In Comedy You Must Keep Getting Better
by Gene Perret
We all miss Joan Rivers. She was a funny lady. Her material was often brilliant and always delivered with gusto – sometimes savage gusto – but she was passionate about her comedy each time she stepped into the spotlight. This wasn’t by accident. Joan was a dedicated professional comedian who worked hard at her craft. [icopyright one button toolbar]
In all of the writing about Joan’s career, I noticed a quote from one club owner who mentioned that early in her stand-up career, Joan would always set up a tape recorder to listen to, analyze, and improve on each performance. That’s dedication. I once asked Jay Leno if the proliferation of comedy clubs in the 70’s and 80’s helped or hurt aspiring comics. Jay wisely answered that it helped the smart ones.
Comedy is deceptive. To entertain, comedy should appear spontaneous, ad-lib, top of the head. But that spontaneity is accomplished through preparation and commitment to the craft. This is true in almost any endeavor. Perfection is acquired through study and practice.
To achieve excellence, you should be determined that each performance will be better than the last. Joan Rivers knew that and applied it throughout her illustrious and long enduring comedy career. It’s a generous lesson she left for all of us.
In analyzing your own performances, though, you should take extra effort to analyze the total performance. There are four main areas that you should review in order to improve your act. I’ll list and discuss them below:
Material: Good, solid, funny material is the lifeblood of any comedian. I travelled often with Bob Hope and there were two items he would not leave the airport without – one was his make-up kit and the other was his beat up, aged briefcase that was filled with pages and pages of jokes. Again, comedy may seem spontaneous, but the material should be there before you step onto the stage. It’s precarious to think that you can manufacture hilarious material once you reach the microphone. Even those comics who are noted for improvisation and witty ad-libs have a backlog of material ready just in case. You wouldn’t jump out of an airplane unless you were certain you had a well-packed parachute on your back. You don’t face an audience without material.
And the material should be good. No, it should be superb. Good is not good enough. Once on the road, we rehearsed a sketch for a Bob Hope Special. It played like gang busters. When the rehearsal ended, Bob Hope said to me, “Get the writers and come up to my suite.” It was late at night and I asked why. He said, “I want to do a rewrite on this sketch.” I said, “Bob, it played beautifully. Why do you want to work on it?” He said, “If we make it funnier, we’ve got a better sketch. If we don’t, we’ve still got a great sketch.”
We all gathered in his suite and worked on the sketch . . . and made it better.
Some of your jokes can be greatly enhanced with just a little tweaking. Once you hear the uproarious laughter from a gag you’ve improved, you’ll want to make each of your lines better…and better…and better.
Delivery: Solid material is not enough for super-stardom comedy. It also requires exciting delivery. Delivery, too, demands preparation and rehearsal…along with some searching and experimenting. Phyllis Diller once told me that there is no such thing as a good beginning comic. This doesn’t mean to imply that the older comics are better than the younger generation. It simply means that it takes experience and stage time to build up a confident, professional comedy persona.
Delivery has obligations also. The comic has the responsibility of being prepared physically and mentally to perform to the fullest. Proper rehearsal is necessary. World class athletes must be ready when the gun sounds for the beginning of the competition. World class performers should be prepared when they’re introduced onto the stage.
Audience: We’ve all heard comedians complain, “What a terrible audience. They didn’t laugh at anything I said.” Maybe you didn’t say anything they wanted to hear. The audience is as much a factor in a performance as the performer and his or her material. To be successful with them, you should give them what they want.
This doesn’t mean you have to pander to an audience. It does mean that you should find out who they are and what they recognize, understand, and will appreciate. You work differently to a high school assembly than you do to a group of business conventioneers. Give the audience what they want and they’ll give you what you want – appreciative laughter and applause.
You notice that the emcee of the Academy Awards does material about the industry and the people in attendance. You don’t come onstage at the Oscars and do a routine about walking your dog. Bob Hope appealed to military audiences by doing material about their particular base and their specific Commanding Officer. Hope gave them what they enjoyed hearing.
Gather as much information about each audience as you can and then tailor your material to that crowd. It will pay dividends.
Sometimes, of course, it is the audience. You can’t do much about that except learn why and try to avoid similar audiences in the future.
Venue: The place where you work can affect your effectiveness. One comic I worked for had a clause in his contract that stated he would not perform on a stage that had a dance floor in front of it. To him, this was like working over a moat. It separated him too much from his listeners. It destroyed the intimacy his act demanded. When Jay Leno took over the Tonight Show he had NBC redesign the studio so that he could be closer to his audience. On his entrance each night he would shake hands with many of the people in the crowd. During my speaking career, I discovered that I got nice laughs working to 100 people in a room that was designed to hold 100 people. Put those same 100 folks in a room designed to hold 1000 people and the laughs were weaker.
But you may say you have no control over “the room.” You should have control over it. You can arrange to see the room before playing it. If changes will help, try to get those changes made. If the changes can’t be made, you might change your material to suit the room.
As an example, I was once booked into a room that was the size of a gymnasium. I knew the laughter would be lost in a room of this size. I mentioned it to the staff and they brought in movable walls and fake shrubbery and reduced the auditorium to the intimate size of a small comedy room. It worked.
If you can quickly review and improve your material, rehearse and perfect your comedy style and delivery, learn as much as you can about the crowd you’ll be working to and give them what they’ll enjoy, and make sure the room is suitable or adapt your material to suit the room . . . if you can do all that, each show you do will be better than the last. It won’t take too long for you to be EXCELLENT.
Gene Perret is a three-time Emmy winning comedy writer who has written for Bob Hope, Phyllis Diller, Carol Burnett, and many others. His latest books on comedy are “Comedy Writing Self-Taught” and “Comedy Writing Self-Taught Workbook” (written with his daughter Linda who currently writes for Terry Fator). These books are due out on Dec. 1 of this year, but are available for pre-order at www.comedywritersroom.com. Or email us for more details at [email protected].
graphic via shutterstock.com