Rehearsed Spontaneity: Learning Comedy by Playing Banjo for an Empty Room
“Spectacular achievement is always preceded by unspectacular preparation.”
–Robert H. Schuller
When Steve Martin was getting started in comedy, he would do whatever he could simply to get himself on stage. In his autobiography, Born Standing Up, he recounts the regular opening-act gig he had at the Coffee and Confusion in San Francisco in 1965. His act at the time consisted of material that he refers to as, “strictly Monday-night quality, the night when, traditionally, anyone could get up to perform.”
The Coffee and Confusion was essentially a bare room with some chairs and some lightbulbs, hardly the ideal performance space even on a good day. And on a bad day, the room was 100 percent empty. Even when there wasn’t a soul there, Martin had to start his act on time—just in case passersby outside noticed him through the window and were drawn in. “So,” he says, “I went on stage and started talking. Talking to no one.”
As if that weren’t difficult enough, Martin was expected to perform a twenty-five-minute set every night. At the time, he only had about ten minutes of decent comedy material. So he fell back on everything he had: he played banjo, he did magic tricks, he put on costumes and props before settling in to address his audience in a serious manner: “I know what you’re thinking, ‘Oh, this is just another banjo-magic act.’” If he had an obliging audience, he could make it through the full twenty-five minutes; if not, he’d have to fight not to be dead in the water after twelve. He described it like this: “Afraid of falling short, I ad-libbed, wandered around the audience, talked to patrons, joked with waitresses, and took note of anything unusual that was happening in the crowd and addressed it for laughs, in the hope of keeping my written material in reserve so I could fill my time quota.”26
As excruciating as that might sound (I know it does to me), it was the ideal practice setting. Steve Martin was getting “stage time, stage time, and stage time” in adverse conditions almost every night. He treated every set like it was important, even if the bouncers were the only other people in the room; he learned what he could fall back on when his audience was tough; and he built a repertoire of fallback jokes and a few in-case-of-emergency jokes. Over time, he was ready for whatever came his way. Years later, he was still using this format—the “unstructured and modern” element of his shows were the defining element of his stand-up career. That success, generally, can be traced back to Comedy Habit #4: Rehearsed Spontaneity.
Ironically, the objective of comedians, as they put almost twenty-two hours of work into every minute of their performance each year, is to make every one of those minutes look spontaneous and effortless. They work to craft a collection of tried and trusted material that flows so well together, in and out between audience interactions, that it appears the comedian just created it all off the top of his or her head in the moment. They are so well practiced by the time it comes to the big event they could do it in the dark. Martin was no different; he took notes after every performance, recording what worked, what didn’t, and why.
Billy Connolly is one of my favorite comedians and a storyteller by nature. He tells a six-minute story about an elderly lady taking a bus. When I saw this bit live, it appeared that every bit of the story may have unfolded the day before and Billy just happened to be sharing it with me. Never did it occur to me that every line and word was carefully selected and that every part was a well-rehearsed component.
“The reality is, you can’t wing it. If you don’t prepare, you may do okay some of the time, poorly all too often, and good occasionally. You have to practice. Practice breeds consistency, good habits, and success. This is something that every comedian, performer, and athlete knows.”
The reality is, you can’t wing it. If you don’t prepare, you may do okay some of the time, poorly all too often, and good occasionally. You have to practice. Practice breeds consistency, good habits, and success. This is something that every comedian, performer, and athlete knows. The work comes prior to the big day, not on the big day. I said at the start of this book that this is not a magic book. Application of these principles won’t make you instantly funnier, more successful, or more attractive to the opposite sex. Add a little practice, however, and it just might. It’s time for a little practice.
The harder you work, the more natural you will be on stage. Remember the words of world public-speaking champion Darren LaCroix, “The three keys are stage time, stage time, and stage time.” The problem is busy professionals are not able to dedicate time to developing their performance ability every day like aspiring comedians. Don’t worry—you don’t have to. One practice session every second week combined with some 80/20 Principle tips should be enough to quickly make a big difference. Work presentations count. Every chance you get to talk to somebody . . . anybody . . . counts. Use every chance you can get to speak publicly.
“All things are ready, if our minds be so.”
