In response to my last blog entry, I received a nice note from George Carlin's daughter, Kelli.

"I believe that it was his ability and willingness to evolve that kept him personally passionate and professionally relevant. Good luck with your next incarnation!! "

Keeping in line with George Carlin's pursuit of his own voice, whether you're just starting out doing stand-up, or you're an old pro with new material, all comics need to find a place to get stage time. As you work out your material in front of the audience, you will find where the laughs are and where they aren't. Even if you are performing for a small audience, you will learn something each time, adding to your arsenal of stand-up techniques.

I've included Ben Rosenfeld's informative blog in this week's newsletter where he explains the different types of shows where beginners can get stage time. Enjoy.
- Judy Carter

Reprinted with Permission.

The Comedy Business: Types of Shows for Beginners
18 December 2008 | By Ben in About

People are always curious how a comedian gets onto any given show, especially a newer comedian. The three main types of ways for getting on stage as a new comedian are:

Bringer shows
What is it: Each comedian has to bring X number of people (between 2 and 15 at most places) who are willing to pay a cover charge, order at least 2 drinks and listen to a lot of different comedians, a good amount of whom are not that funny. There are usually a couple of professionals in this kind of show to ensure that the audience gets at least some laughs.

Pros: You get a real live audience, and since part of the audience knows you, they’re more likely to laugh at your jokes, which may help the people who don’t know you to start laughing as well, that whole laughter is contagious thing.

Cons: You run out of people to invite to shows really quick, the audience can be too supportive to the point that you don’t learn what’s truly funny, and you end up stressing about all your people showing up instead of concentrating on your act.

Barking for a Spot
What is it: You stand outside of the club, usually on a busy foot traffic corner, trying to stop people, hand out fliers and convince them to come watch stand up. You usually stand outside or “bark” for 1-3 hours in exchange for 5-10 minutes of stage time.

Pros: You don’t have to stress about bringing people, most clubs will pay a couple of bucks for each person you successfully convince to come to the show, the audience doesn’t know you so the laughter is genuine, and you learn cold calling skills, which can be useful at winning over a tough crowd (and lots of other situations).

Cons: You have to stand outside for 2-3 hours, you get rejected 99% of the time (although learning not to take rejection personally is good), and if the club has more than one show that night, you’re outside the entire time except for when you perform, so you can’t learn from / listen to other comedians.

Open Mic:
What is it: You pay $5 for five minutes of stage time. Some places say you just need to buy a drink instead, and most cities outside of New York / LA / Chicago don’t charge you money to get on stage. Actual stage time ranges from 3 minutes to 8 minutes depending on club.)

Pros: Anyone can get stage time and if you plan it out, you can do 2-3 mics a night (in NYC at least).

Cons: Anyone can get stage time. You know those guys that weren’t funny at the bringer show? Well they’re better than many of the people at the open mics (this varies from city to city though). Also, in NYC the only people that come to watch open mics are other comedians, who are not very helpful when you’re trying to learn what a real audience will find funny.

http://www.bigbencomedy.com/blog/archives/types-of-shows-for-beginners/

I'm reading George Carlin's autobiography, "Last Words: The Memoir." All aspiring and professional comics should read this book, which documents his evolution in finding his “authentic voice."

Carlin began his career by performing as a team with Jack Burns, then left to go solo on a journey to develop his own material. He and his wife traveled all across the US (including the Midwest), with Carlin performing night after night, with no money and no home. At many of the nightclubs, he bombed. Yet, the more he scrambled to please conservative audiences, the more he became displeased with himself.

Carlin decided to find an outlet where he felt he could perform for like-minded people. He found that in the Greenwich Village coffee club scene. The year was 1962. Lenny Bruce was getting arrested on a regular basis for performing “obscene” material. Yet, Carlin found the freedom to develop his characters (like the Hippy, Dippy Weatherman), as well as tell edgier jokes about race, religion, and politics. He found a place where he belonged.

For comics, it’s always a difficult path trying to balance the discovery of our "authentic voice" while trying to please fickle audiences. In my 20+ years of doing standup, I've gone through many transformations. I started out as a "goofy" magician able to play any audience with my TV-friendly act. Then came the feminist movement of the 1970's where my magic tricks got edgier, such as my "Escape From My Grandmother's Girdle." Then I let go of my props and began performing stand-up at political events. Then came the gay movement, where I developed and performed my "Womb With A View" show in Provincetown, MA, coming out of the closet in the process. The challenge became to find my place. That’s when I started teaching, in order to create a place where everyone could be themselves without feeling judged. I formed Comedy Workshops where all ideas are welcome.

