Woman Around Town’s Anne Richmond is attending an eight-week course on standup comedy at the Comic Strip and writing about her experience. This is her review of what happened during weeks five and six.
I missed the fifth week of classes at The Comic Strip due to bus complications that arose while returning from Boston on Columbus Day Weekend. Missing class left me very nervous about our upcoming show on October 31st. If i couldn’t test my new material, how would I ever feel confident enough in my performance by the time of the show?
However, the fact that I missed that class spurred me on to make more progress with my work on my own than I had in any other week. I made a chart of all my premises and the examples I had come up with to illustrate them, along with any new ones that I thought of before the next class. Lastly, I worked out punchlines for each one. As soon as i thought of an idea for a joke, i didn’t just make a few notes. I immediately tried to work out a premise because in weeks past I have written down cryptic notes such as “purple ducks,” which I’m sure meant something to me at one time, but amounted to nothing by the time I sat down to write. Working this way eliminated any of the extraneous information or tangents to which I am usually prone.
When I started taking this class, I didn’t think of comedy in such a methodical way. I had heard about premises and the rule of three, but I hadn’t had the chance to see the rules work on every kind of material repeatedly as I had been able to see over the weeks with all of my classmates. This is not to say that all comedy has to be constructed in this way, but I have definitely been taught that there are basic rules that can help you construct jokes to make them immediately more funny.
The night before class I took my chart and put together my streamlined jokes, reading through them aloud in order to figure out fluid phrasing. There’s nothing that destroys comedic timing faster than tripping over your words and having to go back. After I was relatively confident, I put everything away. Usually I cram in all of my work in the last few days, but working this way made me feel more relaxed about the whole thing. I also felt like I understood how my jokes were theoretically supposed to work better than ever.
That week when I took the stage, I got my first laughs, and they were all from my most personal jokes, all premises from moments I had actually experienced. I hadn’t really received any thing more than a light chuckle and a smile up until that moment. My countenance immediately brightened at the prospect that I might actually be on track!
“We’re almost there with a lot of these.” D. F. smiled as I dismounted the stage.
“Well just in time.” I giggled.
After we worked through the improvements I could make in my work, D. F. looked up at me. “Next week, bring in everything.”
“Everything?” I asked tentatively.
“Well yeah. It’s the week before the show. It’ll be time to get everything ready for the show.”
I gulped. Just when everything was getting so comfortable, it hit me that in two weeks, I would be performing my stand-up material in front of a live audience at The Comic Strip.
Anne Richmond is an actress, singer, and writer living in New York City. Armed with a BFA in Theater from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts where she trained at the Playwrights Horizons Theater School and The Experimental Theater Wing, she continues to work in the theater and the burgeoning field of new media. She is a founding member of Box Full of Wasps Theater Collective and one of the creators of the upcoming webseries, O-Cast ©, a show which she also produces, costume designs, and performs in. (http://www.annerichmond.com, http://www.o-cast.com)