–William Shakespeare, Henry V
Practice speaking within shorter and shorter time frames and keep cutting your presentation, speech, or story until someone complains that it’s too short. Recognize that modern-day audiences have ever-decreasing attention spans. These short attention spans have led many companies and conferences to shorten their speaking slots as well. Keynotes are becoming TED talks—short, funny, and information packed. Being concise forces you to include only your best points, jokes, and stories. Where there is no time limit, impose one on yourself. Will people complain that your talk should have been longer? Unlikely. And if they do, leaving them wanting more is never a bad thing.
Once you feel comfortable with telling your material and stories to your friends, family, and colleagues, move on to strangers. Don’t just run up to people on the street and start your stories—that never ends well. Don’t force your opinions on your audience, either; people don’t like being told how to think. Keep the focus on telling stories. It will make you so much more likable on stage and, as I’ve found in my own experience, will make you bomb next to never. The best ways to practice this are via open mics, storytelling nights, and public speaking groups like Toastmasters. If you are short on time, or attending nights like these sounds like a stretch, don’t worry. Practicing in any manner, even at home in your underpants to a captive audience like your cat, will still make you better than most speakers out there, who for the most part are winging it. Leave winging it to the birds.
It’s worth paying heed to the words of Irish comic Dylan Moran here on relying on your potential alone: “Don’t do it! Stay away from your potential. You’ll mess it up. It’s potential; leave it. Anyway, it’s like your bank balance—you always have a lot less than you think.”
“Practicing in any manner, even at home in your underpants to a captive audience like your cat, will still make you better than most speakers out there, who for the most part are winging it. Leave winging it to the birds.”
This practice should be viewed as a learning experience, as it will highlight areas you need to work on. Your story and humorous bit list will always be in Permanent Beta. Remember, a smile from a colleague, small laugh at an open mic night, or a mild sniffle from your cat often translates to huge laughs at a conference or in a presentation. Business audiences are often so starved of entertainment that by including some in your talk, you can generate reactions in them akin to a group of happy dolphins slapping their hands together loudly as their bodies thrust backward in excited, Flipper-style appreciation. Stage time is at a premium these days and, with more and more professionals crossing the line toward comedy, if you are brave enough to get out there, you’ll meet some great and interesting people on these nights. Over the last year I have met TED speakers, startup founders, Emmy-nominated writers, lawyers, sales and software professionals, many great comedians, many terrible comedians, and a huge collection of lunatics all trying to build their public speaking skill set in the same unconventional way.
“To improve, we must watch ourselves fail, and learn from our mistakes.”
–Joshua Foer
Practice as you wish to deliver.
You need to practice your material exactly as you wish to deliver it. If you practice at home in a seated position, it’s going to feel strange when you go on stage and have to perform standing.
How you use your hands when you’re speaking is extremely important. Don’t stand there with your hands in your pockets. You want to engage them as much as you can. In 2015, a human behavior consultancy called Science of People set out to find what makes TED talks go viral. Founder Vanessa Van Edwards identified one of the key nonverbal indicators as hand movements. Her poll revealed a correlation between the number of hand gestures a speaker makes in a talk and the number of views the talk receives.27
A great tip given to me by San Francisco–based comedian Matt Morales is to practice your presentation with a bottle in each hand. This gets you accustomed to speaking with your hands out in front of you, which looks really natural but initially will make you feel like a zombie robot.
And whatever you do, don’t look at your feet. Focus on something right in front of you as if you’re talking to the audience. You want to build the habit of looking ahead with your face up and smiling as you’re presenting. These little things can make a big difference in building the right habits. If you want to stand up and talk, don’t sit down and practice.
Once you’ve practiced your material in your home, it’s time to get out and test your jokes and stories in the real world. Like Darren LaCroix says: stage time, stage time, stage time. It is the perfect opportunity to identify patterns, jokes, and stories that really hold an audience’s attention and hopefully generate some laughs. The best way to do this is in front of live audiences.
Your material and collection of stories are always a work in progress. Record, study, and evaluate each performance continuously. By doing this, you’re able to look back and cut out the ahhhs, uhmms, ehhhs, unnecessary words, and gaps in your performance that can be improved (we’ll look at this in more detail in chapter five). Record it, realize it, and then cut it out. Identifying these areas helps you create a more polished and effortless-looking talk. You’ll also be doing this to find material you know always gets laughs.
Take a bar exam.
