How can you be a comedian

Below are some suggestions for how you can find the funny before you go on stage. The best way to do this is to watch as much stand-up comedy as humanly possible. YouTube is another bottomless source of standup material. If you have a favorite comic, see if you can catch their earliest comedy show and see how it compares to a later set.

This is because they, too, are watching, observing, and learning. However, one of the most helpful things when setting out to do something new is to have another person or group hold you accountable. Now that a lot of life is online you can take a stand-up comedy class from anywhere! While stand-up comedy may be a male-dominated field, you can even find classes that are geared to help women get started in comedy surround by other funny females.

Comedian Lisa Sundstedt started teaching stand-up comedy classes in , after using her Pretty Funny Women shows to bring fresh talent to the stage. With a comedy class, you can take notes from the greats. So put that pen to paper and start writing.

If not, a good place to start is with your own experience or observations. What annoys or puzzles you? Do you judge other people for something you do, but find a way to justify it? When you eventually get some stage time, the audience will be right looking at you.

Is there something funny or unique about your appearance? Say it. If you prefer to tell jokes about other subjects and avoid politics altogether, no problem. Try to remember anything you say that makes someone laugh. Jokes are everywhere, and every single encounter is an opportunity for writing more material. Nike is right. Just do it. An open mic is an opportunity to try out some of your jokes without the pressure of pleasing a paying audience.

Once you kick fear in the face and get your first time over with, pretty much every time after that will be easier. Your favorite comedy club may have open mics where you just need to pay five bucks or buy a drink to get some stage time. You can search the internet for an open mic near you. And during these days of distancing, there are virtual open mics that you can do to sharper your emcee skills from anywhere.

Produce your own live show or project at some point — it will help you better understand the business. Understand what your strengths are as a performer and seek out opportunities to exploit them. But remember that you have an advantage because none of them are you. Please leave them in the comments…. In the nyc circuit, the open mic scene which is tha breeding ground for talent is full of people who dont take it seriously!

Last night I produced and hosted what was probably one of the better shows I have done from a material and audience standpoint, the comics I brought in did their thing, and the crowd ate it up!

I hosted the heck out of the funny people, we all engaged the audience, no hecklers, but plenty of participation! Pretty much a happier, more satisfied, laugh for your buck-crowd you would be hard-pressed to find.

The venue was awesome, the food and drinks great! The January show was over-capacity, had to turn people away. The April show was about half that, and this one was half of the April show, maybe a tenth of the venue. Without going into specifics, suffice it to say I lost my shorts. I spent the entire 90 minute drive going over in my head what I could have done differently, what variable it was that would have made this a success that the other shows were, what did I do to lose so much money.

My answer: Nothing. I invested heavily in marketing. I had venue support. I had talent that people were willing to pay for. I did the radio morning shows, I did the call-in shows, I pushed it on my Facebook, Twitter, and personal website www. I worked harder on this show than I have on any other show, and I had the absolute worst results from a financial standpoint.

I shook the hand of every guest, asked them each to visit my website and sign up for future shows. I added 21 Facebook friends and 9 followers on twitter. I received about 20 emails thanking me for a great night, and promises to come again and bring friends.

And most comics I know would too, and think it was a bargain at twice the price! Thanks for the motivation, brother! There is a lot of truth there…but I will add one more…. Considering the date this was posted July I am reading this almost a year and a half later but boy did it make me laugh! Looks like he was replying to the very first post….

Andrew Hall July 30, at am I have found that persistence trumps talent a vast majority of the time. As soon as I saw it , I thought the same thing. This rule applies to Karaoke, too! Spot on, Josh! Fame is a fickle bitch. The love of money is the root of all evil. Gotta find a happy medium with the proper comedy medium. If you want to make more money faster, discounting some great breaks, work clean. These hot crowds are great for writing. Be funny when you can.

Lots of people who know yer a comic just wait for you to crank them up. Do it. If you can get on a roll, hurt them—-with laughter.

