You might have noticed that reality TV has taken over the television airwaves. Why? Perhaps, with so much of our lives spent socializing with "virtual" friends, there is a longing for substance. People want their entertainment real – meaning no actors pretending to be real people, no scripts, and certainly no stand-up comics faking that their five-year old premises that are still pissing them off.

The call is now for totally authentic comedy. Sacha Baron Cohen has captured this "realness" in his films, where the people in it don’t even realize that they are in a comedy. So, how do we comics capture this authenticity?

In our last showcase at The Hollywood Improv, first time performer Tavia Smalley based her entire act on being in the moment and about her fear of doing stand-up. As she didn't have any carved jokes, I didn't know how her set would go over with the audience. So how did it play? She killed, as the audience at the Improv fell totally in love with her realness on stage. She wasted no time being completely honest:

"Any shy people out there? Can you imagine being up here? Neither can I." Click here to see more of her act.

The days of "Hack" topics such as Depends ads, self-flushing toilets, airports, and car nose picking are long gone. What has replaced them is finding the humor in the real stuff that doesn’t readily seem funny.

Many times, the more serious a topic and the more difficult it is to find humor in it, the better it is. I'm currently coaching a motivational speaker who is working on finding "the funny" in her story about her family disinheriting her.

As for myself, I’m being challenged by writing about my dark childhood. I seem only to be able to write at 5am as that's before my inner critic wakes up to stop me from revealing things I’ve repressed for too many years.

Getting it out on paper is the chore and finding the humor is the challenge.

Stay tuned.

Labels: real authentic comedy stand-up Judy Carter