Zen and the Art of Stand-Up Comedy

Jay Sankey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136555633
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

In this engaging and disarmingly frank book, comic Jay Sankey spills the beans, explaining not only how to write and perform stand-up comedy, but how to improve and perfect your work. Much more than a how-to manual Zen and the Art of Stand-Up Comedy is the most detailed and comprehensive book on the subject to date.

CHAPTER ONE STAND-UP

DOI: 10.4324/9780203056585-1

Among the most remarkable features characterizing Zen, we find these: spirituality, directness of expression, disregard of conventionalism, and frequently an almost wanton delight in going astray from respectability.

—D. T. Suzuki

Comedy And Laughter

In response to a question like “What is funny?” comics often say, “Funny is funny,” and, though that doesn't say much, I would have to agree. Whatever makes someone laugh is comedy, at least to them. That's what makes laughter such a subjective and fascinating phenomenon. A person hears or sees something that strikes them as funny, and their physical system suddenly convulses, the lungs sending bursts of air out the throat, resulting in a variety of sounds, all of which we refer to as “laughter.” Certainly laughter is a mysterious, highly personal response to an amazing range of things, but in my view, laughter is first and foremost a release of tension. Something about what the person just saw or heard (or perhaps merely thought) made him tense on an emotional or psychological level, and then something in him “chose” to release or vent this tension in the form of laughter, rather than tears or anger or some other form.

On a more primary, perhaps even symbolic level I'd be tempted to say that laughter is often the result of a sudden and surprising witnessing of things either coming together or coming apart. The magician puts a coin in his hand, then opens his hand to show that the coin has somehow vanished, suddenly breaking with the crowd's presumptions, jarring their belief in what is “real.” And in response, they laugh. The comic tells a joke challenging a convention or taboo, creating tension in the crowd, and people laugh. And when the clown steps on a banana peel and takes a truly frightening fall, again we feel tension and release it in laughter. The magician, the comic, and the clown all do things that create, on some level, tension inside the audience—tension that, with the appropriate trigger, can be artfully coaxed into laughter.

What is Stand-Up Comedy?

If I'm going to have the guts (gall?) to write an entire book about stand-up comedy, I figure I should at least give you a definition of what exactly I think stand-up comedy is. Here goes … Stand-up comedy is “a particular kind of performance, often given while standing on a stage in front of a microphone, during which the performer tells a scripted series of fictitious accounts in such a way as to suggest that they are unscripted, in an attempt to make an audience laugh.” I know, that's quite a mouthful. Put in slightly simpler terms, stand-up comedy is telling believable lies to make people laugh.

Why Be A Stand-Up Comic?

Notice that the question isn't “Why do stand-up comedy?” That's because to a lot of comics, stand-up isn't merely something one does. It's something one is. In my case, stand-up has allowed me to rewrite my entire life and, in a sense, live a second life.

When I first began to develop my stand-up character, I was convinced I was writing about someone other than myself. But then one night onstage, it suddenly struck me that, though the facts of many of the jokes I tell onstage are not, strictly speaking, true about my life, the emotional themes and concerns behind my jokes are very much about who I am, what I think, and how I feel. Like in the movies, where “the names have been changed to protect the innocent,” through stand-up I've been able to talk about my own odd experience of this life without losing (too many) friends or being locked up in an insane asylum. Thanks to the accepted “unreality” of anything that happens onstage, and thanks to the idea of playing a character, I've been able to both explore and express some of the strange stuff at the core of who I am, and even get paid for it!

But trying to develop and hone, not just a unique comedic perspective, but also the ability to communicate this perspective, takes a lot of work. And it's not really the kind of thing one can work on for just a couple of hours a day. Instead, most comics come to commit a part of themselves to it twenty-four hours a day, a part that is almost always “awake,” listening to conversations, watching the world around them, and taking note of the thoughts and feelings going on inside themselves. This intensity is one of the things that makes comics so interesting, this desire to truly say what they think. In this suspicious and often “edited for television” world, the challenging comments of the stand-up comic make him a type of outspoken philosopher, an anarchist dreamer, even a kind of social hero.

Stand-Up Comics

Never trust someone with a microphone.

—Bobcat Goldthwait

In my experience, most comics are extremely sensitive, relatively insecure, very insightful, highly intelligent people. Strong individuals rather than group members, with a burning desire to share what they think and feel (at least while onstage). Theirs is the perspective of the Outsider, the observer, a perspective that undoubtedly has a truth to it, but also one that is often unusually myopic. Many comics are submersed in their own seeing. This results in many fascinating imaginings and insights, but, like all things, they have their price. Comics tend to feel strangely separated from society. The odd men (and women) out. As if with them, the socialization didn't quite take.

Life on the Road

Making your living fully, or even partly, as a stand-up comic almost always involves travel, which usually means crappy little motels, strip malls, fast food, and a great deal of time alone in taxis, hotel rooms, and airports. Call me crazy, but I don't mind the life style. It gives me a great deal of time to write, work on my projects, go to the movies, get to the gym. And, I admit, I like room service and coming back to a magically tidied space. But there's no question that the life style can be lonely, depressing, and disorienting.

All that time on the road can also put a real strain on your relations with family and friends, which is nothing short of tragic. But many stand-ups feel what they do is closer to play than work, and in this day and age, literally running your own business, not having someone always looking over your shoulder, and only having to perform an hour a night—well, such a life style isn't going to cost nothing. Anything worth having requires sacrifice.

Comedy can be an extremely rewarding, wonderfully free form of expression, but there's no question that very few people become seasoned stand-ups without having to experience a lot of rough nights. In fact, I remember hearing someone say, “Nobody chooses to be a comic. It's so difficult and, at times, so amazingly unrewarding, that the only people who do it are people who don't merely want to do it, but for some reason, must.”