If you are not quite ready for live audiences, head for the bar. Unlike conference rooms, bars are friendly, social places. People expect stories told there to be succinct and entertaining. That’s why IDEO marketing lead and Mortified co-producer Annette Ferrara tells designers to “take a bar exam”28: “Go to a bar with a colleague—or imagine you’re in one—and tell your stories using only napkin drawings as your visuals. Have your friend repeat back your story to see what’s sticking and what’s not. Refine and repeat.” I know this wisdom sounds like it has its origins in Irish stereotypes. I would love to deny this, but wholeheartedly I can’t. Annette’s husband is Irish.
Over-preparation is the best way (if not the only way) to be able to overcome anything that may go haywire during your presentation. Murphy’s Law states that what can go wrong will go wrong. Murphy’s Law of Public Speaking states that what can go wrong will be ten times worse and go viral. Make sure you have your notes with you and that you’re familiar with the concepts. Make sure you have additional copies of your presentation. A great piece of advice is to make sure you’re already familiar with the stage and the setup. Try to get on stage before you present. Go during the day, or earlier in the evening, just to stand up there when no one’s around and get comfortable with that particular venue.
Video- or audio-record and review every performance. You will be surprised just how much your time on stage can fly by and how little your mind will remember of the experience. We do this to pick up on items we can improve and make sure we catch any bits that worked well. It feels really awkward at first, as most people hate the sound of their own voice. “We hate it because it is so foreign,” says Dr. William Cullinan, dean of the College of Health Sciences at Marquette University in Wisconsin.29 When you hear your own voice you are not hearing it as others do, due to the internal bones and conduits it must pass through to make it to your ears. This is why all of a sudden it seems alien.
Jordan Gaines, a neuroscience grad student at Penn State College of Medicine and a science writer, explains in an NBC News article, “It’s kind of the same way we like what we see in the mirror, but not what we see in photographs.”30 Many of us will have spent time in front of that very mirror getting ready for a big night out. Happy that we look good and are ready to roll, we leave the house for a great night, and it is great—until the photos get posted on social media the next day. “How did they get one of me that makes me look so ugly?” you think. “It looks nothing like what I saw beforehand in the mirror.”
Earlier this year, I was working on writing jokes for a very famous and talented international public figure and speaker. I was amazed to find out he had never once reviewed his own talks. Like the rest of us, he was uncomfortable listening to his own voice and watching himself on screen, but once he tried it a few times, it became habit and his talks quickly got much better and funnier. By recording and reviewing his speaking, he could quickly see the areas he could improve on, and distinguish what jokes were working from those that were not.
“He was uncomfortable listening to his own voice and watching himself on screen, but once he tried it a few times, it became habit and his talks quickly got much better and funnier. By recording and reviewing his speaking, he could quickly see the areas he could improve on, and distinguish what jokes were working from those that were not.”
Based on just my gut feeling, I thought my first three times on stage went pretty well. I thought I carried myself well, projected a fairly steady confidence, and moved fluidly from joke to joke. It was only when I looked back to the video that I noticed I was waving the microphone like I was trying to draw on my face, nervously pacing around the stage like a drunken madman, and getting more groans than laughs. It was pretty terrible. However, I did make one joke that got a small laugh. I reworked this bit to fit it into the joke structure, and I still use it (in its improved form) today. It’s the same basic short story, but the small laugh is now a huge laugh rippling through a large audience.
Then there is the big fear: going blank on stage. Standing in front of an audience with no memory of what you’re supposed to say is anxiety-inducing for even seasoned pros. The way to avoid this is to use a memory-recollection technique called the memory palace. Originally introduced in ancient Greek and Roman treatises, the memory palace premise is to create a place or a series of places in your mind where you can store information that you need to remember. In basic terms, it’s a form of memory enhancement that uses visualization to organize and recall information.
Joshua Foer went on a year-long quest to improve his memory under the tutelage of top “mental athletes.” Joshua began the year with a memory just like everybody else’s. He finished that year as the 2006 USA Memory Champion.31 In the book about his experiences, Moonwalking with Einstein, he explains:
How we perceive the world and how we act in it are products of how and what we remember . . . No lasting joke, invention, insight, or work of art was ever produced by an external memory . . . Our ability to find humor in the world, to make connections between previously unconnected notions, to create new ideas, to share in a common culture: All these essentially human acts depend on memory.
