Friends tell you that you’re funny — ‘You should do stand-up.’ And now you’re wondering whether they’re right…
Firstly, ‘should’ doesn’t come into it. ‘Should’ is not a good word. Nearly always it means ‘I’m not going to make the effort but I’d like to watch you change dramatically and maybe even set yourself up to fall flat on your face.’ Never ‘should’ yourself into anything, let alone something as challenging as comedy.
How about ‘If I really wanted to, I could do stand-up’? That’s the first and most important question.
Well do you? Do you really, really want to stand up in front of a dozen or more people, week in, week out and die on your feet because you’re really not that funny? Because, trust me, that will happen. Even established comedians take ‘new material try-out gigs’ to test stuff that they thought was utterly hilarious at home but strangely falls flat on its face at the pub.
Also, just because our mother thinks it’s funny doesn’t mean it is. In fact it’s highly likely that if our mother likes it, it’s crap. Successful comedy is edgy stuff. I can remember risking a joke about visiting a psychic only to find that my late husband was just as annoying dead as he had been when he was alive, The audience loved it. My mum didn’t speak to me for a week.
Jerry Seinfeld once said that speaking in public was people’s greatest fear, with dying coming in only second. Therefore most people would rather be in the coffin than doing the eulogy. If it’s any comfort, as a minister who does funerals on a regular basis, I can tell you that leading a funeral is far scarier than doing a stand-up gig. People rarely cry at you if you do a bum gig.
However, please don’t tell me that you’re not brave enough. If you can pour hot wax on your body, let it dry and then rip out every single hair by its roots, you are quite courageous enough to be a comedian.
The second question is, how? How do you get to be a comedian? You show up. You show up for the gigs (there are loads of groups looking for new comedians on Facebook so that bit’s not hard), you show up for making the events in your life funny. You show up by writing something every day (okay, you can take Sundays off but that’s all) and you find your voice. Sounds simple, right? Right. But nobody ever said it was easy.
You’ll write mostly rubbish to start with, even if you think it’s hysterical. But all that’s important to begin with is to write. Writer’s block is a myth, a good excuse for not succeeding and, as Funny Women founder, Lynne Parker said recently in a TEDx talk, success is the thing most women are afraid of.
More important than what you write down, however, is the act of writing itself. When you commit to writing, you will definitely have huge resistance, days when you don’t feel like doing it, when you believe (quite correctly) that it’s rubbish, when the Muse deserts you. But, if you keep going, the inspiration returns. Her name is Thalia by the way — the Muse of Comedy — and if you keep showing up, she will too.
It doesn’t matter if anyone listens to it, buys it, laughs at it or shares it. It matters that you do it. Then you are on the road to becoming a comedian.
For more tips on how to get started in comedy check out our Tricks of the Trade or join us at Time of the Month
