Creative Heart Coaching

How to Become a Comedian, Part 6: Listen to You

Don't forget to check out the earlier posts on becoming a comedian. They're good.

We're getting into some juicy stuff here.  I'm holding your hand.  You're not alone.  I'm not leaving you.  You can feel safe and secure in my comedy kangaroo pouch here, and you're protected and I'll be your marsupial comedy mama and all that.  You're going to do great.  You just have to follow my instructions, or you'll die.  Just kidding.  Follow them or...  don't.

ACTION: So now that you've got the loosey goosey thing down with your material flowing, it's time to listen to that bad boy.  Play back your audio and again pick out the good stuff.  What made you laugh when you listened to it?  Write anything down that seems like good material.  Make notes about inflection.  Make notes about where you want to expand.  And then sit with your material and do some expository writing.  We're using all the different parts of the brain to generate material, so sometimes you'll sit and type, and other times you'll hang out with friends.  Other times you'll wake up and remember a joke you were telling on stage in a dream.  Usually those aren't as funny in real life.  I once dreamt I was telling jokes about teddy bears.  Upon waking, they were not so hilarious.  Sigh.

More on joke writing tomorrow! 

If you're ready to move forward in your comedy or solo performance career, and feel called to work with me, you can book a free consultation here:

Alicia

 

Divulging the Material that Will Create Your Solo Show

Writing the story of your life (or any other made up story for that matter), and then performing it for others, can be a difficult task.  A one man show or one woman show however depends on your ability to reveal the nitty gritty of your story in a way that is fascinating and entertaining, as well as perceptive and often humorous as well.

In writing my solo show last year, there were a lot of obstacles.  I wanted to tell a story, but I didn't really know what the story was.  I knew I had traveled to India.  I knew how I felt before.  I knew how I felt after.  But when people would ask me what I learned or gained from the trip, it was difficult to really put it into words.  There were also a lot of personal changes that I went through in the past couple of years that related to my trip to India.  I broke up with the man I was seeing during that time, and it became imperative to include my relationship in the telling of the story.  Only I didn't quite realize that it was over with him!  And in order to tell the story about how India changed me, I had to live it.  Art was imitating life which was imitating art.  

What stories are you living out, and are you able to step back and see them?  It can be difficult to see things that are in our blindspots, and even more difficult to speak them, let alone to speak them to the public.  These "secrets", these things we know but don't tell even ourselves, these pieces of ourselves we hide from daylight, they are the juiciest, most delicious parts of your story.  They are what make people come to the theatre.  They are what move us to laugh and cry when watching someone on stage who we don't know or care about, who suddenly becomes an inspiration.  It could be information about a violation, a betrayal, a secret fantasy, a longing, an indiscretion...  How deep can you go?  And will it benefit you to go there?  Will it benefit your audience as well?

To access these parts of you, try an exercise: take several deep breaths deep into your belly.  Sit with your back straight and your feet on the floor.  Let your eyes close and your breath return to normal. Ask your conscious mind to relax, and begin to allow the subconscious mind to speak.  Information may come in phrases, pictures, or sounds.  Focus now on the story at hand.  Ask your subconscious to un-conceal whatever it is that would be most helpful for you to know in order to tell this particular story.  Sometimes it can help to trick yourself a little in order to hear the answer..   You can tell yourself that you don't have to stick with the answer--that you only have to hear it once and can forget it if it's too much, which it could be.  Know that your subconscious will only allow itself to divulge information which you can currently handle.  When you're ready, take another few deep breaths, sense your body, come back to the room, and then write for at least five minutes about what you discovered.

If you're looking for more support in developing your one person show, consider solo show coaching with me.  I work via Skype with actors, writers, and standup comedians across the country.

Alicia Dattner
Comedian & Creativity Coach

So You Want to Write a One Person Show, Part 7 of 7

So to recap, Part 1 of "So You Want to Write a One Person Show", I spoke about discovering the Central Moment on which your show pivots.

Part 2 of "So You Want to Write a One Person Show" we looked at the moments that lead up to the Central Moment of your revelation in your solo show.  We explored possible turning points and after effects of the Central Moment, and we looked at possible through lines, the threads that sew your stories together into one cohesive piece.

Part 3, Write write write. We threw out all we "knew" and explored all possible avenues.  This is where the rubber meets the road--we took creative risks and pushed past our normal habits and ideas about who we are and what we can create.

Part 4, Take a break, play, and contact your muses. We contacted our "muses"--that something greater that guides us and shows its genius.

Part 5, Bringing it all together, editing, refining through performance.  "The difference between a standup show and a solo show is that in standup, the character knows exactly what they're talking about and exactly what they think.  And they're going to tell you.  In a solo show, the character doesn't know.  They're looking for something, they want something, and they're figuring it all out with you, on this ride, together.  The hero has a conflict."

Part 6, Kill Your Darlings.  Take some steps back, acknowledge and let go of your darlings.  What is really in your work because it stands on its own, and what is there that needs explaining?What is in this piece that sheds light on some aspect of humanity never before spoken, and what is trite or cliche?  The joy will come, not in hearing the accolades, but in being an instrument for something truly, humanly brilliant that touches people's hearts and raises the stakes in living their lives fully.

Part 7, Owning Your Story.  

It's time to own it.  Ask yourself, what did you learn?  About yourself?  About the world?  Who are you today?  Is nothing ever the same again?  Is everything actually the same as it's always been?  Are you ok with that?  Why or why not?  

It takes a lot of chutzpah to create a solo show and tell your deepest, most personal shtuff in front of complete strangers.  Let alone people you know.  What drives you?  Is it a compulsion to over-disclose?  Are you telling to much in order to push people away?  Out of a hope that if they really knew you, they'd stop liking you?  Cause it won't work.  The more we know about you, the more we like you.  