One of the most useful and widely used mnemonic or memory aids Joshua learned to utilize is the memory palace, and he is not alone. Many memory contest champions claimed to use this technique in order to recall faces, digits, and listed words. These champions’ successes have little to do with brain structure or intelligence, but more to do with the technique of using regions of their brain for specific learning. Or, in our case, remembering our material and avoiding the dreaded stage blank.
I was introduced to the power of the memory palace by San Francisco–based comedian Richard Sarvate. By night a very funny man, by day a more formal computer programmer at Yahoo!, he applies the same logic and rigor from his corporate office to his nightly adventures in comedy. When creating an image to put in your memory palace, he says, “It is useful to have the image interact with the environment. For my sushi joke I picture a sushi chef. If I put him in the elevator in the lobby of my apartment, I picture him mashing the buttons on the elevator in frustration. Now that he is interacting with the environment, it’s a lot easier to visualize and recall. It’s useful to make the image bizarre in order to make it more memorable. For my Mexican Indian joke I picture Krishna wearing a sombrero. A ridiculous image, which is almost tougher to forget.”
The techniques Richard cites date back to sometime between 86 and 82 B.C. with the first Latin rhetoric textbook, Rhetorica ad Herennium, often referred to as the bible of mental athletes. The ad Herennium, Joshua outlines in his book, “advises readers at length about creating images for one’s own memory palace: the funnier, lewder, and more bizarre, the better.” We have known to use humor to be more memorable since before the Roman Empire, yet somewhere along the way, we forgot how. I guess someone in the Dark Ages forgot to picture Julius Caesar in his funny sheet toga.
How to craft your memory palace.
1. Decide on a blueprint for your palace. A memory palace can be a purely imagined place, but it’s often easier to base it upon a place that exists in the real world, one that you are familiar with. The house you grew up in, the apartment you’re currently living in, and your office are all great examples.
2. Define a route through this palace. It’s essential that you follow a specific route in a specific order through your palace so you’ll log items in the order you want to speak about them.
3. Identify specific storage locations in your palace and along your route. This will give you defined places to store your information.
4. Memorize the memory palace. The best way to do this is by drawing out a blueprint so you can visualize it brought to life on paper, then create a memory in your mind.
5. Place things to be remembered in your palace. For example, if part of your presentation consists of talking about Ireland or a particular Irish guy you met (like me), do your best to create this person in as much detail as you can. This essentially burns an image in your mind that makes it easy to recall that element. The more humorous and absurd the better.
6. Explore your palace and see everything you have created. Visualize everything you have created and commit it to memory. Take a few moments to do this. These essentially become your practice run-throughs, in which you walk through the house and, along the way, encounter all the different memory points or key item topics for your presentation that you want to remember. If you go blank at any moment, stop and picture where you are in your memory palace.
For me, this is the lower floor of my house, with a path that takes in each room: I enter from the main door (the start of my talk), past key topic areas in each room, on the sofas, on the chairs, at the table, and then exit through the door (the conclusion of my talk). Using this technique, I have never gone blank on stage.
“Comedy and public speaking are a combination of what you say and how you say it. To say it best, you need to practice. Don’t just turn up on the day and expect it to go well. Practice makes all the difference.”
Remember, comedy and public speaking are a combination of what you say and how you say it. To say it best, you need to practice. Don’t just turn up on the day and expect it to go well. Practice makes all the difference. And don’t worry if the thought of going to an open mic or testing your material speaking in public scares you. There are plenty of ways to deal with stage fright.
Avoid stage fright.
Public speaking is generally listed as one of people’s biggest fears. Stage fright is so common, it’s easy to conjure up the image of what it looks like whether you have experienced it for yourself or not: a furiously pounding heart, shaking hands, sweaty palms, and all other manner of anxious, terrible, why-am-I-shivering nervousness. As I said earlier, it was my biggest fear. I thought it was a bad thing when I encountered all these involuntary reactions before speaking to an audience, but the more I looked into the psychology and science behind it, and the more I spoke to other comedians, performers, and presenters, the more I began to realize that this was perfectly normal.
This is my body’s way of telling me that it is ready. The thought of negative consequences triggers glands to secrete the hormone ACTH. This hormone results in the release of adrenaline into your blood, and that’s what causes these uncomfortable feelings. This is essentially your body’s most alert and heightened state. It means you’re ready. You want to focus on embracing this feeling. When you feel it, be happy. It means your body is in its peak condition to face a challenging or worrying situation.