For the past ten years I've done a complete “180” performing at corporations, steering my material away from controversial topics, attempting to find the thread that unites us all. And yet, inspired by Carlin's memoir, I see that "the times, they are a changin” again. And now, the teacher must rediscover her own voice, becoming a student as I look for a place where I belong. Perhaps at this point, the audience isn’t the one judging my material, it’s me.

Join me at the Hudson Theater in Hollywood, this Sunday from 12-3pm for a free stand-up comedy class. Sign up here.

As the Goddess of Comedy, I feel obliged to share my advice about New Year's resolutions...don't make any!

Here's why:

This year I'm going to...

1. Lose weight! This is stupid because 90% of diets end in failure. You have more of a chance of seeing Paris Hilton win a Nobel Peace Prize than keeping weight off. Plus, intense dieting ruins metabolisms. After so much dieting - now I have to jog 14 miles to work off a tic-tac I ate in 1999.
2. Exercise more! Have you ever wondered how gyms can sell thousands of new memberships every year and they never get crowded? Because people join and don't go. Take my advice - just walk to the gym and then walk back. It's cheaper and you don't have to listen to someone breaking wind while they're doing sit-ups.
   
3. Find my soul mate and live happily ever after! Unrealistic fairy tales such as "someday my prince will come" create unrealistic expectations. And next thing you know, you're smashing your soul mate's car window in with a golf club. Instead of someday my prince will come, try hoping for - someday the person I can tolerate will come.
   
4. Be more organized. Didn't you do that last year? Or perhaps you lost that list...
5. Be a better person. Unless you're a lying, cheating, scumbag, perhaps, you are fine the way you are. What if we could all enjoy life on January 1st just the way we are - fat, broke, and surrounded by idiots?
   
   

In LA? Join Judy's free stand-up class on Sunday, Jan. 10th noon to 3pm. Details here.

Working Blue and Getting Cheap Laughs or Staying True To Your Voice and Getting a Career…

So, Aadip, my assistant here at comedyworkshops.com did well at our graduating showcase at the Hollywood Improv and got his first booking at a non-paying gig in the Main Room at the prestigious Comedy Store, here in LA.

He got laughs, but noticed that the crowd really responded to “dick” jokes from other comics, while some of the smarter, more emotionally true humor of his and several other Comedy Workshops comics got a less enthusiastic response.

Welcome to the rough world of working the clubs. I remember feeling the same way one night at a club in Philadelphia where I had to follow a comic whose entire act was about how good he was at oral sex. “I mean, I could tell what a girl had for dinner, I’m just that good.” Seeing how many laughs he got, I threw away my planned set and I did my own raunchy set.

Following me was a new young comic by the name of Jerry Seinfeld.
Jerry did his observational material that he is so famous for now. He didn’t get any laughs for at least five minutes. After hearing an evening of sex jokes, “What’s up with lint?” wasn’t at all interesting to the audience. But, Jerry didn’t change his material and went from his routine about “lint,” to “What’s up with putting two socks into the dryer and only one comes out?” First a few people started to laugh and eventually he got the entire audience in the palm of his hand. He got -- not only their laughs, but their respect.

Blue material might get a laughs, but committing to your comedy vision might just get you a career.

Just ask Jerry.

Labels: comedy workshops, Judy Carter, stand-up advice

“Comedian Sunda Croonquist has been getting big laughs making ethnic stereotype jokes about her mother-in-law, but it’s no laughing matter as her mother-in-law is suing her for character defamation.” – People Magazine

Oh come on! This reeks of self-promotion. The number of views on Sunda’s YouTube page were in single digits until this story broke. Suddenly, she’s been on "Larry King," "The Today Show" and all over "People" Magazine. I think this whole thing was planned as a PR stunt and how nice of her mother-in-law to go along with it.

This bogus suit will probably be thrown out, and it’s a good thing as if we comics didn’t have families, we wouldn’t have material. In fact, here are some great zingers from some of our recent workshop comics, as they performed them at the Hollywood Improv:

"I grew up with a distant father... He lived all the way over on the couch."
- Kevan C. Peterson

“While my parents were busy looking for themselves, they couldn't seem to find their way home, but they would send postcards from the corner bar.”
- Tavia Smalley

“John Elway's son quit football and Michael Jordan's son looks like the missing member of Fat Albert's gang. It must be hard being the son of a superstar...glad I'm my dad's son. No expectations to live up to there.”
-Dawan Owens

Writing a good joke about someone is a form of flattery. In fact, most of my students families are disappointed when they aren’t personally mentioned in their showcase.

