We could all use a little laughter right now, am I right? Isn’t laughter supposed to be the best medicine? If I were a doctor, I would prescribe everyone a healthy dose of laughter everyday. If I could, I would go door-to-door and deliver the prescription myself because I LOVE to make people laugh.
I was born with an uncontrollable need to make people laugh. As a child nothing was more satisfying than getting my mom and sister to laugh. Even better if they peed their pants. When I was about eight I grabbed an electric fence just so my cousin could “see my skeleton”. (By the way, the skeleton thing turned out to be a huge myth–so STEP AWAY FROM THE ELECTRICAL FENCE!)
I grew from class clown to “that friend” until I finally decided to take a stab at stand-up comedy. Not knowing where to begin, I decided to take a class entitled “Stand-Up 101” (no joke). This class, through the Laugh Index Theatre, (LIT) in Washington D.C., promised to help me (and six other students) create and perform a five minute set over the course of five weeks.
At the first couple of classes we, the stand-up 101 students, were given writing prompts and simply told to write several paragraphs on each prompt. Below are some examples of comedy writing prompts:
- I really hate…
- I am in love with…
- I am most annoyed by…
- I am so proud that…
- What really terrifies me is…
- I’m embarrassed by…
- I’m obsessed with…
The trick here is to NOT overthink this. Just write! Let whatever your thinking flow out onto the page. We then shared our writing with the class and discussed what we liked about each person’s responses and what, if anything, was funny about our writing. This helped us figure out the core idea that made the story funny.
Next, came the hard part. The next couple of classes we worked on whittling down our stories to the core ideas. Figuring out how much set up each story needed while being as concise as possible. This is really hard but, it forces you to choose your words wisely. Before I knew it, I had turned my stories into my own unique jokes! Now all that was left to do was to string the jokes together into some sort of cohesive flow for a five minute set. Sounds easy? Its NOT!
We tried to get our literal “act together” by the last class so we could perform in front of each other before our big performance at the actual comedy club in Adams Morgan in front of a real audience. The practice session didn’t go so well. I don’t think any of us were happy with our practice sets. I was forced to spend the next several days writing and rewriting and then practice, practice, practice in front of mirrors, my husband, my phone, my husband, my kids, oh and my husband.
Performance night was unreal!! I was sooooo nervous. It was very hard to watch the other acts as I sat there waiting my turn. As I walked up to the microphone I told myself, “just go for it”! Thankfully, the bright lights were in my eyes and I couldn’t see the crowd. I really don’t remember what I said, but I do remember the feeling— exhilarating!
Afterwards my husband exclaimed, “Wow! You were funny!” Like he had never seen my set before, (except for the million times I had practiced it in front of him)! For a fleeting moment I thought he meant that he didn’t have the heart to tell me that he thought I was going to bomb and I almost screamed, “OMG, AND YOU LET ME GO OUT THERE ANYWAY??” But, I was riding too high off of my five minutes of fame to care. (Turns out, my jokes lost their “funny” around the tenth practice session but bright lights, a live audience, and a big dose of fear and panic helped with the delivery.)
You can view my short career as a stand up comic on LIT’s YouTube at: https://youtu.be/Ya6e7QWLNv4. Will I do it again? All I can tell you is the process is sooo hard but also sooo rewarding. I highly recommend trying it at least once! And what a perfect time to work on a comedy set during these trying times when we need laughter the most! If you decide to tickle your funny bone and write a joke a two, please post to social media and tag me. I would love to see it.