The Science Of Comedy

24-02-2010

So my warm up gig for the contest (or to be truthful the first gig of 2010 and first gig in three months because I am lazy/busy) is on Sunday.

As of right now I still have no cold opener, which is a little on the annoying side of things. In general I like to always have a cold open, a joke that is about ten seconds long and gets a quick (maybe cheap and dirty) laugh. I like to assume that the crowd will have seen nobody before me, not even the MC (which I know is untrue because the MC has to introduce me, duh!) and that I have to warm them up from scratch.

There are a few schools of thought on this. Such as: Why bother? Why bother making a short throw away joke just to get the crowd laughing when you can build to your first big joke from the start?

It is a valid point but at the end of the night you want to be remembered for your own merits, your own jokes, not for riding on the coat tails of the person that came before you. If you follow a brilliant act, a person that had the crowd in bits, then they will still be laughing when you get on stage. Still have laughter in their veins. You have a warm crowd thanks to the guy who went before you.

Sometimes I find that when I am just at a gig watching the acts that a middle of the road act gets a lot more laughs than his/her material warrants because they have followed an act that was pumped up and hilarious. Reverse the running order of those two guys and you would think you are seeing a completely different comedian.

But what if you are the first guy up? The crowd is so cold your nipples are standing upright and ready for action. The first act needs a cold open, without one you are standing there in silence for too long.

My thinking is that I don't know what way the running order is going to be until the start of the night. Am I first? Last? In the middle? It doesn't matter. I want that cold open ready as my first joke for when I get on stage. Not just to be prepared for a cold crowd but for myself.

I find that even now, after all this time, I still get a little jiggle of nerves just as I walk up on stage. Let's be honest here, I am trying to make a room of strangers find my brand of insanity funny. That isn't going to be all plain sailing. So for me the cold open is a safety net. It is a throw away joke that gets me a laugh within ten seconds of standing up on stage, so that I have gotten the first laugh over and out of the way. It gets me into my comfort zone on stage. All I have to do now is build from that first laugh and the night can be great, bad, indifferent, I won't care. So long as I get that one laugh I will be happy, the sooner I get that laugh the sooner the nerves will go. If I get up on stage and launch into one of my long winded jokes (because at the end of the day I am a story teller at heart) then it will be a lot longer than ten seconds til my first laugh. If I get it at the end of that story.

That is how my "Read P.U.B.E.S" joke was born. You say that and instantly you get a chuckle. You get to the actual punchline of the joke and you have laughter.

Which is why I am not liking the fact I don't have my cold open, less than a week before the gig.

Although this gig is going to be one of the ones where I don't get a crowd of people to come along. I want to try the material out on total strangers (possibly punish the lady friend by dragging her along) so that I can get a neutral reaction. That way I will be able to hone and shape the material better for the contest.

And you all thought comedy was just about being funny. Hell I am still figuring it out after nearly three years doing it.

Blue_jester

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