So you have stage fright? Grow your hair to shoulder length, wear rose colored glasses, keep your eyes shut, and only do one-liners, play on words and non-sequiturs.
RIP Mitch Hedberg.
RIP Mitch Hedberg.
Poll: Could this work?
- Thread starter dfcrackhead
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This could work to help you get a bit of practice in and get feedback, but the fact of the matter is if you want to be a stand-up comedian, you WILL have to eventually get on a stage at amateur night and suffer like a ************. Having your first real stage tryout, as well as your first public bombing where you get booed and feel like you want to crawl into a hole and die are essential steps to making it.
I understand your situation though, I'm a huge fan of stand up comedy and have been thinking for a while about possibly getting into it. I too am fairly shy, I've had some public speaking experience in school during speech competitions and I was always really nervous before them. I remember standing outside waiting for my turn, the number of people ahead of me slowly reducing and getting all the more terrified. Eventually its that time, and I have to walk out in front of a crowd of maybe 100 people staring at me....and then I just get into it and start talking and slowly I calm down a bit and just concentrate on what I'm saying.
Stand up comedy is even harder than giving a speech though as engaging the audience is pretty important, and you have to worry about hecklers.
There was a Kat Williams special I watched that also included some interview segments of him in a limo where he discussed stand up as a career which had some really good advice. He said if you are really serious about it you should treat it as a job, do the best you can with the short amount you are given when starting out and try to increase your laugh per minute ratio every time you perform. Use the audience feedback to trim off the unnecessary parts of your bit, and keep improving it till you start getting allowed more time on stage.
And as another example there have been professional stand up comedians who suffered from stage fright, like the very funny Mitch Hedberg. He worse dark sunglasses and never looked at the crowd and he always seemed somewhat nervous swaying around.
I understand your situation though, I'm a huge fan of stand up comedy and have been thinking for a while about possibly getting into it. I too am fairly shy, I've had some public speaking experience in school during speech competitions and I was always really nervous before them. I remember standing outside waiting for my turn, the number of people ahead of me slowly reducing and getting all the more terrified. Eventually its that time, and I have to walk out in front of a crowd of maybe 100 people staring at me....and then I just get into it and start talking and slowly I calm down a bit and just concentrate on what I'm saying.
Stand up comedy is even harder than giving a speech though as engaging the audience is pretty important, and you have to worry about hecklers.
There was a Kat Williams special I watched that also included some interview segments of him in a limo where he discussed stand up as a career which had some really good advice. He said if you are really serious about it you should treat it as a job, do the best you can with the short amount you are given when starting out and try to increase your laugh per minute ratio every time you perform. Use the audience feedback to trim off the unnecessary parts of your bit, and keep improving it till you start getting allowed more time on stage.
And as another example there have been professional stand up comedians who suffered from stage fright, like the very funny Mitch Hedberg. He worse dark sunglasses and never looked at the crowd and he always seemed somewhat nervous swaying around.
I would say just get on stage at an open mic or something. Preferably after the audience has had a few drinks. Even if you bomb you learn some lessons and find out where your problems lie. Taking a public speaking course wouldn't be a bad idea. Some comedians even take acting courses to improve their skills.
Failing that do your comedy routine in the posture Lemmy from Motorhead uses.
Failing that do your comedy routine in the posture Lemmy from Motorhead uses.
put some of that good stuff on youtube and get the escapist members going.
Pretty soon you'll get a show and they'll HAVE to get you as a site content contributor
Pretty soon you'll get a show and they'll HAVE to get you as a site content contributor
I loved Mitch Hedberg actuallyShockolate said:
I never saw the Kat Williams thing, but I have watched I Am Comic which is a documentary about the stand-up life and they interview a lot of big name comics.Bon_Clay said:
God damn, you made me realize just how poorly written my post was.dfcrackhead said:
Yay edit button.
If you check that post again, you'll see that I already corrected that mistake. I gotta learn to proof-read before I click "post".dfcrackhead said:
It helps avoiding stupid things like people trying to correct me while I've already corrected myself.
Today just isn't my day....
We should go back and edit these posts to get rid of all the grammar talk and make it look like an in-depth, on-topic, discussionShockolate said:
You'd have to be very funny.
The problem is, everything spoken on a stage automatically sounds funnier to the audience than it really is.
You don't have this advantage on the internet.
So, good luck.
The problem is, everything spoken on a stage automatically sounds funnier to the audience than it really is.
You don't have this advantage on the internet.
So, good luck.
