As my six month comedy anniversary draws near I have been introspective about my growth as a comedian. While I have undoubtably improved, I may have also developed some bad habits. By looking critically at my sets, and blogging about them, I know what I need to improve.
The End of Crowd Work
I am putting my crowd work in time-out. I hear competing advice about crowd work for a new comedian. My mentor stresses its importance and uses it as a tool to connect with the audience. Advice I have found online says to avoid it for the first year and I am beginning to understand why: it cheapens my set. It is an excuse not to write more material. It reduces the laughs per minute.
Maybe in longer form shows I will bring back some crowd work to help me move through my set list. There is a value in becoming conversational and making my jokes seem extemporaneous but there are other ways to achieve these benefits without eating my stage time. Specifically, eye contact and tone.
After tracking the amount of time setting up punchlines in my own set versus a professional comedian it has become clear how much work I have to do in writing. Included in writing is editing. Last week I made it a goal to develop a new joke and to rework some old material. My new tutoring joke has come a long way and now I want to work on some of my “biggest hits.”
I have enough material to fill ten to fifteen minutes but only five are any good (and even that is a high estimate). Actually the best way to explain my nearly six months of writing and performing is that I probably now have all the tools to create a decent five minute act.
A New Goal
While experimenting with crowd work and some advanced comedy technique has been fun and enlightening I believe it is time to go back to fundamentals. I am going to use my writing time today to edit and add to my set, pick winners and losers, and flesh out the best five minutes I can. Then, over the next week, I plan on practicing this act over and over until I have it memorized, down to the word! Finally I will take it to the streets across 5-6 open mics and tune up the performance.
I plan to have a set I am really proud of. Looking back at my previous recordings, things that I was (rightfully) happy with at the time are just not good enough for me today. I want to keep improving. Increasing my laughs per minute. This means shorter set ups, well performed punchlines, and additional tags. The fundamentals.
So enjoy my last crowd work transaction you will see from me for a while in the below video. It was from a monthly open mic in Little Havana. The bar was nice but the patrons were unsuspecting. They were a nice crowd and I felt compelled to converse with them. Funny how the instinct to connect with my audience has kept me from serving them most effectively: I should simply make them laugh. Over and over again. That’s a conversation already.
Nice!
“I liked they took a little flag up there…and claimed the entire planet” 🤪😂