Being A Female Stand-Up Comic

How the hell should I know what it's like? I mean, I can't honestly say I know what it's like to be a female comic. Sure, I've thought about it a fair bit, and I've had some pretty involved conversations with female comics, but I still can't say I know exactly what it's like. But I do have some guesses.

My first guess is that I wouldn't be surprised if audiences treat a female comic differently from how they treat a male comic. Second, considering that standing on a stage with a microphone in hand and deliberately trying to make people laugh at commonly held beliefs is an inherently powerful, perhaps even aggressive thing to do, and considering that our society still (!) seems more comfortable empowering men than women, I wouldn't be surprised if being a comic is a little more complicated for a woman than a man.

Despite the many, very funny, very gifted female comics on television, I bet some audiences, on some level, still aren't completely comfortable with a woman, onstage, making fun of stuff. How female comics deal with these differences, I do not know, but I do think it's interesting to note that, while onstage, many of the most successful female comics seem to talk more about being human than being female.

Amateur Nights

Whether they're called “Amateur Nights,” “Open Mike Nights,” or “New Talent Nights,” they are all basically the same thing: a performer's nightmare. Between the unbelievably bad acts, the blasé MCs, and the often cynical, doubting crowds, if you survive your time as a neophyte comic on amateur nights, I assure you, as a professional comic you will very seldom have to perform under such truly horrible conditions again. But alas, as things stand now, 99 percent of stand-up comics begin their careers by performing for weeks, months, or even years on these amateur shows.

Just do it

How do you know if you can be a successful comic? There's only one way and that's to try it. You think about it and talk about it and dream about, but it's really all crap until the night you finally take a stage in front of a living, breathing crowd. So don't feed yourself lines like “I gotta write more jokes” or “I've gotta go sit in the audience another twenty times.” You literally have no idea what you're talking about. How could you? You've never done it before!

My only advice to anyone interested in the idea of being a stand-up comic is to call up a local comedy club, ask about their amateur night, and get up on that stage. Then get off the stage, go home, and think about the experience. Then, if you like, try it again. And again. Only after you've tried it several times are you in any position whatsoever to have an opinion about what it's like to do stand-up comedy.

Unreal Audiences

Just as no two comedy clubs are exactly the same, no two clubs run their amateur nights in exactly the same fashion. They all have their own approach and feel, largely dictated by management and also by the mentality of the crowd. It's a given that a healthy percentage of the audience is made up of friends and families of the performers. Such support should certainly be appreciated, but unfortunately it also “skews the crowd,” in a sense tainting the purity of the crowd's response. Yeah, it's great when your family all laugh at your stuff, but when the party of sixteen people sitting in the front row refuses to laugh at your jokes (waiting for their friend to take the stage) and then they laugh uproariously and wildly applaud at everything their friend says, well, it's all just a little unreal. Not the ideal environment to learn about what's really funny.

Sadistic Environments

Sadder still is the fact that, instead of trying to create a friendly, supportive environment in which young performers can learn, take chances, and consequently grow, some clubs encourage a kind of dog-eat-dog, Christians-at-the-Colosseum environment. In these joints, audiences are coaxed to take sadistic pleasure in watching a very frightened person break out in a cold sweat and run whimpering from the stage. I think this is not only tragic, but completely irresponsible crap. Sure, it may well appeal to some people's immature bloodlust, but with this approach, I think everyone loses in the long run.

Getting onstage is scary. Individuals exposing themselves to that extent deserve a certain amount of respect, at least as much as the amateurs bring to it themselves. By encouraging the crowd to revel in the discomfort and failure of the young performers, I believe management is merely reinforcing the prehistoric idea that comedy begins and ends with the put down. And of course, as a result, the amateurs are that much more fearful and more hesistant when it comes to taking the very kinds of risks that will yield better comics and better shows. A truly sad state of affairs.

Your First Time Onstage

Arrive early, at least forty-five minutes before show time, introduce yourself to the MC, and find out what your position on the show is, in other words, second, seventh, thirty-eighth. Also, find out the name of the person who goes onstage just before you. Then go sit quietly in a corner and keep your eyes and ears open. There is an awful lot to learn, and the sooner you start the better. In fact, to really make the most of your time onstage you may want to consider showing up at the club a couple of hours early, just to walk up onstage, stand behind that strange, daunting microphone, and spend a few minutes looking out at the empty seats, trying to imagine they're filled with laughing people. Then get off the stage and wait as the minutes crawl by until show time.

When the show starts, watch the other acts very care fully. Yes, chances are some of them will be dreadful, but sometimes you can learn as much about a craft from someone who does it poorly as you can from someone who does it well. If nothing else, seeing really bad acts can give you some ideas about what you shouldn't do. When it's your turn to take the plunge, be sure to bring up a glass of water and a set list with you, have a friend push the “Record” button on your tape recorder, and walk onstage.

Your First Ten Sets

It's a cruel fact of life that many amateurs do better their first and second time onstage than they do their fourth or fifth. The reason is quite simple. One of the keys to stand-up is to try to make everything you say look sp...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Zen and the Art of Stand-Up Comedy
• Other
• Zen and the Art of Stand-Up Comedy
• Copyright Page
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• CHAPTER ONE STAND-UP
• CHAPTER TWO WRITING
• CHAPTER THREE CHARACTER
• CHAPTER FOUR DELIVERY
• CHAPTER FIVE PERFORMANCE
• CHAPTER SIX SET STRUCTURE
• CHAPTER SEVEN AUDIENCES
• CHAPTER EIGHT PROFESSIONAL STAND-UP
• CHPATER NINE ZEN AND THE ART OF STAND-UP COMEDY