About Matt McDonald Expertise I DO NOT FULFILL REQUESTS TO TELL JOKES! PLEASE DON'T ASK. I can answer questions regarding getting started in stand-up comedy: what to expect, what to do before, during and after your first show, pushing past stage fright and associated pants-wetting fears and so on. I am also reasonably comfortable talking about the basic business aspects of stand-up where beginners are concerned.
Experience I DO NOT FULFILL REQUESTS TO TELL JOKES! PLEASE DON'T ASK. Experience in the area I "worked" for nine years as a stand-up comic in Ohio. Most of my experience comes from open mics, local competitions and the like but I do have some familiarity with "the road" as it pertains to beginners. I have counseled/coached/mentored several people who wanted to get into stand up and wanted the full lowdown on what to expect once they started to pursue it in earnest. In 1994, I made more money from winning local open mic night contests than I did at my actual job. I also performed in improv comedy for a couple of years, though I never considered myself very good at it - I can answer general questions re: improv as well.
Due to a volatile temper and abysmal luck, I never managed to make it to the next rung of the ladder. Middle age has mellowed me and now you can learn from my mistakes.
Jokes & Comedians - Controlling nerves and how to make sure your not over doing it and copywrighted material
Expert: Matt McDonald - 2/26/2008
Question Hello. I am an amature comedian. I have only done it twice. Theres two things I need to work on. Number one is controlling my nerves. When I'm on stage I'm fine but once I had forgotton what I was going to say and I got kinda scared and it showed. I did improv as best as I could and managed to keep going. How do you memorize everything and make it all flow even if you are doing improv?? The one other thing I need to work on is not over doing it. I watch America's Got Talent every year and sometimes the judges will say an act is to polished or they were over doing it. How do you make sure that you don't make this mistake?? The last thing is about copywrighted material. I never have used another comedians jokes. But I am wondering. Lets say you make a joke and you belive that it is yours. Later you find out another comedian has made this joke and are now sueing you. What do you do?? Is there some way out of that because you didn't know they told it before you did. As far as you knew it was your joke. So what do you do??
Answer Hi Jennifer,
>When I'm on stage I'm fine but once I had forgotton what I was going to say and I got kinda scared and it showed. I did improv as best as I could and managed to keep going. How do you memorize everything and make it all flow even if you are doing improv??<
The first and most important thing you can do is to recognize that some stage fright is a good thing. Stage fright, in manageable doses, can make you a better performer, sharper, more focused. The big problem is that too much stage fright can keep you off the stage entirely, or lock you up once you do go on stage.
So you have to accept that you will probably always have some level of performance anxiety, with the goal being that it becomes a productive fear, rather than something that limits your ability to do what needs to be done. I think that's key to succeeding, at least early on. Some people think you can or should get rid of that fear before you actually take the stage. I think there's a widespread belief that stage fright is a reaction to poor planning or something similar, so that if you have stage fright it 's a sign that you're "not ready".
That's completely false. Stage fright is a very natural reaction to pressure. Everybody gets it, even the most experienced performers. I knew comics who were working professionals, very successful, very talented, who were nervous before every performance, six performances a week. Part of getting past your initial stage fright, the paralytic fear that keeps you off stage or causes problems, is to let the fear in, instead of fighting it. For me, it was really that easy – once I stopped trying to fight it off and instead just admitted that 1)I was scared, 2)it was OK to be scared and 3)it was natural to be scared, it just no longer had much of a hold on me.
Therefore, I think the first suggestion I would give to you is to not fight yourself – admit to yourself the same three things I did. Do it whenever and as often as necessary. I can remember, the night before my first time at an open mic, I stayed awake just letting the stage fright run through my system. I let it play out all my worst fears – all the different ways I could suck. No matter how badly I did, it just never seemed all that terrible. Once I had run through all those scenarios, I just didn't have that fright (in uncontrollable doses) any more.
Along with that, you have to be very self-aware. In my opinion, stage fright is a reaction to the immediacy of judging that accompanies any performance art. Most people, non performers, get to walk comfortably through life without ever having to be judged in the harsh light of reality – we tend to try to spare each other's feelings constantly, so it' s rare that somebody just comes right out and tells you you suck and enumerates all the ways in which you suck and so on. On the other hand, when you're a performer, you give the audience the right (and obligation) to judge you as harshly as necessary. Most people can't handle that because their ego won't accept it.
As a performer, you have to admit to yourself that you have weaknesses. If you know where you need to improve and where you screwed up, criticism is not a big deal. Here's a bad example, but one that's fresh in my mind. If you watch "American Idol" (this is the sort of thing you do once you're married), there are two types of reactions to Simon: the performers who are crushed by him and the ones who simply affirm/agree with/accept his criticism. Every winner (and Clay Aiken) has been of the latter type. All the people who fall apart eventually, no matter how talented they are, are the former. Knowing your limitations, weaknesses and areas for improvement is like armor. If you sucked, be the first to admit you sucked. And commit to getting it right the next time. Stage fright, I believe, is largely a reaction of the ego, which always wants to be appeased and stroked. If you are in the habit of battering your ego, of seeing yourself clearly, then the fear of being judged (stage fright, or at least some component of it) is really not a big issue.
