Almost everyone who has made people laugh has toyed with
the idea of taking it to the stage. Laughter's addictive, yet still legal, so
the thought of going pro - even just for one night - is seductive.
Witness the popularity of "open mic" nights. On any given night in
America, someone, somewhere is taking a stage, squinting under the lights, and
hoping to score some laughs.
And on a cold March night, I became one of them, along with eight other people
who took a comedy workshop at the Cleveland Improv. Led by Dave Schwensen, a
former standup comedian and author of How to Be a Working Comic (Back Stage
Books, 1998), we spent a dozen hours putting together five-minute routines,
learning the funny business of comedy, and realizing the infinite wisdom of
these six words: "Dying is easy; comedy is hard."
The pros, of course, make comedy look easy. Ask them about it, though, and they
freely admit it: even they struggle.
"You can't buy laughter," said Christopher Titus, who appeared at
Connxtions in October. "You have to create it."
And the actor and standup comedian finds the funny in places most folks don't
dare to go.
"The bit about my father's funeral was hard to write," Titus said
before the Toledo show. "Every night, I work on it."
I took a certain comfort in those words as I commuted to the Improv that first
Saturday. Besides writing jokes, for months I had carried a tape recorder with
me to note anything I found amusing. Convinced I had plenty of material, I
listened to the tape during the drive.
Only then did I realize how many observations - and how few actual jokes - I
had.
The closer I drew to Cleveland, the lamer my jokes sounded. By the time I
arrived, I was convinced I had nothing, joke-wise, but a sackful of dead roaches
to throw at my classmates.
The show date was three weeks away. This was going to be interesting. Or
catastrophic. I couldn't decide which.
•
When you perform in a play, other people can cover if you err. But with
stand-up, it's just you and your sense of humor - and in my case, a paralyzing,
20-year-old, case of stage fright.
During the first class, we all had to perform any material we had. For some,
that proved easy. Brian Love of Columbus started strong, doing dead-on
impressions of Mike Tyson and Bill Cosby. Joe Fico and Kevin Berry of Rochester,
N.Y. had both done stand-up professionally. They sounded seasoned and
comfortable, reeling off old bits that had worked and new bits they wanted to
try.
After them, my jokes seemed even less funny, if possible, than they had in the
car. Taking the stage, I felt the desperation grip my brain even before I opened
my mouth. My pores prickled as they pumped out perspiration. My papers fluttered
visibly. Someone may have given me a pity titter, but mostly my jokes dropped to
the ground and died.
As I came off the stage, Schwensen gave me a smile.
"Well, Vanessa," he said brightly, "it's obvious you're a
writer."
He said more, but I didn't hear a word of it. What in the world had I done? I
was a fool, thinking I could do this. I would fail miserably. I just knew it.
Of course, I'm not the first person who's felt that way about performing. Fico,
29, said he had a similar reaction in his first comedy class.
"I was very, very scared," Fico said. "I was the last one to go
on stage; I tried very hard to get out of it. I was shaking. They told me they
were taking bets on when I would drop out."
I could certainly relate to that. And once I could again think rationally, that
reaction rattled me. If I couldn't speak in front of eight classmates without
melting into a pool of anxiety, how would I handle 100 paying customers? I
considered what comedy great Woody Allen would do, and called a counselor for an
emergency session.
As we dissected the high school incident that sparked my performance anxiety -
it involved a malfunctioning saxophone, a live microphone, a very bad word, and
an audience of 600 - I realized it was actually a very funny story.
So I scrapped everything I had, and crafted a comedic tale from the most
humiliating moment of my life. Risky? Sure. But as they say, "Go big, or
stay at home."
•
A lot of folks may dream of doing comedy, but it's not for everyone.
"There are people who are funny and people who aren't," said comic
Cathy Ladman, who performed in Ann Arbor last October. "You can't teach it.
"Being a comedian is a craft, a skill," Ladman added. "It's like,
you can teach someone to draw, but you can't teach them to be artistic. … I
think it's a gift you're given."
And even if you have the gift, you must hone it.
"You can be the most talented person in the world, but you have to go to
work and put it together," said Schwensen. "There are people who are
naturals at this, but they need to learn."
And there's plenty to learn. Styles abound within the world of stand-up.
