Comedyschool now in session

Have you ever had that feeling that your jokes could have been better? Do you ever look at your final comedy product and sense something is missing, or that you could have added something to it but you just don’t know what it could be? Have you ever wondered what the really successful comedians are doing that makes them so successful? Today we explore some of the tricks that comedians use, and how you can use them to improve your comedy.

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1- Becoming a character/parody: This simple concept of a trick is what turned Robin Williams from a local club comedian to a comedy legend. Robin Williams doesn’t portray a character, he becomes that character in a mixture of homage and parody. The best example of that can be in seen here in what I regard to be Robin’s greatest ever performance

Start at 33:00

Here, you don’t just see Robin Williams talking about all of those characters but actually portraying them for you. He creates the greatest setup ever without actually setting it up in words, making everything he says after that a punchline. Remember the video above because it will be brought up a lot throughout this post.

Becoming a character or a parody of one is a free set up. You can do it with a costume or by a change of accent, what you need is total commitment to the part. You have to commit to the character throughout your performance whether by choice of words if you’re writing or by facial and body movement if you’re on stage. Commitment is the greatest factor and it can’t be dialed down to less than 100%. If you’re committed fully to the character, statements that aren’t really funny become hilarious. Go back to the video at 35:43 and you’d see it yourself. If you put what Robin Williams say in simple words it would go as this

“I came to Pompeii last year. I directed 15 movies in Pompeii. I’m very excited about my musical. It’s a lovely musical called “Who’s sorry now?””

His statements on their own aren’t funny. But add a shawl, an accent, and a full body movement commitment and you get a classic comedy gold. The rest of the video are just further elaborations that underlie how you can make comedy by using little to no funny statements.

Finally, what Robin Williams says at times during those videos are definitely clever but he would have gotten the same amount of laughter by saying non-funny statements. The goal of becoming/parodying a character is the expectation for the audience that they’re going to laugh. Now you must have been in that situation where the person standing opposite you is so committed to the joke that you couldn’t help but laugh despite the fact that the joke they’re making isn’t that funny. By committing, you’re simply sending all the signs to your viewers that what you’re saying is funny, preparing them for laughter.

2- Self-deprecating: This one is basically a comedian’s friend. There are two reasons why this is an important trick to use in your comedy. A) Audience are much like all people, they don’t like it when a person talks down to them. By self-deprecating you’re bringing yourself down to the audience’s level (or maybe lower), granting you the ability to be heard. B) By pointing out your insecurities/disadvantages you’re giving your audience the permission to laugh at them with you.

Humans by nature love to point out and laugh at disadvantages but only bullies do it in a way that would hurt the other person. By self-deprecating you accomplish to take out the bully part as well as take control of your situation and turn your disadvantage in life into a huge advantage in comedy. Hence, it’s a comedian’s friend.

3- Recontextualizing: Here’s a word that made @Holybranches hit his head against the wall couple of times as I was explaining it to him. Recontextualizing, or out of context analysis, is basically what Robin Williams did the moment he picked up that shawl from the woman. Visually, the situation is nothing more than a man picking up a woman’s shawl but Robin Williams instead describes a whole new context to the situation. So instead of a man wearing a shawl we get a foreign movie director female from Pompeii. That happens again when he wraps it around his waist and creates a chef. By taking the situation out of context you’re simply creating your own rules as you go on.

Recontextualizing allows you to reach beyond the current given situation and use tools for comedy that wouldn’t be available otherwise. Being a comedian/actor Robin wouldn’t be able to talk about directing movies and musical in Pompeii nor how to cook octopus but by recontextualizing the situation he opened himself to a much bigger space. By creating yourself that space you’d have more material to work with.

A cheap plug uhhmmm… I mean example for this would be my second entry for #comedyopenmic round 9

4- Specific exaggeration: While writing/talking in a comical sense you could make your jokes funnier by avoiding describing in a general sense as well as an accurate one. For an example for this we turn to my favorite late night show host Conan O’Brien and his quest to learn italian

What we see here is that tool of specificity and exaggeration put in play. Instead of Conan simply saying that he can’t speak Italian, he resorts to acting it out to paint a very specific picture of the situation and not just be satisfied with a general one. Conan also resorted to exaggeration with his hand, facial, and body expression. By becoming specific in the gibberish he spoke and exaggerating them, in the process, Conan turned a simple video about an American learning italian into a comedy segment.

Exaggerating things in a specific fashion makes a funny comedy. Just look at any yo’ mama joke and you’d see that the same pattern applies in all of those jokes. So instead of using a general description of a situation, a person resorts to specific exaggerations as their way of making everything funny.

5- Doubling down: doubling down in comedy terms is basically following your last punchline with a new one until your audience laughs. Think of all those times where you and your friends started poking fun at one of your own. The set up remains the same and each one adds their punchline using the previous person’s punchline as their own set up.

Look at both videos provided up there and you’d see doubling down in effect, Robin Williams didn’t stop at “I came to Pompeii” But actually carried on with more lines, “I came to Pompeii” became a setup for “I made 15 movies in Pompeii” so on and so forth.

Simply put: If your joke is doing so well, why stop there?

And while there are still many more things to learn, this will be it for today. If you’re looking to learn more please check out my previous two #comedyschool posts for the basics and the process of writing a joke

Also check out @walkingkeyes for more lessons, here’s his latest one

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