Now, you have to walk a fine line with that because you can become a self-defeatist if you go too far. You want to be honest, not harsh. I knew what my problems were as a comic, but I was also very aware of what I did well. Keep in mind, it's not an attempt to tear yourself down so far that there's nothing left to build on. You must evaluate yourself without self-consciousness. You need to be able to admit your weaknesses very clearly and with stark objectivity, but you also need to be able to enumerate your strengths with the same clarity and honesty.
To sum up that particular point: do not live in fear of judgment. If you know yourself, criticism is no big deal: it is either valid, in which case it simply confirms what you already admitted, or it is invalid, in which case it is immaterial.
As a first time performer, of course it's very difficult to know what your strengths and weaknesses but you can still evaluate yourself. Chance are you will not be very good, you will do very little right and you will get very few laughs. Now, I know that seems harsh, but notice what this does for you. It sets a base level of honesty for you that you can accept ahead of time. Instead of getting crushed by the audience's reaction, they're simply playing into your expectations. But it's not enough to nod and say "yeah, I'll probably have a rough time". You have to really believe it and let it in and live with it.
Remember, I believe that stage fright is basically your ego throwing up a roadblock against the receipt of honest criticism. But if you've already given yourself the same honest criticism, there's no need for the roadblock.
Another aspect of stage fright is the "flight or fight" nature. It is very easy to withdraw from a performance – nobody is forcing you to take the stage, so your first instinct is to run away. Part of dealing with your fear (notice: not "overcoming" it, but "dealing with" it) is to convince yourself that performances are mandatory.
A lot of people use stage fright as a subliminal excuse to avoid performing. They might plan to do stand-, but they back down in the end, using some excuse that masks their real fear. "Oh, I can't do it tonight, I don't feel good", etc. One of the things that I tell almost everybody is that you have to treat this like a job: once you commit to performing (whether it's simply a commitment to yourself or a real, contractual obligation), you have to think of it as an unbreakable contract. In "fight or flight" mode, there are physiological changes to your body that make it very difficult to manage a performance. You have to overcome that urge to flee and, I think, you can do that simply by changing the way you think about an engagement. Never think of a performance as an "I can" situation. When choice is a part of the equation, that "flight or fight" mechanism starts cranking and you have problems. Instead, think of it as "I must". Remove choices, remove options. Lock yourself into the obligation of a performance. If you can convince yourself of this, you remove the possibility of "flight or fight" and instead your body switches into a more rational mode of thought.
What you don't want is to be ruled by fear. You want manageable, productive fear, not the type of fear that beats you down. In addition to the sort of touchy-feely metaphysical stuff I've mentioned so far, the things you do in the days and weeks leading up to the first show will help keep your fear at a productive level. THese are things I talk about at length in my comprehensive "howe to get started" response, which is here: http://en.allexperts.com/q/Jokes-Comedians-1535/started.htm
But always remember that stage fright, in manageable and controllable doses, is a great, great performance enhancer.
>he one other thing I need to work on is not over doing it. I watch America's Got Talent every year and sometimes the judges will say an act is to polished or they were over doing it. How do you make sure that you don't make this mistake??
You have practice in the right way. This is an abolsutely crucial point. There is a point at which you can practice too much and fall into the trap of being overdone. You can also simply not practice correctly. Again, you can find my thought on this at: http://en.allexperts.com/q/Jokes-Comedians-1535/started.htm along with a lot of other stuff that's related. But, here's some of the hight points about practicing your act. And, by the way, one of the primary effects of over-paracticing is stage amnesia (forgetting your act). So you might already be overdoing it.
Throughout the preparatory run up to the show, you should be taking notes for material, working some of those notes into jokes, as I've outlined above, and practicing. When you write a joke, once you're ready to try it on stage (so this is the end point of phase 2 in the writing process), practice it. Even if it's just a one liner. Practice it.
Say it into a mirror or just say it out loud in the car. Vary the way you say it, which words you emphasize, your voice inflection, facial expressions etc. Your whole body is part of the joke - stand-up involves gestures, pantomime, etc. So as you say the joke, be sure to be thinking of how you can use your body to illustrate it. Eventually, you'll find the best combination of voice intonation, word emphasis and body usage, or at least you'll find the version of the joke that is as good as you can make it before testing it on a real audience. Keep practicing that particular delivery. Practicing each joke on its own, outside a unified "act", is helpful because you'll soon find that jokes can be fit together like Legos, where the feel of the act in general can be changed based on the order of the jokes. So you need to be able to view each joke as "separate" from all the others. Of course, there are "blocks" of jokes that should or must always go together, but it will probably take you a while to develop those.