Slapstick and one-liners have been around for decades; think of the Marx
Brothers and Milton Berle. These days, Bill Cosby tells stories. Jerry Seinfeld
and Ellen DeGeneres do observational humor. Robin Williams improvises. Jim
Carrey started out doing impressions. Paula Poundstone riffs off an audience.
Lily Tomlin brings characters to life.
All cast long shadows. Indeed, a common misstep for beginners is adopting a
pro's persona instead of finding their own voices and viewpoints, Schwensen
said. When it happens in his classes, "I say, No, what's your sense of
humor?"
Ladman agreed, adding that keeping her voice unique can still be tough, even
after years in the business.
"The most challenging part for me is finding a subject and my own point of
view on that subject that is distinctly me, that doesn't sound like it could
come out of anyone's mouth," she said in an e-mail last month.
That said, many standups cut their comic teeth imitating others. As a teen, Love
memorized Richard Pryor's routines.
"When I was in eighth grade, I studied him," the 35-year-old truck
driver said. "I watched his every move, his facial expressions."
But he moved on.
"You have your own opinion, your own view," he said.
The hard work of being original pays dividends, though.
"I love making people laugh," he said. "I love the response when
I do something funny or say something funny."
Berry agreed.
"It's hard to explain," the 39-year-old prison guard said. "You
have to be up there. You think, 'I can do it. I will own this room.' And,
sometimes, you do."
Like many comics, he finds his stage persona, which tends toward the raunchy,
quite different from his actual personality.
"I'm more reserved, but onstage, I can just unleash and not worry about the
repercussions," he said. "I get wired, in a way."
Me too. Turns out my inner performer is brasher and higher voltage than the
woman I am offstage. And a good thing, too, as I would soon learn.
•
Taking Schwensen's advice, I honed my story. On stage, you don't tell a story as
you would in the office break room. A performance story is a narrative that
builds to a climax, but it also provides a framework for humorous tangents and
other laughs. So I added to my basic tale facial reactions, jokes-within-jokes,
movement. I had always envisioned myself as a witty intellectual, a latter-day
Dorothy Parker, but my act's final form seemed more silly than sophisticated.
The day of the show, I ran through the routine five or six times at home, and
another four times in the car. You know, just to be sure. Then I psyched myself
into a positive frame of mind, per my counselor's instructions, through the
well-known method of bellowing along with a Ricky Martin CD in the car.
We comics gathered at the back of the club as the crowd arrived, assuring one
another that we would "kill" (comedy-talk for "do well"). I
was surprised to find I did not feel like faking a stroke to get out of
performing. The counseling had done its job. I wanted to get on that stage, even
if I "died."
Schwensen gave us our numbers in the line-up. I would go third, after the
14-year-old schoolgirl and another of Schwensen's students. The placement
relieved me. I would not have to wait long to learn if I had the right stuff -
or if I could remember five minutes of material.
Performing has some peculiar pleasures. It was a thrill to hear an emcee say my
name as the audience applauded, to see my friends reach out to touch me as I
strode to the stage, to take the microphone off the stand and feel a surge of
power as I realized these 50 to 70 people were all mine for the next five
minutes.
So watching about 10 of them leave right then hurt. Granted, they were underage,
and had to leave after the first performer, but still. Before I could even
think, I had made an impromptu joke about it, the crowd had laughed … and I
was hooked.
It's fun to go to a comedy show, but it's amazing to be on the receiving end of
the laughter. That first, unplanned laugh was a wave of energy that lifted me up
like a rising tide floats a boat. In a snap, my senses sharpened even as I
relaxed and stopped worrying about forgetting my routine. Berry told me later
that he could see me loosen up in that instant.
I settled into my story, pausing for the laughs instead of rushing forward, as I
had in class. My mind raced, yet I still found time to savor every reaction,
basking in the pay-offs of the jokes I had agonized over, enjoying the crowd,
enjoying myself.
It was hard to end it and leave the stage, but watching the others who had made
their own journeys from fear-stricken wannabes to comedians proved satisfying,
too.
It took a long time to stop smiling on that cold night. I think I finally calmed
down around Sandusky as I wondered why it had taken me so long to get on stage.
So don't be surprised to see me at an open mic night somewhere, squinting into
the lights, hoping to score some laughs.
"It's a blast being on stage," Berry said.
I couldn't agree more.
Contact Vanessa Winans at: vwinans@theblade.com or 419-724-6103.
