So you want to step into the comedy spotlight? Here are a few tips, tricks, and hints to get the crowd laughing right along with you.
Tip 1: Check out the audience. Ask the emcee what your crowd is all about. Where are they from? Are they mostly college students, or mostly baby boomers and retirees? Should you really do that joke about Yankee Stadium to a room full of international exchange students? Tailor your routine to suit your crowd.
Tip 2: Keep your material fresh. Young comics usually have one or two standard joke routines, and if things aren’t going the way they should under the lights, having no backup jokes can really turn a performance sour. If your audience isn’t yukking it up, make sure that your comedy set has some alternate punchlines and some detour jokes to get things back on track.
Tip 3: Stick with what works. Getting tired of telling the same jokes over and over? Every comic needs new material, or his or her act will get stale, but if that one joke about your grandma at the zoo keeps 'em coming night after night, stick with it. Practice the joke, refine your approach, make it the best it can be. Who knows? Maybe, like George Carlin’s “7 Things You Can’t Say on Television,” your trademark schtick could make you an iconic stand-up comedian (or comedienne).
Tip 4: Study the greats. Let’s face it: everyone will know if you rip off Mitch Hedburg’s trademark one-liners, but if you study his style and use it to make your set better, you’re learning from the best -- not stealing from them.
Tip 5: Work your audience. Got a heckler in the back row? Call them out and ask them some questions, or make some jokes at their expense. Not everyone in every audience will love you, but if the laughs are still rolling, you know it’s you = 1, heckler = 0.
Tip 6: Read the funnies. Watching comedy legends or hanging around nightclubs is a great way to get a hands-on comedy education (and some great original material), but reading the work of funny writers can give you some hints about how great jokes are constructed and delivered.
Tip 7: Own your act. The minute you you hit the stage, your audience will begin gauging how good you are as a comedian. Make sure that you bring every ounce of attitude you can muster to the mic, and own your confidence and the unique style that’s gotten you the gig in the first place. Bring your best from the first joke to the last.
Got a funny bone? How about a favorite joke? Do you yearn for the yuks, live for the laughs? If you’re a comedian (or comedienne) at heart, Ithaca College offers not one, but two creative outlets for your comic talent.
IC Stand Up and IC Comedy Club focus on different parts of the schtick spectrum, but their members are all hard at work bringing the hilarity to Ithaca College.
What is the difference between the two clubs? “The idea behind IC Stand Up is to really focus on the art of stand-up comedy -- the delivery, the stage presence, and the formation of jokes,” says graduate student Aaron Arm ’09, the club’s president.
IC Comedy Club copresident Michael Garrison ’10 says that while the club does some stand-up, “it also performs short-form improv games, like what you’d see on Whose Line Is It Anyway? Also, this semester we’re starting to focus more on sketch comedy similar to Saturday Night Live.”The College even has a built-in venue to promote its funnymen (and women) -- the IC Square stage in the Campus Center, a hub for student activity at IC.
Watch TV-R major Dave Reynolds '11 win the 2008 Stand-Up Comedy Competition. Warning: Dave uses some profanity.
“IC Stand Up likes to hold performances in IC Square because students are already eating there. It’s like a sneak attack of comedy for people who didn’t come to see us,” Arm says.
IC Square plays host to both clubs several times a year. In addition to stand-up, IC Comedy Club does sketch performances open to all students on campus. Both clubs host several shows each semester, and IC Comedy Club also does a sketch show at the end of the academic year. “We haven’t decided on the theme, but last year’s was ‘how to be an American,’" Garrison says.
A relaxed Jon Hirschberg '10 takes the stage.
Whether on stage or in meetings, hilarity reigns supreme in this community. “Some of the best routines I’ve seen are at our meetings,” says Arm of IC Stand Up. “At one meeting, a student performed an improvised set of non sequiturs for five minutes with a podium over his head.”
Garrison and Arm agree that clubs are a nice item for the résumé. “Performing stand-up is like public speaking to the tenth degree,” Arm says. “Not only do you have to stand in front of an audience but you also have to make people laugh.”
“When you can feel comfortable coming up with jokes and telling them to people who may or may not laugh, that’s really good,” Garrison points out.
“I think that good humor is reliant on good perspective and intelligence,” Arm says and dryly adds, “I believe we also have dental.”
Influences for Ithaca College’s comedians range from comics Louis C.K. to Jim Gaffigan to Brian Posehn. But if you really want to get a taste of the humor scene on campus, Arm says, look no further than the late comedian Mitch Hedberg. “He saw the world in a way that few people will ever see it. I wish I could see the humor in everything the way he did,” says Arm.
Do you want to test your funny bone on campus? There’s one catch -- both clubs require students to audition. But don’t worry, says Garrison. “We know that performing is totally nerve-racking, so we understand that people get shy and nervous about it.”
“I believe that most comedy people are social misfits in some way,” says John Ungaro ’10, copresident of IC Comedy Club. “If you can get people laughing, you’re in the center of it all instead of being in the back of the room.”
He adds, “I was so nervous about stand-up, but I finally did it. I ended up really liking it.”
New comedians should just give it a shot, Garrison advises. “I think people would be surprised about how funny they are.”
So test your comic skill at Ithaca College. The stage is waiting.
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Fuse is a student produced publication about the Ithaca College experience. All content in the print and web versions of Fuse is developed by current Ithaca College students in a breadth of different areas of study.
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