go against what I'm observing in most other aspiring comics on the scene, but isn't it likely that most aspiring comics are doing things wrong and that I shouldn't follow their lead?

Which brings up another issue. Now that I know all the routines of all the locals, I want nothing more than to get them out of my head. I don't want to be influenced by mediocrity, and mediocrity is mainly what you get at open mics. I'm not being a snob; I admit I suck myself. Also I'm not very good at comedy.

[SoSure]

Repeating stuff helps a lot, I think. Knowing all your jokes, even the ones you're not thrilled about, frees you up to be in the moment and sell them better.

The Laughing Skull gives comics here residencies where they host every weekend show for a month, and after doing 24 weekend shows, it's amazing how much funnier older jokes can be in the hands of someone who's more comfortable on stage. You'll find laughs in jokes you didn't know were there because you're more present and can play around with delivery. You'll wait one more beat than you might have before, because the panic's gone. There's always a noticeable jump in how solid those folks are after their month is up.

Though it won't be as big of a jump, I think that happens on a smaller scale with mics. You can see it on people's faces when they're actively trying to remember what comes next, and getting rid of that through repetition will make an old joke better.

I think the Laughing Skull snagged the residency idea from the Comedy Studio in Boston, so Erik might be able to speak to how that scene likes it.

[Cameron]

There is no "right" or "wrong" way to go about it, and thinking about it in those terms probably won't lead anywhere. Just do what feels right to you and the rest will fall into place.

[ErikNielsen]

There's no "right" way, perhaps, but there are a lot of wrong ones.

As far as "voice," ignore it. It's a pernicious notion that solves more problems than it creates, especially for new comics. It just leads to trying to define what you do in advance, rather than letting yourself do it. If you're thinking in terms of "voice," you're just going to create material that is derivative of your old material, which is usually a bad way to improve on your old material. At some point, it can be useful for determining whether the new material you're writing fits in with your existing act... but even then, I wouldn't think of it in terms of "voice." I'd just think of it in terms of coherence.

And yeah, even if you accept "voice" as a relevant notion, you don't write material "for" it. "Voice," like "society," is a construct created after the fact by people observing a lot of individual pieces. Your "voice" comes FROM the material you write. You can't define it from the top down... that's like sitting down with a broad topic and trying to figure out what's funny about it. It's a fool's errand. Start by coming up with the funny thing and work back if needed.

As far as a "voice," then, write material. Write what comes to you and what you think is funny. Eventually, you'll have a bunch of material that works well with audiences and reflects what you want to do. Look at that material, see how it fits together, figure out any recurring methods or themes. That's what you do. That's your "voice" if you want to call it that. But as far as I'm concerned, it's more about recognizing patterns and using them to suggest the next direction. It's about using experience to develop instincts.

As far as abandoning material... well, I can't tell you what to do, but keep polishing your best five minutes. Maybe it's not "great", but you're unlikely to be "great" for a pretty long time. But you have to think of it in terms of being able to put your best foot forward. Let's say you get booked to do five minutes on a show. A lot of the time, that's exactly what you expect from comics who are a few months in: do five minutes, don't embarrass yourself, and don't kill the momentum. Get a few laughs if you can. That's all. You build from there. If you're constantly cycling that stuff out, you're building from nothing every couple months.

Be proud of your best jokes -- be confident in them. They may not be better than the jokes you hope to write some day, but they're better than your not-best jokes. You can deliver them with more confidence. Moreover, having a "best five minutes" (or whatever) may well drive you. When you come up with a new joke and try it out, you can think, "is this as good as the Spider-Man joke, or the joke about when I got lost in the woods, or the one about my mom wanting me to be a doctor?" If so, great, you've made progress. If not, you can drop it with confidence and move forward. If you're not sure, keep polishing. Stand-up is an iterative process, but it's also a cumulative process.

(One note on dropping new jokes: at least 3-4 of my best 10 minutes are jokes that I did once or twice then dropped. Then, six months or a year later, I went back to them and figured them out. Myself, I like to work from a general memory and forget the word-for-word joke as it was originally written, because I believe the good part is the part you'll remember, and freeing yourself from the remainder of the original joke phrasing will help you to rebuild from scratch around the good part.)