Never seek to suppress this heightened state. One or two drinks or other substances before you publicly speak are never a good idea (a six-pack of Corona is even worse). Even one or two drinks can greatly suppress your body’s reaction times and override a lot of these mechanisms designed to make us alert and perform better. Imagine you were a nervous racing car driver about to compete in a championship final decider. Naturally, you would feel very nervous. A shot of whiskey may seem like it could temporarily suppress those nerves, but would it be a good idea? Not unless you like crashes.
When faced with stage fright, it’s helpful to remember a tip from the business world—the 5 Ps: Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance. When it comes time to take the stage, trust your training. You have put in the work and you are ready. Chances are, it’s going to go really well. Close your eyes and try and hear your own heart beat before you go on stage. Breathe and relax. Stretching is also a great and widely used technique. Stretching sends out hormones to trigger a relaxation response in your body. I hate stretching and yoga, to be honest. I am far too ADD. The one time you will find me doing it, however, is just before I walk on stage. It makes a huge difference!
Steve Martin knew all too well how many things could go wrong in a single performance: “Stand-up is seldom performed in ideal circumstances. Comedy’s enemy is distraction, and rarely do comedians get a pristine performing environment. I worried about the sound system, ambient noise, hecklers, drunks, lighting, sudden clangs, latecomers, and loud talkers, not to mention the nagging concern ‘Is this funny?’”
He also knew that his fears could be put to his advantage: “I suppose these worries keep the mind sharp and the senses active. I can remember instantly retiming a punch line to fit around the crash of a dropped glass of wine or raising my voice to cover a patron’s ill-timed sneeze, seemingly microseconds before the interruption happened.”32
For Martin, it was practice and stage time (no matter how excruciating) that made all the difference as he improved his comedic performance. Practice is the key to a strong performance in both the best- and worst-case scenarios. Over-preparation will help you be ready for anything. The knowledge and confidence that you can handle whatever comes your way on stage will assuage some of the fear you might be feeling. All of the practice will be well worth it. With calm nerves, rehearsed delivery, and material you know through and through, you will look better on stage than you could ever hope to without consistent practice. After all, as Steve Martin says, “Persistence is a great substitute for talent.”
Exercise: Hone Your Stories and Build a Set List
Find a space at home or work and tell your stories while recording them. This can be audio or video recorded. Video is better, if possible. Don’t stop to make corrections. This is where you vocalize thoughts and let your mind wander. You’ll be surprised what little additions you tend to make compared to your writing.
A strange thing happens when we are forced to vocalize a story. We tend to feel the need to fill the silence, even with no audience present. In doing so we add a lot of filler words, but also, importantly, many additional details we may not have put in written form. This conscious vocalization can also save you a lot of stage time.
Listen back to see if you made any additions worth keeping and also identify where you can cut words. Note any differences between how you told the story versus how you wrote it back in the exercise from chapter two. Often this can be a great way to refine your words and find extra small details that can make a big difference to your tale.
If your story makes you laugh even a little on listening back, then you have something good to work with. If you love telling a story, it’s likely others will love to listen.
Now rewrite what you like best, following the joke structure outlined earlier.
Take your favorite stories and cut them down to the fewest possible words to compile a five-minute set list. Your set list is simply a list of topics/stories you intend to try out on stage, usually listed by key words. (No need to write out every word. Think more along the lines of a postcard with bullet points.) Work from these bullet points to create your own memory palace. For those of you who intend to try stand-up comedy, five minutes is likely the amount of time you will get initially at an open mic night (three to seven minutes is the range you get as a beginner, with five the most common). Many of you have no intention of ever attending an open mic night or simply don’t have the time, which is completely fine. For you, this set list should be items you practice on real people whether at work or outside it.
As you attend more public speaking events or build up to trying them, your set list should get longer as you continuously add new material that you know works. Typically, a new comedian can produce five to seven strong minutes within the first few months, a professional comedian sixty new minutes a year. Remember, you only need a few strong jokes and not a full five to seven minutes to liven up your presentation. However, the longer your “comedy set” becomes (should you be brave enough and have the time to try it), the more tried and trusted jokes you will have to build into your public speaking/presentations.
Watch Joe Kowan’s TED talk on the subject of stage fright, titled “How I Beat Stage Fright.”