If by slim chance that law suit is real, I would like to make an offer to Sunda's mother-in-law: I will write you an act with your daughter-in-law as the butt of your jokes. Let’s face it, having the last laugh is the best revenge.

My fellow speakers are going to kill me, but I am going to do a workshop this September that will reveal the secrets to a successful career as a corporate speaker.

It started in 1991 when I revamped my stand-up act by adding a motivational message as well as poignancy. Suddenly, after playing comedy clubs and staying in cockroach invested "Comedy Condos," I had my first speaking gig. Now, I was staying at the Four Seasons, flying first class, and making as much money in one hour as it would have taken me in three weeks of working the clubs. Sweet!

I then learned exactly how to market myself exclusively to the corporate market. The results? In 2008 I had over 50 speaking gigs, 2 of which included travel gigs in China and Berlin. One of my best gigs was for an insurance company where I got to spend a magnificent week on the 5 star Regency Cruise Line. They flew me and my spouse first class to Ft. Lauderdale where we boarded the ship and had our own personal butler, a balcony, a marble bathtub and shower. I was told “Order anything you want anytime of the day or night.” Just for fun, at 3am we ordered Baked Alaska, just to see what would happen. It came. And it was delicious. I scuba dove in Mexico, zip lined in Honduras, and on the last day, I did my hour long speech. OK, maybe I had to spend the week with insurance agents, but not too shabby of a downside.

It was on this trip that I truly realized the disparity between comics and speakers. There were two comics who had been hired by The Regency Line to do their set three times a week in the night club after dinner. I kept trying to find them, and when I finally did we sat and had a drink together.

“I’ve been looking for you guys…”
”Well, they told us not to mingle with the guests,” he revealed.
“Well, isn’t it great being on a ship, and sitting on your balcony at night?!”
“We don’t have a balcony. Our rooms are in the bottom of the ship with sealed 8 inch portholes.”
“Well, it’s gotta be cool having such a lucrative gig on a boat!”
“Not so much… we make $1500/week and have to work three nights a week.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell them that besides my vacation, I got paid $25,000 for my one, hour long speech.

This was shocking to me, as one of the comics on the ship had just done Letterman and had more television exposure than I’d ever had. But the perceived value of being a "speaker" was more than the value of "being funny," even though that is mostly what I do when I speak.

I'm going to be doing a one-day workshop to show comics how they can make the transition to this lucrative field of corporate comedy. Come join us on Saturday, September 26th, 10am - 4:00pm, in Los Angeles! Click here for more information.

In the 1980's, I was listening to an interview with Jane Fonda who at the time was a major movie star, wrote a memoir, developed a line of clothes as well as ran her business, "Jane Fonda Workout." In this interview she referred to herself as "Lazy."

I get it. Successful people don't generally have high self esteem. So if you think you are a total slacker, stupid, and untalented, you probably have what it takes to be successful in comedy.

Although I have successfully written three books, as well as have enough material to fill a 2-hour comedy concert, in writing my new book, or any time I try something new, I feel like a total failure.

My first drafts are fifth-grader level. I'm such a bad speller that even MS spell-checker can't figure out what I am trying to say. I procrastinate as well, and seem to look for ideas in the refrigerator. There are none there unless you consider wilted spinach a premise.

I realized something today while complaining to Jamie, our Workshop Coordinator, how horribly my writing was going this week. Then it dawned on me: Worrying, fretting, and self flagellation are actually a productive part of my creative process. Looking back, I realized that every successful thing I’ve done has been preceded by months, and even years, of anguish and self chastisement.

Psychologists did a study on self-esteem and their results were surprising. The people who tested for "high self esteem" were mostly criminals in prison. They just felt they deserved your TV. The surprise of the study was that the people who tested low on the self esteem totem pole were the very people who created the test – the psychologists.

What does this mean? It means that low self esteem is good, because if you think you're a worthless piece of shit, then you try to do good things to prove otherwise. I bet that Mother Theresa's father said to her, "Theresa, you, you you! That's all you think about! You are the most selfish little girl around." And thus, we wouldn't have saints if we didn't have critical parents. And we probably wouldn’t have comics if it weren’t for low self esteem.

So, start writing about your feelings of worthlessness and as you write, perhaps they can transform into material that is worthwhile.