Thanks for reposting this. I needed a refresher course in doing this! Hi, ok well I read a lot of useful information. Thank you for all the advice.

I have just started performing as a Stand up comedian on amateur nights ie Open mike. And did got some laughs. I refuse to believe my appearance influenced that? Anyway I plan on doing it a lot more until Eddie Murphy is excited just to meet me? Or the other way around? Anyway as a retired boxer that know one ever herd of? I should have a lot of material?

As well as everybody else. So keep your eyes and ears open and look for Sir Eric McNair. Your a coward and should do the same material no matter the crowd…. Laughing is selling yourself short and ur letting the crowd own YOUR material. Also how many people voted class clown became successful comedians?

Probably one out of ten thousand….. Talking to guys that have opened for the likes of Dave Chappelle really helped me understand the roadmap that I was embarking on. Granted, i am only 14 years old, but since i was tiny all i have ever wanted was to make people laugh. I am not the class clown, shouting things out that the entire class roar at, i tend to mutter something to the person sitting next to me and allow them to get told off for laughing.

As good as this list is, i find it hard to think of jokes, as in things to say. I couldnt be a stand up comedian because of this. Speeking wise, i usually make people laugh with my ability to make any conversation sound dirty one of my sketches Do you guys think that i could start off with a youtube sketch show? I got a mahoosive list of sketches but most comedians start with stand-up. You say to give up but with so few people succeeding in comedy, is there point to competing with so many naturals?

Please carry on and follow your dream. I know this is controversial but I believe great talents are made by hard work, courage, open mindedness, experience and confidence which grows with time. I just did my first stand up and it was awesome. I got invited back. I think you should find the comedy that makes you laugh and use it to inspire you. If you notice you have some funny comments that get laughs keep a note of them to build up an act.

Good luck. It is an extension of a contest I started 7 years ago which runs succesfully now. You could try it with a bunch of jokes which you've cribbed from the internet and pretend they're your own the first time. If you felt that it worked and you enjoyed it, then it would maybe give you the confidence to try and write your own stuff, because eventually that is what you are going to have to do in the end.

Getting up on stage that first time will tell you if it's for you. If it's a horrendous experience, you won't want to ever do it again. It will tell you a lot about yourself, so just get up and try, everything else stems from that really. It's like most things, thinking of something funny to say, quickly, requires practice. It's like a muscle I suppose, the more you do it, the better you will get. Like any muscle, if I haven't worked live for a few weeks or if I haven't done a gig for a while, I find when I come back I'm a bit slower and it takes a while to get back up to speed.

It's about practice and about having the dedication and the temperament to pursue what you want to do I suppose. If someone heckles you, just tell them to shut up, or be quiet. You don't have to engage them in great battles of wits, because they are inevitably very drunk.

I was doing a charity gig the other night and there was a guy who started shouting things out from the front row, so one of us just said, "Thank you for coming, other people are trying to listen," which was a nice way of telling him to shut up and he did. It tends to only happen when there is a solo comedian on stage and the person shouting at them from the audience is envious of the person on stage, that's all it is. I find you don't need to think of a funny put-down for a heckler, just tell them to shut up.

You still have to be on TV I think if you really want to make it in the business. That may change in years to come, but at the moment, television is still immensely important.

It creates the opportunity for so many more people to see you. The thing is, there's only a small proportion of people who actually like you, but the more of them that see you the better so that you can start to build up a bit of an audience. Even with Have I Got News For You getting something like five million viewers, that's still 45 million people who aren't watching. That's an enormous number. You need to know that most people don't care or at best are sort of ambivalent and be OK with that.

It's so important to learn from other comedians. When I first started I used to read autobiographies and watch other comedians on stage and watch how they were doing things. If you think it is going to be a tough audience, watch and learn how a skilled comedian can turn that audience around. All that kind of thing can be picked up just by observing as well as doing it yourself.