My favorite place to perform is Philadelphia, because that's where i started and that's the place that made me.
Related posts tagged 'Performing'
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Related posts tagged 'Performing'
I’ve learned that if I foul it up, if I pause wrong or stumble over a word, the joke doesn’t go as good, and sometimes it doesn’t even go at all. It’s so much about timing. If there’s a three-second gap and I don’t say the next joke, I can lose the whole thing.
It really is a lesson I realized early on: You better know what you’re gonna say and say it the right way. Even if I wasn’t doing one-liners, even if it more traditional, telling stories, I’d still have to say it in the exact right way. It’s just how my brain works. I’m lucky all of this just meshed, you know? I didn’t decide to talk like this or sound like this. The surreal jokes and the voice just worked together. It was all by acci...
I’m really used to being onstage now. Next year will be 40 years. But being onstage, it’s not normal. It’s not a normal place. Because everyone is watching you, it’s all heightened. Everything that goes good goes great and everything that goes wrong goes horrible. So that has changed over the years. I’m not as nervous. But I still feel the tension of it.
I purposely do something on air that I haven't planned to get me out of my head. It's like tricking your brain. It makes me feel like I screwed up so I can except that I screwed up and relax.
I’ve definitely seen some crazy shit. I saw this one show where a guy goes up and somehow picks himself up in a plastic garbage bag. It was so upsetting. I’ve also seen a guy in L.A. jump up and land on thumbtacks. Someone from Chicago, Ian Abramson, did sort of break the mold of a stand-up comic—he found himself performing on Conan, and he did his bit where he wears a shock collar.
I think just reminding myself to quit thinking that there’s some kind of perfect show to capture; to remind myself constantly that it is comedy and mistakes are funny. Anything that is too perfect—it kind of becomes too sterile and then it does not feel genuine. If it doesn’t feel genuine then there’s no possible way people are going to feel they saw you.
There's improv, but we write a bunch of stuff in advance, too. So have a library of jokes in your head, and on paper too, and you can pull some out when you need 'em.
Definitely. I kind of hate when I hear a performer who says they "never get nervous." I just don't believe that.
It’s a weird balance of listening to yourself, so you can kind of be driving the car, but also listening to the audience so you can also see the road. Whenever I have a bad set it’s usually because I’m not doing one of those things at all. I’m either not paying attention to the crowd or I was over-confident with what I was going to do. Whenever there’s a night where I’m dialed in and I have the most fun, it’s usually because I’m right fifty-fifty on listening to the crowd and myself.
It always was and it still is. … For most standups, you have to be in the moment because anything can happen in the room. … Your job as the comedian is to let everyone know that everything’s gonna be OK. The most extreme example is like if someone had a heart attack — which has happened to me and other people that I know. It’s crazy. But you’re the one on stage, you have lights pointed at you, and you have a microphone, and you have to say OK, 'Well, we’re going to deal with this and everything’s going to be fine.'
The thing that I love about Scott is that he is not an agent of chaos, but he is an agent of mischief. He loves to paint other people into a corner. And it’s fun, it’s really fun. You know, there are times when it’s frustrating because you might have a thing that you wanted to do but now because you did screw up a word or something, he jumps on that — but, you know, everyone is in agreement. ... It’s entirely up to the improviser, to the guest, to say, 'You know what, yes, I am going to go along with this idea, this very challenging idea that he has pushed me into, because it’ll be fun to try to get out of it. It’ll be fun to try to make sense of this.'
And, ultimately, that’s one of the th...
i would say do it. i would say be brave. you only lose by not trying, you dont lose if you dont achieve fame or glory.
The more you can do the better. Always write your own stuff. Most people aren't interested in writing for you. Beeleedat.
When I talk about my cancer on stage, doing standup, it is a cathartic experience. And it is important to be honest and talk about things that matter, even dark and scary things. The special that we shot about my cancer helped a lot of people. Early detection is the key to survival. So if you ever feel sick, or that something may be wrong with your body. Go to the doctor, don't be afraid. It could save your life.
One thing I learned from The Office is that the line between funny and dramatic is paper-thin (no pun intended) and often non-existent. If you ground a performance in truth, it can be both as funny and as dramatic as can be. I think no one embodied that lesson better than Steve Carell.
I do get nervous. And that's not a bad thing. What I try to do (and this sounds very cheesy, but it's helpful) is to acknowledge my fear, and then it doesn't dominate me.
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