But, don't overpractice. If you do it too much, your delivery will become robotic and remove the spontaneity from your act. For an experienced amateur, this is bad enough. But as a first-timer, you're likely to have a real stage fright situation, and one of stage fright's most common side effects is to make it difficult to remember your material. If you have over-practiced, this locks you into a delivery for the joke, so you start to get your pants in a twist if you don't deliver the joke as you've memorized it, this then raises your anxiety, which makes you worry that you're NOT delivering the joke properly (i.e. as you memorized it) and that leads to forgetting the joke. So practice the general feel and layout of the joke – make sure you know your premise, your punchlines, etc. but allow the delivery to be fluid and shifty each time you practice it. You want to practice the feel and "intent" of the joke without necessarily practicing its word-for-word delivery. Overpracticing a will also tend to get you stuck on its timing, and sometimes the timing of a punchline is all you need to adjust in order to make a bad joke work – so if you're over-practicing, you can really hurt yourself on a couple of different fronts.
Two days before your first show, take the material that you've worked on and find five minutes that you like (five minutes is pretty typically the amount of time you'll get at an open mic). Don't worry too much about whether this is the "best" five minutes. Your first year or two is about finding your voice on stage, figuring out your point of view. So if you choose the material you think is best (funniest), it might not represent the material that best fits your persona (it's hard to explain, but you'll start to get it after only a few times on stage). Instead, you want to choose the jokes that you personally like best – these may not be the funniest ones, but they probably best represent "you", and therefore you' re likely to perform them better. Arrange this five minutes however you want, and remember that you want to open and close with strong material. Generally, the rule is that you want a short, punchy joke up front to lead your set – a joke with a minimum of setup. You want to get your first laugh in under thirty seconds. For your last joke, just make sure it's funny – you have the luxury of going with something that has a longer setup here.
Write this set out in as much or as little detail as necessary. I always had a pretty good memory for my jokes, so I would basically just write out the key words or basic concept. If you're worried about remembering your jokes, you might want to write a short summary of each joke. The level of detail you put into this will be dictated by your personality, memory, rigidity, etc. Commit to this list and practice it. As opposed to the practice you did earlier as you crafted each joke, now you're practicing the set of jokes as a whole, getting a feel for how long it takes you to get through the material, how it feels to transition from one joke to another and so on.
>Lets say you make a joke and you belive that it is yours. Later you find out another comedian has made this joke and are now sueing you. What do you do?? Is there some way out of that because you didn't know they told it before you did. As far as you knew it was your joke. So what do you do??
Well, for one thing, you'll never be sued for stealing a joke, or even a lot of jokes. Hell, Denis Leary poached entire sections of his act from Bill Hicks, and Dane Cook took a lot from Louis CK. Neither has ever been legally held to account. It just doesn't happen because it's not legally or financially feasible.
But, that said, legitimate joke stealing does have consequences, namely that other comics will ostracize you, refuse to work with you, etc. Some people are OK with that and steal jokes. There's not much that can be done to stop them.
I think what you're asking is different though. There is a recognized phenomenon in art that's very common in comedy, sometimes called "spontaneous inspriation", meaning 2 people who create the same thing (i.e. joke) independent of each other. Basically, disputes over jokes really come down to he said-she said where one person says they created the joke at time X and the other claims they created it sometime before X. It's difficult to prove who created it first, and even if you could, there's nothing that says the date of creation trumps anything else. In other words, it's a question of whether you want to give up a joke in the interest of deferring to somebody else who says they created it first. In some cases, you will want to because maybe the joke isn't all that good in the first place, or maybe it's a well known joke and you just didn't realize it (another common reason this happens is because you'll hear a joke and then a few months/years later, you'll come up with basically the same idea and think it's yours in the first place, when really you've just forgotten the joke and are now remembering it. That's happened to me.).
It's really a gray area. Some comics will literally get violent if they suspect you've stolen a joke and some will just pull you aside and tell you you're doing one of their jokes and they'd like you to stop. Everybody handles it differently and every situation is different.
If you're really worried about it, there's a common poor-man's techniques you can use to prove date of genesis: write your jokes down and then send them to yourself in a sealed envelope and never open it - the postmark on the envelope proves that the joke was in existence as of the postmark date. But really, there's not much you can do and no real reason to do it. You cannot prove that you never heard a joke before and therefore cannot prove a joke is not stolen. Even if you have an envelope with a date that proves the genesis point of the joke for you, that does nothing to prove that you didn't steal the joke - all we know is you didn't steal it before the postmark date.
I just wouldn't worry about it too much. You deal with it when it happens and that's all you can do.
