A New York Times survey in 1984 placed death third in a list of people’s biggest fears. The first two were walking into a room full of strangers and speaking in public. It takes a lot of courage to get up on stage and perform, so if stand-up comedy is on your bucket list, here are a few handy hints from 13 years of running Funny Women to help you on your way.
1. Women are funny – just in a different way. Stand up can be a tougher call for women than men as female brains are wired slightly differently from male brains. We take longer to formulate and process our responses because we have so much more going on in our prefrontal cortex. While this means that we can multi task for Britain (or whatever country we come from) it also means that we can take longer to get a joke.
2. Develop a performance style that makes you feel comfortable on stage. If you are relaxed then your audience will be too. Standing up, sitting down, or moving about – anything goes but too much pacing about could distract from your hilarious quips.
3. It may sound impossible but find ways to maintain ‘eye contact’ with your audience, whether it is to 500 people in a large theatre or 10 people upstairs in a pub. We work with voice coach and actor, Lisa Armytage, who has some amazing techniques to help you draw audiences into your space.
4. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. The best comedians have performed their acts hundreds of times in their heads as well as on stage. The old adage of practising your material in front of a mirror with a hairbrush still stands. Watching your performance so closely will also make you aware of how your body language relates to your material. Film yourself. Watching it back might be painful at first but you’ll learn so much.
5. Match your performance on stage with your online presence so that there are no surprises when you turn up to a gig looking 20 years older than your publicity materials. Use recent pictures of yourself on your website, social media profiles, posters and flyers.
6. You never know what you’ll hear next. So be open to what’s going on around you and if you hear something good, write it down as you might be able to use it in your material. Listen to other people talking when you are out and about, traveling on public transport or queuing up in the supermarket. Random comments taken out of context can provide the richest of comedy pickings!
7. Less is more so don’t be frightened to edit your material. One-liners get more laughs per minute than shaggy dog stories so work on your craft and try out different versions of your act on different audiences.
8. Don’t panic! This just sends the wrong signal to your brain and makes recalling your material much harder. Nobody will realise you forgotten something unless you bring it to their attention and even if they have seen your act before they will just think it’s new material!
A lot of comedy skills are transferable to everyday and business life. Following the General Election, I was invited to write my top tips for mastering the art of public speaking for the Guardian Women in Leadership which you can read here.
