Mastering Stand-Up
The Complete Guide to Becoming a Successful Comedian
Stephen Rosenfield
- 272 pagine
- English
- ePUB (disponibile sull'app)
- Disponibile su iOS e Android
Mastering Stand-Up
The Complete Guide to Becoming a Successful Comedian
Stephen Rosenfield
Informazioni sul libro
This entertaining and sharply written guide—for both beginners breaking into comedy and professionals seeking to improve their sets and advance their careers—examines the work of great comedians such as Louis C.K., Jerry Seinfeld, Eddie Izzard, Moms Mabley, Hannibal Buress, Sarah Silverman, Richard Pryor, and more as a means of illustrating the most important techniques of performing and writing stand-up. Here, Stephen Rosenfield lays out a clear plan for achieving success, candidly explaining what works, what doesn't, and why. Including a 12-item "Successful Comedian's To-Do List, " Rosenfield states, "Get undeniably good at each of these and you can kiss your day job good-bye. You will be a pro." The New York Times heralded Stephen Rosenfield as "probably the best known comedy teacher in the country." His alumni include some of today's most prominent comedians and comedy writers, such as Lena Dunham, Jim Gaffigan, Eric Slovin, and Jessica Kirson. Rosenfield has directed, coached, and/or written for these and hundreds of other comedians. As a pioneer in the field of teaching comedy, he founded the American Comedy Institute, the premier stand-up comedy school in the United States, in 1989.
Domande frequenti
Informazioni
Part I
BEGINNING OUR
WORK TOGETHER
1
THINGS I KNOW ABOUT YOU
2
THE ROAD AHEAD
- 1. Find Your Originality. Get in touch with what is original about your sense of humor. Originality is a hallmark of exceptional art. In comedy, it’s what the entertainment industry looks for first and foremost when determining who has the makings for the big leagues. Most club comics aren’t originals. Their work is generic. Their material may get laughs, but it could be performed by anybody. That’s why they’re not memorable. And then, on the other hand, there are the stars of comedy. They make an indelible impression on us. We feel like we know them. We think of them as friends, as family. We love them. When they finish a set, the buzz in the room is not about jokes, it’s about them. I’m going to help make that happen for you.
- 2. Master the Techniques of Stand-Up Comedy Writing. You may not think of yourself as a writer. You may think of yourself as just a funny person who says funny things. The idea of trying to write comedy may be intimidating. But it shouldn’t be, for one simple reason: you’re already writing comedy. Like many comedy writers, you’re writing with your mouth. What you need to do now is capture the funny things you say and think by writing them down. Once you get your spontaneous comic creations on paper, you can start to apply the writing techniques that will transform your ad-libs into stage-worthy stand-up comedy material.
- 3. Master the Techniques of Stand-Up Comedy Performing. Sometimes new comics feel like if they know their lines, they’re prepared to do their set. Not true. That would be like an actor saying he doesn’t need any rehearsal because he’s memorized his lines. A stand-up, like an actor, must have the ability to produce onstage the emotions that give life to his performance. He must be capable of creating this emotional life night after night, in a way that seems spontaneous and unrehearsed to the audience. Masterful comedians acquire the techniques to do this, and it’s the reason why many of them become exceptional actors. In the upcoming chapters, you’ll learn how to acquire these skills.
- 4. Create Your Comic Persona. To become a successful comedian, you must develop a vivid and distinctive onstage personality—a personality as individual as your real-life personality, only more so. This stage personality, or persona as it’s called in comedy, must be manifest in your material, how you look, what you wear, and how you move and speak. The process of creating a persona is a collaboration between you and your audiences over an extended period of time, usually several years. I’ll teach you how to make this collaboration happen successfully.
- 5. Deepen Your Understanding of Comedy. Gifted stand-ups go on to careers as actors, writers, directors, and producers in television, theater, and movies; as hosts of their own television talk shows; and as bestselling authors. Their versatility comes from the knowledge and experience they acquire about comedy during their formative years in stand-up. Getting good at stand-up writing and performing is an education that will enable you to pursue comedy in all areas of the arts and entertainment.
- 6. Study Great Comedians. Watching great comedians will help you learn and improve your act. Just because someone is onstage doing stand-up doesn’t mean that you should study that person and try to incorporate what they’re doing into your work. The comedians you love are the comedians you want to study. Louis C.K. says that studying George Carlin taught him what he needed to know to move up in the stand-up ranks from hack to comedy star. Carlin’s work taught Louis the two things that became Louis’s trademark. The first is to have the courage to speak the unspeakable onstage. And the second is that if, every year, you throw out all your old material and write an hour of new material, you will be forced to dig deeper and deeper into yourself to find your comedy. Don’t limit yourself to studying only the current crop of star stand-ups. View video of the great stand-ups of the past. The Internet has made this easy. You’re not going to know what’s possible to accomplish in your stand-up unless you know the work of the great comedians who came before you.
- 7. Perform! Perform! Perform! To become a pro, performing must be a regular part of your workweek. Perform stand-up as frequently as you can. The only way you’ll absorb the techniques you learn from this book is to use them onstage over and over again until they’ve become second nature to you.
- 8. Never Blame Your Audience. Your audience can be an invaluable guide to improving your writing and performing. In comedy, they’re ultimately your editor in chief. Over time, they’ll teach you what subjects and attitudes work best for you. Just as important, they’ll teach you what doesn’t work for you. Sometimes they’ll be your friends and sometimes they’ll be strangers; sometimes they’ll love you and sometimes they’ll be cold and indifferent; sometimes they’ll be rude and sometimes you’ll wish you could take them home with you because they’ll give you more than anyone else in the world gives you. They’ll do all of these things, some of the time. Remember, however, that all of the time, they’re your collaborators. In good shows and bad, they have lessons to teach you about how to be a better comedian. Never blame an audience; learn from them, instead. This book will teach you how.
- 9. Know the Forms of Stand-Up Comedy. As in all art, stand-up has classical forms. Knowing them will help you define and clarify the type of stand-up you want to do. Knowledge of the forms will expand and give shape to your comic ideas.
- 10. Understand the Business. To work as a stand-up, you need to be knowledgeable about the comedy business. There have never been more opportunities for comedians and comedy writers than there are now. Because of the Internet, it’s possible for you to create and produce, at virtually no cost, comedy that can launch you professionally. I intend for you not only to do stand-up, but also to be paid to do stand-up. I’ll provide you with a working knowledge of the entertainment industry.
- 11. Trust Your Nerves. It’s OK to be nervous. Your nerves can give you invaluable assistance onstage. In this book, you’ll learn how to make your nerves work for you.
- 12. Have Fun. Stand-up is the one endeavor I know of where having fun is actually a requirement. And it’s a requirement for this reason: when individuals become an audience, a transformation takes place. They stop feeling what each of them is feeling individually, and they start to feel collectively what the performer is feeling. If the audience picks up from you that there’s nowhere else on Earth you’d rather be than onstage talking to them, then they start thinking, I’m having a ball here, listening to this guy. If, however, you go onstage thinking, Christ, let me get this over with, then your audience will start thinking, GET THIS OVER WITH. Before each of our shows, I ask the comedians, “What’s the most important thing tonight?” The answer is, have fun.