[ErikNielsen]

As far as the residency thing goes, I was the fourth one. April 2004, after Myq Kaplan, Erin Judge, and someone else I'm blanking on. (Baratunde Thurston, maybe? The Studio was not messing around with this residency idea.) They do it a little differently -- Rick Jenkins hosts a lot of the shows, and they have set hosts for the other days of the week, so the comic in residence takes the bullet at every show, rather than hosting. Works out to around 20-22 shows total.

At the time, I had 20 or so strong polished minutes (some stronger than others), 5 minutes I was working on polishing, and 5 newish minutes. So my plan was to use week 1 to focus heavily on 5-7 minutes of the good stuff, Week 2 for 5-7 more minutes, and then sprinkle the remaining 7-8 minutes in with the newer stuff on weeks 3 and 4.

So Week 1, I did my showcase set, and mostly killed. Week 2, I came in on Wednesday (The Studio runs shows Wednesday-Sunday), and Steven Wright -- one of my comedy idols -- was there. There had been vague rumblings of him showing up at Studio shows a few times, but not going up. But this time, he had some new material, and he wanted to do it. He asked the guy scheduled to go up after me if he could fill in that spot. Of course, that guy said yes, which meant I was going up right before Steven Wright, so I had to do my best material, right? And I did, and it went well. Came in on Thursday, Steven Wright is there again, and he's going second again. I said to myself, "well, I have to do different stuff." And I did, and it killed. He was there again on Friday, and Saturday, and Sunday, and every time I went first and he went second. So I burned through all my material, even the new stuff, but I was keyed up, and it all went great. And after he got off stage on Saturday, he came up to me and said, "you're fucking hilarious. Good work up there." And I... sort of stammered for a bit.

So okay, my four-week plan was shot -- but I was on a high here. Came in Wednesday of week 3. Steven Wright was there again, but I literally had no more material to do that he hadn't seen. So I did a random mix of material from all the days.

Then on Thursday, I woke up with a cold. I struggled through a day, went to the club, and Steven Wright wasn't there. Guess he went on tour or something... I didn't have the energy to work on the new stuff, so I did a set of my old stuff. I was increasingly exhausted, both from doing comedy more than ever before, and from being sick. The fourth week wasn't bad exactly, but I don't know that it was up to my standards. And I didn't get to work on my new stuff. I just did the same 10-12 minutes over and over again in different combinations.

After the last show of the residency, I went home. I went out to one show the next week. I didn't perform for 11 days. Then I went back out, and for the next six weeks, I went on a roll unmatched by practically anything I've done before or since. I was leaving Boston, so a few shows gave me 20-minute spots, which I had barely done before that, and I killed. Everything was coming naturally -- after the ordeal that was the end of the residency, going up one night and killing felt like no big deal. Actually, the streak stretched into my first few months in LA... I felt I could do no wrong. Then I took some time off when I started attending graduate school, and I cooled off a bit. Still, it was a huge help to me -- going up every night, running through (what turned out to me) the same set or two, whether or not I was mentally prepared for the show. If you can do something like that, I highly recommend it.

[nixonjames]

Erik that sounds brilliant. The whole thing, I can totally appreciate the preperation you put into it. People are WAY too enthusiastic for getting a residency ASAP now imho. I got some less than stellar feedback from Rick and it really helped me focus on becoming the performer that I wanted to be. And so I will have taken probably a 9 month hiatus before I get back on that stage but am 100% better prepared now that I have a better understanding of 'audition an act' and am prepared for that. Nonetheless I definitely want to get to that 20 minute or 3x7min set comfort before I'd even consider the opportunity if I were to be chosen.

Which leads me to my continued fervent counter-point to your 'voice' argument.
Part of what my largest growth period to date was spawned by was my frustration with all aspects of my comedy. It came across kinda fake/clever, badly ironic, confusing, etc. And a big part of that was I'd not started to look for my voice. I was writing jokes that made ME laugh instead of trying to better learn how to communicate how the things I imagined from that made ME laugh in a way a wide span of audiences would appreciate. And after some time digging and discussing with a couple of poet friends of mine, I went back to what I did in high school. Freewriting. Take a line from a news article, strongly held belief/opinion, observation, etc... and just let loose. I stopped trying to write jokes (i.e. be thinking about 'what would be funny?!') and started being more natural. Granted there weren't a ton of jokes but I found with repetition this habit lent itself to a certain editable mass that when I took the time to talk out all my thoughts on stage I got a pretty strong indicator after a few shows what notions/ideas held water, and which ones didn't, either due to poorly being communicated, or just not funny (You are dead on regarding throwing away old jokes. One of my better bits was a failed one liner that stuck with me, and it's still not really fully developed tbh).