I've always loved the phrase, "Your attributes make you likable, but it's your flaws that make you lovable."  After it takes guts to tell your story in your big one person show, it takes brains.  Brains to work out the truth of your story, seeing it from your vantage point.  It's easy for us to look at a dis-sheveled, homeless person and see their life story.  But so much more is there than we can see.  Alternatively, it's easy for us to look at our lives and see the inside version of the story.  To actually see ourselves simultaneously from the inside out and the outside in, that takes real skill, objectivity, perceptivity, and honesty.  Of course it's going to remain subjective in many ways because it's us telling what happened with ourselves.  

So but there's an incredible amount of work that goes into being able to actually see and tell the story, and there's one final trap to avoid once we've got our script all worked out and our scenes all staged and blocked (you did do that part, right?)  Once we've got our aunt Lil's voice down pat and our sister Jessie's squeal just right.  The trap is that we can get so "clear" about the story that we forget to actually own it.  To come to a place where we re-live it anew (without re-traumatizing ourselves... and this is a whole topic for discussion) and then we come to learn something about ourselves, to experience a transformation, on stage, in public.  

The trap is that we can forget to actually be present for it.  The deep deep work we've done on the way is challenging and rocky, and that time on stage is the sweet reward.  It's the gift we receive and it's also the gift we give to the audience.  It's the gift of us arriving at this moment through telling the story of how we arrived at this moment.  It's grace.  It's power.  It's peace.  Own it.  And let it go.  

These are the qualities you may be experiencing and needing to convey to the audience as you reach the climax or conclusion of your story.  And notice how the actual story in some way begins to dissolve as these qualities emerge.  It's similar to a photo coming more and more into focus and then as the focus gets so sharp it is suddenly so close or so far away that the image dissolves into nothingness an all that's left is a sense of Violet or Cyan or Indigo that forms a kind of sunset we all watch together.  A kind of quietness, like, "Well, that happened."

So, what are you waiting for?  Go get 'em, Tiger! And check out an interview with solo performer and comedian Joe Klocek here.

If you're ready to move forward in your comedy or solo performance career, and feel called to work with me, you can book a free consultation here:

Alicia

So You Want to Write a One Person Show, Part 6 of 7

So to recap, Part 1 of "So You Want to Write a One Person Show", I spoke about discovering the Central Moment on which your show pivots.

Part 2 of "So You Want to Write a One Person Show" we looked at the moments that lead up to the Central Moment of your revelation in your solo show.  We explored possible turning points and after effects of the Central Moment, and we looked at possible through lines, the threads that sew your stories together into one cohesive piece.

Part 3, Write write write. We threw out all we "knew" and explored all possible avenues.  This is where the rubber meets the road--we took creative risks and pushed past our normal habits and ideas about who we are and what we can create.

Part 4, Take a break, play, and contact your muses. We contacted our "muses"--that something greater that guides us and shows its genius.

Part 5, Bringing it all together, editing, refining through performance.  "The difference between a standup show and a solo show is that in standup, the character knows exactly what they're talking about and exactly what they think.  And they're going to tell you.  In a solo show, the character doesn't know.  They're looking for something, they want something, and they're figuring it all out with you, on this ride, together.  The hero has a conflict."

Part 6, Kill Your Darlings.  

You may have heard this quote before and not fully understood what it meant, so let me elaborate.   It was Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch who spoke it first, “Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it – whole-heartedly – and delete it before sending your manuscripts to press. Murder your darlings.” 

My senior film thesis in college was a mockumentary about standup comedy.  I made a feature length film (video) in which I starred as a struggling comedian, struggling with whether she wanted to be a famous comedian or just date one.  It was a lot of fun to make, and earned a high grade in a school where we didn't technically even have grades.  And it was good work.  But years later, I got re-acquainted with an assistant who helped shoot the movie.  He handed me a DVD of my film, recut.  He recut my film.  From 75 minutes to 40.  And you know what?  It was better.

It was a totally different movie and missed a lot of the points I was making, but there were about 30 minutes of purely self-indulgent material that I had no ability to recognize as indulgent at the time.  In fact, if I were to re-cut the film again, I'd make it about 25 minutes long.  There is a fantastic scene (which I am not in) that I directed two friends to improvise about chicken soup and sex, and it is probably the best 10 minutes of the whole film.  By killing 65 of my "darling" minutes, there is an incredible piece that would be wonderful to watch.  And it took 10 years to be able to see that truth.

So take some steps back, acknowledge and let go of your darlings.  What is really in your work because it stands on its own, and what is there that needs explaining?  What is in your work because it makes only you satisfied, and what is truly satisfying to people in general?  What is in this piece that sheds light on some aspect of humanity never before spoken, and what is trite or cliche?  What is in your piece that's part of some inside joke and what is a universal joke?  

What's there that you can make a secret jab and someone you're mad at, and what's there to speak truth to power?  What's there to secretly impress someone you're in love with and seem clever or brilliant, and what's there that was truly channeled through genius?  What's there that distracts people from what you really want to say, and what's there to artfully hide what you want to say so they'll come upon it in surprise?  It's time to be ruthlessly honest with yourself, step aside, and allow your muses to speak through you.  And when it goes well, let them take the credit, too.  The joy will come, not in hearing the accolades, but in being an instrument for something truly, humanly brilliant that touches people's hearts and raises the stakes in living their lives fully.

Read more here: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Seven of "So You Want to Write a One Person Show?"

If you're ready to move forward in your comedy or solo performance career, and feel called to work with me, you can book a free consultation here:

Alicia