One of the big epiphanies that I had about stand-up comedy when I discovered the secrets of the Killer Stand-up Comedy System for myself was…
What I was doing without thinking much about it in the classroom to make students laugh as a career teacher (20 years U.S. Navy – retired 1999) was actually stand-up comedy — very powerful stand-up comedy at that.
But I didn’t think of it that way at first and the reason I didn’t was because…
All the books I read and workshops I took didn’t present it that way.
When I tried stand-up comedy for the second time in 1992 (after a 10 year hiatus from a single failed attempt 10 years earlier), I was to determined not to flop like I did the first time.
So I got my hands on every book on stand-up comedy possible and studied them until I was blue in the face. Then, I started writing “jokes” they way you were supposed to do. I started “delivering jokes” like I “thought” a comedian should do instead of being myself.
In the process I completely ignored the laughs I could generate in the classroom or examine the process that I used (without realizing it) to get those laughs because…
It wasn’t stand-up comedy — at least not anything like they presented in the books or workshops I took. I wasn’t “writing jokes” to get students to laugh the way the books said.
I didn’t count my teaching time as stage time because the books said I needed time on a stand-up comedy stage performing stand-up comedy “jokes”.
Fortunately, it only took me nine months and almost quitting stand-up comedy again to figure out that…
What I was doing in the classroom to generate laughs from students WAS stand-up comedy and it WAS valuable stage time — stage time as valuable, if not more so than that provided by any comedy club open mic night.
Once I figured that the dynamics and mechanics for generating laughter in the classroom environment was EXACTLY the same as on the stand-up comedy stage…
I developed 100% of my initial stand-up comedy material in the classroom environment — NOT the open mic environment.
Let me say this to every professional trainer, teacher, speaker or educator who has ever thought about being a comedian because they could generate big laughs in the classroom…
DON’T start writing “jokes” or discounting your time in front of education audiences. DON’T start trying to do your impression of what you think a comedian “should” be like on stage.
And here’s the last stand-up comedy tip I will give you…
Audiences are audiences — whether they are in the classroom or in comedy club. The mechanisms to make an audience laugh are EXACTLY the same in ANY presentation environment.
You won’t read that in any popular book on stand-up comedy.
Start studying what you already do to generate laughs in the classroom environment and you will be head and shoulders above those who are trying to “joke write” their way to big laughs on the stand-up comedy stage.
