Believe it or not, Marilyn Stuck Her Big Toe in Stand-Up Comedy
And lived to tell the tale!
What was I thinking?
I’ll tell you. I’m decent at improvisational acting, and I can be pretty funny. I’m holding my own writing humor and satire on MuddyUm. I’ve actually had about five or so posts curated. And my ones about Curation and Distribution have gone viral,by my standards.
I’ve taken four clowning classes, which combined my improv and my physical comedy skills. So I thought, hmm, stand-up, how hard can it be, right?
Pretty hard, it turns out.
For one, joke writing for stand up is different than what they call literary writing for humor. And by literary, I’m pretty sure they mean in written format, not high falutin.’
So you have to learn some theory, concepts, and structure.
Fortunately, at Stagebridge, the performing arts school for adults 50 and over where I take my improv and clowning classes, found a dynamite teacher in Corey Rosen.
An actor, storyteller, improviser, and comic, he comes highly recommended. I signed up, along with five others who are farther along in their stand-up careers than yours truly.
We learned about the rule of three. It’s been scientifically proven that after two straight concepts, putting in a third on the funny to absurd side satisfies something intrinsic in folks and gets a laugh. Make note. Not two, not four, but the magic number, holy trinity, three.
What’s God got to do with it? He invented the whole she-bang. And here you thought it was the big bang. Wrong. It’s the whole she-bang. Full catastrophe, but whole she-bang.
The above is an example of literary humor. Not cause it’s high falutin,’ but because it’s written down. Think low brow. Down, low, you get my drift, or you don’t, and it’s okay. Ahem. Let’s move on…
Comedic Structure
Come to find out, jokes have a structure. Say what? It’s true.
Even knock-knock jokes have a structure. They always start out knock, knock. The next line is, who’s there? Not yeah, whaddya want? It’s who’s there? Etc.
So Corey taught us a structure he uses and likes, which is very flexible and works in combination with storytelling as well. We start with a topic and an attitude. These combined give us our premise.
We worked with this phrasing: You know what’s ___ about ____?
The first blank is an attitude word like scary, weird, stupid, frustrating, etc. The second blank is your subject matter or topic. My topic was growing up in the military — being a brat as we’re called.
Then we do what’s called act outs. We prove the premise by acting out one or more characters, usually two in conversation. We change our voices and body language to embody those characters. Usually, it’s just of few lines of dialogue to prove the point.
Trevor Noah is fabulous at this format. Here’s a video where he makes it look soooo easy:
Finding my topic was a fairy tale experience for me.
Not because it was magical.
But because my first Ideas were too soft, fell apart and didn’t go anywhere. My second one, when we were given the assignment to be vulnerable, and I chose the time someone tried to rape me, was too hard. It wasn’t at all funny until I got to the hospital, and those jokes took a microscope to find.
At that point, with just over a week till Showcase, I was so discouraged and flummoxed I wanted to quit. Everyone else was polishing and perfecting, and I didn’t even have my topic yet.
I was in the bathroom, my favorite creative chamber, mentally composing the email to Corey about why I need to drop out when the topic dropped into my consciousness. Growing up in the military. As Goldilocks said, this one was just right!
Grabbing paper, I scribbled out the gist of my piece.
When I got to my computer moments later, there was Corey’s email asking me to send him what I had so far so he could give me notes (theater term for feedback).
Quick like a bunny, I typed it up and sent it off. He sent it back, transformed into stage-worthy material. Voila! Teamwork. He even changed the title from Marilyn’s Latest Idea to Marilyn’s Amazing Idea. Gotta love him for that.
I tried it out in class, got notes, practiced, tried it again, got more notes, and kept practicing.
The second thing that’s hard about stand-up is, you’re supposed to memorize your routine. Not necessarily word for word, but the gist of it so you can be off-book as they say.
FTS! It’s on Zoom.
I’ve got my notes where no one can see ’em but me. I made that work. I bit the bullet and invited a few friends to our Showcase and got lovely comments in the chat and thunderous applause on mute!
I thought I’d be relieved when the class ended. But there’s a sweet space in my heart where the class used to be. Will I take another class? The jury is still out on that. Stay tuned; I’ll keep you posted.
In the meantime, if you want to see our Showcase, here’s the YouTube video. I am second in the line-up. The guy at the end is worth waiting for. Enjoy!
Marilyn Flower writes humor to laugh the changes she wants to see and make. She’s the author of Creative Blogging: Ninja Writers Guide to Character Development and Bucket Listers, Get Your Brave On. Clowning and improvisation strengthen her resolve during these crazy times. Stay in touch!