Showing posts tagged 'advice'.
I don’t know Thomas Høgsted, but I’ve been told this story about some sound advice he gave to a new comic after the guy’s first 5 minutes at an Open Mic.
The new guy had done alright — especially for a first-timer. And after the show he asked around for some good advice from his more experienced, new colleagues. The advice Thomas gave were these. One. Just do the jokes, you’d like to. Other comedians will tell you to do this and that, but always stick to what you find funny. Two. Practice, practice, practice. Be on stage every week and just really never not think about jokes. Three. Watch as much Martin Lawrence as possible.
It’s already too late for 100%
That last bit of comedy advice from Thomas was quite popular, so here’s another one I like. Thomas does mostly one-liners. And therefore his advice may be mostly for comedians alike — still it’s something to think about for everyone.
Thomas writes a lot of jokes when he’s developing new material. And I mean a really fucking impressive lot of jokes. This tuesday he showed up for the open mic at a café in Århus with 81 completely new ones. Eighty one. And in about 15 minutes on stage he hammered through them all, recording his performance to later determine what worked and what didn’t.
Of course many of those jokes turned out to not get the laughs he expected. He may not have sold the idea well enough or it might just have bin too plain silly. But that’s to be expected when you go for quantity over quality. As Thomas once told me: I don’t know what’s funny so I try a lot and let the audiences decide.
Now the real advice. If your new joke doesn’t work the first time around, trash it. It’s already too late for it to have worked 100% of times. Statistically this is true.
In effect this means that if your joke doesn’t work the first time you try it, don’t bother doing it again, because if it doesn’t work the first time around, it will probably never be fantastic. And there’s no reason to settle with okay jokes.
And while this might seem dramatic for some, it’s the advice that when I followed it in my (very) early days of writing and doing my first jokes, made my performance turn from okay to better.
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These days I don’t immediately trash an idea, if it fails or it doesn’t get the amount of laughs I want it to get. And I don’t think you should either. But I know I will have to change something in my telling of it and not just keep on trying and failing. Because there’s no reason to settle with okay jokes.
Then don’t wear a cardigan
As I started out doing stand-up comedy I started to notice that when I wore a cardigan, things seemed to go better. It was as if the audiences bought my character faster and I felt more secure.
I told this to my friend Thomas (who have been doing stand-up for way longer than I) and his advice came instantly. Then next time, don’t wear a cardigan!
Because if you build these rituals in your head — and that’s where they are, in your head — you’ll become dependent on them, and the day you don’t have your favourite slippers on and favourite song playing in the background it just won’t work.
