LEARNING ARE FUN: COMEDY 101
101 Things you need to know if you have never, ever, ever been to a comedy club or seen a live comedy act ever! You’ll be surprized who reads this section… you may learn something! Before even thinking of a joke, you need to build up your comic vocabulary.
Here are a couple of terms you’ll hear often.
Open Mic
Pronounced open ‘Mike’, it’s effectively a clubs way of introducing new acts. They may have an ‘Open Mic’ evening or allow the new acts to come on and do a strict 5-7 minutes. Sometimes established acts use the Open Mic platform to test out ‘new’ material. It’s the best way to get your career started.
To kill:
To do really well. The audience loves you.
To bomb:
To do really badly. This is where there is a danger of tomato peltage.
Dying:
The process of bombing.
Set:
Your collection of jokes. A noun. (E.g., “I just memorised my set.”)
Setup:
The explanation part of a joke. It’s the part of the joke that you’re not supposed to laugh at. The exposition of a situation or story.
Punch line:
The funny part of a joke. What you’re supposed to laugh at.
Heckler:
Someone in the audience who talks and interrupts a comedian in an insulting way, in attempt to make the comedian bomb.
Blue:
When a comic is “blue,” it means that he/she is using dirty language and/or talking about sexual (or otherwise adult) situations in an explicit way.
Now that you can talk the talk, follow our advice and you’ll be on your way to killing audiences with your stand-up routine in no time. Either that or you’ll be pelted with rotten tomatoes. Let’s hope it’s the former.
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