The following is an interview of writer and stand-up comic Shaun Eli. I met Shaun at a networking event about a year ago. Shaun’s regular mailings are consistently clever and funny, and I thought his insights on public speaking and the use of humor would be of value to my readers as well as myself. Please read on for some interesting insights and techniques on winning your audience over completely, handling hecklers and making them laugh with ease.
What got you interested in stand-up comedy?
I’ve always enjoyed watching comedy and I realized the funny ideas I had were similar to what other people were doing on stage, so I figured I could do it. It just took me a long time before I worked up the courage to try it. Okay, it was because of a girl.
How many years or how much experience do you have with performing onstage? Is your background primarily comedy, or only that?
I’ve been writing jokes professionally for around 15 years, and started performing 6 years ago. Before that I had no performance experience. At around 2 years into performing, a pro comic referred to someone as a “new comic” and when I asked what that meant he said, “Less than 5 years experience.” At the time I thought that was a lot of experience, but now I realize it’s not so much.
Have you ever experienced stage fright? If so, how did you get over it?
Yes, tons. The ‘secret,’ if there is one to comedy, is the same as for anything else: practice. Comics say the only thing that gets you better is stage time, stage time, stage time. Getting on stage a thousand times makes a big difference. Eventually you realize that there’s not much difference, or ought not to be much difference, between being on stage and talking to three people at a dinner table. Reading a couple of books on performance skills didn’t hurt. But the key is to go do it.
For talking in front of a large group, one trick is to look at one person in the audience and just talk to that person for two or three sentences, then look at someone else for the next few… your brain will make you feel and seem more conversational if you view it as ‘a person’ instead of ‘an audience.’
How to you prepare for your stand-up routines?
There are two different parts to preparation. One is material and the other is performance. For writing, I write everything down and usually it sits in my computer for quite a while before I try it on stage, partly because I have so much material that I’m not in a rush for new stuff, and partly because I want something to rest while I think of more punchlines. I shoot for 3-4 laughs a minute, at a minimum, and usually a 2-3 minute story won’t have that on the first draft. But the more times I look over something, and the more times I tell it, the funnier it gets.
Preparation for going on stage consists of deciding what I want to open with, and from there it may vary based on the audience. If they seem to like something I’ll stay with it, but sometimes something someone says, or how someone reacts, leads me in a different direction. Eventually comics move through the emcee part of our career, where we spend a lot of time doing what’s known as ‘crowd work’– talking to the audience, getting to know them as part of the warm-up for a show. After that, there’s no fear in asking the audience questions during my performance and simply seeing what happens from there. For the last couple of years I’ve been hosting shows for patients and their families at Sloan-Kettering. I realized– if you can get comfortable talking to cancer patients from the stage, there’s nothing to fear in any audience.
One thing I love, and audiences do too, is to open with something that refers to something another comic said or something that happened at the show. That way the audience knows it’s fresh, not something rehearsed, and that always gets a better laugh.
What is a safe way for a speaker to be funny?
The key to comedy, according to experts, is vulnerability. If you open yourself up to the audience you will endear yourself to them. So, if you want to tell a funny story at the start of your speech, it will usually work much better if it’s at least a little self-deprecating. It’s said that every joke has a victim… if you’re the victim of your joke nobody can complain about that. If it’s about anybody else you run the risk of being thought of as a bully.
Have you ever had a heckler in your audience? If so, how do you respond to them and stay in control of your time onstage?
It happens from time to time, though it’s rarer than most people think and it’s not welcome behavior. I’m lucky– I think that being a clean comic, and dressing somewhat nicely, cuts down on hecklers.
The general rule is to ignore them the first time, deal with them politely the second time in a way that lets them know to stop, and if they still don’t shut up, you have to blast them. But first you have to get the audience on your side.
One issue is that if they’re sitting up front and they say something rude most of the audience doesn’t hear it. So if you go off on them the audience just sees you being mean. One tactic is just to look right at them and repeat back exactly what they said, but very slowly. This usually makes them look pretty dumb.
Sometimes they don’t realize it’s not a two-way conversation, and one way to deal with that is to ask their name, talk to them for thirty seconds, then remind them that you have the rest of the audience to talk to as well. Then walk to the other side of the stage and talk away from them for a minute. Most of the time they’re just inapropriate. They’re not trying to be jerks or interfere.
Reader’s Digest called comedian Shaun Eli one of the smartest comics in the country. He is the host and producer of Ivy Standup(sm). He was a frequent contributor to the opening monologue of “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno, who has cited one of Shaun’s jokes as an example of the type of “smart comedy” which he’s happy to include in his opening monologue. You can find Shaun’s jokes, stand-up video, comedic essays and biography on his web site www.BrainChampagne.com, where his slogan “Brain Champagne: Clever Comedy for Smart Minds(sm)” rings true.
To receive a free article by Shaun on how to tell a joke; please go to http://www.brainchampagne.com/HowtoTellaJoke.html.
Related posts:
