Why Non-Comedians Should Try Stand-up

I have discussed the importance of stand-up comedy for aspiring comedians, as well as the appeal that the practice has for such hopeful humorists. However, I strongly believe that stand-up comedy can be an extremely useful activity even for those without ambitions of achieving fame in comedy. Approximately one year ago, I performed stand-up comedy in the basement of Calhoun College at around 1:00am on a Monday night for The Cucumber, a stand-up show hosted every other Monday by the Yale Daily News. The decision was largely spurred by a bet with a friend of mine, however, I am enormously grateful for the experience.

Much has been written about performing stand-up comedy for the first time--a significant amount of which I read in preparation for my comedic debut--but the process must be experienced personally in order to fully understand the practice. I had read that first time stand-up comedy was one of top 10 most adrenaline filled experiences, listed alongside base-jumping off the Perrine Bridge in Idaho and taking a parkour class in Melbourne, Australia (See Whole List Here). Incredulous of this description, I ultimately found it accurate. Although I have never completed the other activities on that list, I found that waiting nervously for the performers ahead of me to complete their acts was comparable to the anxiety just before the most serious and least prepared test I have ever taken, magnified times ten. While terrifying at the time, I now consider this practice rewarding because I was able to endure the most intense performance anxiety of my life and now feel more prepared for other daunting presentations as a result.

In addition, I learned much about myself from the experience. For example, when nervously performing in front of a crowd, I tend to pace, a custom that was pointed out by a friend in the audience. Also, my rate of speech accelerates, making my nervousness more obvious to the crowd. By taking a presentation scenario and pushing the situation nearly to its most intense and anxiety inducing form, I was able to understand how I react in these circumstances, and subsequently learn from the experience.

Video of a young Seth Rogen, age 13, performing stand-up. He has undoubtedly improved his talents since.

I believe that my time thus far at Yale has taught me most significantly the importance of social skills. I come from a particularly quantitative background and have continued my enthusiasm for the sciences at Yale. I consider the sciences to be invaluable in so much of our lives because of their foundation in concrete facts and data. However, I have also understood a substantial problem in scientists who have difficulty expressing their studies and conclusions in a public forum because of their lack of engaging social abilities. Without making this discussion political, I find that the debate surrounding climate change to excellently personify this issue. While nearly all scientific academics agree that humans are affecting the global climate, just over 50% of Americans believe the same issue to be true (2010 Study Here). Politicians have managed to convince Americans to the contrary of scientific evidence and I consider much of this to be a failure in the ability of scientists to effectively voice their opinions on a large public scale, although obviously the issue is much larger. While I do not consider stand-up comedy to be the solution to these social weaknesses, I believe that even a single attempt at stand-up can help individuals make wondrous improvements in their presentation skills and sometimes I wish that my scientific compatriots would try their hand at stand-up regardless of their interest in comedy--assuming they at least possess a sense of humor.

Time and time again, I have found social skills and presentation abilities crucial in allowing individuals to take advantage of opportunities and achieve personal success. Job interviews, thesis defenses, and even colloquial discussion and debate depend upon the ability to present oneself effectively. Few activities have so shockingly improved my presenting aptitude as stand-up comedy and although convincing myself to perform in the first place was arguably the most challenging hurdle of all, the rewards are undeniable and incredibly fulfilling.

Do Famous Comedians Hate Stand-Up?

To me, stand-up comedy represents possibly the purest form of comedy. The comedian personally delivers his unfiltered, unadulterated joke, directly to a live audience who then provides their unfiltered response in cheers, boos, or anywhere in between. The comedian is alone on stage with no one to play off of and there are no redo's if a joke is accepted poorly, the comedian can only hope to recover. In this way, I find stand-up comedy to be one of the best representatives of a comedian's ability to be humorous because there are no handicaps, no one to hold you by the hand and walk you through the process. That is exactly why the lack of prevalence of stand-up comedy performed by famous comedians has often surprised me.

Stand-up thrives in small, cramped New York City basements with dozens of attendees huddled around a small, claustrophobic stage. Stand-up also makes infrequent appearances on the Comedy Central television network however, these occasional examples are far outweighed by Comedy Central's presentations of shows like South Park, Futurama, or The Daily Show. Furthermore, while popular comedians almost always make their beginnings in stand-up comedy, why do they constantly turn their backs on the practice once they achieve fame? The television show I can recall having most embraced stand-up comedy is Seinfeld and even so, the show only provided a minute or two of stand-up at the beginning and end of every episode. While late night television hosts begin their programs with a few minutes of monologue, I still find this representation of stand-up performed by popular comedians to be significantly out of proportion with the presence that I feel stand-up comedy has on the comedy industry as a whole.

Without stand-up the discovery of up-and-coming comedians would be far more difficult, so why do famous comedians appear to abhor the practice. Rather than viewing such comedians as Adam Sandler exclusively on the silver screen, I would prefer to enjoy occasional stand-up shows in venues like Carnegie Hall. I'm sure there are some reasons why comedians prefer to make feature films rather than continuing their stand-up careers for example comedians do not have to write the scripts for the movies they star in, and standing in front of a camera that can re-record any flawed scene is clearly less stressful that standing live in front of hundreds or thousands of people. However, I still very much enjoy stand-up comedy and believe that many others do as well. Therefore, I believe that the demand is present, and I wonder how significant the incentives would need to be in order for the supply to meet that demand. Perhaps this is in fact the major problem, it is possible that the profitability of a major motion picture with a global presence far exceeds the profitability of a live performance in a limited capacity hall. Maybe the incentives will never be present because of this incredible disparity in profitability, however something else gives me hope that perhaps my dreams of stand-up comedy featuring some of today's most famous comedians is not out of reach.

A video of Adam Sandler's early stand-up in the 80's.

A few years ago, I first saw the movie Funny People, a film about comedy, made by comedians. The movie starred Adam Sandler--who I mentioned as an example earlier--a famous comedian who found had been diagnosed with fatal cancer. Sandler's character decided to put large scale movie productions aside and return to stand-up comedy. This leads me to believe that there is a sentimentality that comedians associate with stand-up possibly as a means of remembering their beginnings. I find this film particularly encouraging because it was created by a group of filmmakers who themselves started in stand-up comedy and therefore hopefully provide a perspective representative of the comedy industry as a whole . So hopefully, as some of the more famous comedians age, they will return to their roots and return to the stage.