I put a ton of time into figuring out a process that worked for me, and part of that was getting out of my own way so I could be truly comfortable on stage. I got the courage to initially do this because enough people in chatting with me noted my unique pov and manner of expression for getting big laughs. So I took the lessons I'd learned in applying craft/technique and started trusting that I'd incorporate those things on the fly. After some more extensive work on editing/rewriting, learning to edit on the fly, not getting glued in to the words (another good point by you, I'm not disrespectful see!), etc.

So while most of what you say is dead on and it's totally true that you have to put the work in to gain a handle on your voice, part of the fun of being an amateur is getting to play around with all the voices in your head. Til you key on something that works. So I agree in part with the top-down, etc approach. But I think if someone is willing to put the work in to experiment with multiple writing techniques and really pore over the most consistently personally compelling topics/opinions, then they can stumble upon some glimpses.

Warning for anyone wanting to go this route. It feels a lot like surfing, so you're gonna fall and bust your face, and maybe get dragged under the riptide (lose your spot, get nothing on a weird riff, accidentally go over time because it's expected that you will hold to it but you're getting off on how well being more free and not giving a shit is really working and you're just running with ideas, then you look and you're over, and you feel bad, unless you're an asshole/have the cred to do whateva).

I really don't know why I post these, you're gonna have an awesome retort that is 100% honest of your experience but slightly askew to the reality that many others in this game face. And it'll all be pointless because there's like 10 people on this board who have been doing comedy for realsies (defined 150+ live sets/year).

I've said too much, I haven't said enough.

[ErikNielsen]

I'm not sure I disagree with anything you're saying. It sounds like you started out envisioning your comedy style and your writing process one way, and working to that assumption. Then, when it wasn't producing the results you wanted, you asked yourself how you ideally wanted to work and thought about what you were doing that was getting laughs, and you tried that, and it's working better for you. (And presumably, if your new methods weren't working either, you would have tried it a third way, or whatever.)

That's exactly what I meant -- you let your past experience dictate your future direction. It's not as though you woke up one day and said, "I'm going to be a storytelling comic now," even though all the idea you've had were for one-liners, or "I need to do high-energy stand-up," even though it was against your previous inclinations. You found the things you were doing that didn't fit with what you wanted to do or didn't lead to good work, and you stopped doing them. And you took the things you did that worked and made you happy, and you delved further into those. That's all I meant.

[drieux]

I took a month off and this week started performing again. Did two showcases, one at a club and one at a small bar, with one going great and the other kinda sucking. I also stopped into a nearby open mic prior to one of the showcases to see about getting some time before the other show, and maybe it's the absence or maybe it's because I'm getting older and starting to concentrate more on my actual job and adult responsibilities, but yowza! Lots of wannabe-comics are either insane or talk like children. I overheard somebody who's been performing for all of three months talking about how they almost have an hour of material and want to record an album before the end of the year. Oh, to be young, stupid and hopeful again.

[funkyrhino]

. I overheard somebody who's been performing for all of three months talking about how they almost have an hour of material and want to record an album before the end of the year. Oh, to be young, stupid and hopeful again.

well I've been doing it for almost a year and a half now and my HBO special comes out in September and I'm already working on my next hour and a sitcom so it can happen.

[drieux]

The thing that always amazes me about the newbies is how quickly they get OBSESSED and their heads fill with dreams and goals. That's a great thing, but I quickly thought about the crew that I kinda/sorta started with in San Francisco five years ago. Of about 150-ish people, most quit within a year or two. A few dozen are still regularly hitting open mics, hanging at clubs and performing on showcases for free. About 10-15 are now regulars at the local clubs and are typically paid to perform on the road. One has a job writing on a national TV show. And one appeared this week at the Montreal Comedy Festival and will be on John Oliver's show tonight (Emily Heller, for those wondering) and is likely to continue to see success. Those are the odds. Some aspects at play are hard work, some sheer will of force, some luck and being at the right place at the right time. But a LOT of it is hard work, with all that other stuff thrown in.

But even so, after three months of telling jokes to a laundromat full of other aspiring comics, it's amazing that somebody is already planning out their first album. It's one of the amazing, yet baffling things about comedy.