Comedy: The Serious Business of Dive Bars, Dreams, and Ramen Noodles

photo by Phil Provencio

Comedy is a funny business, but not in the obvious way.  More in the down and dirty, back of dive bars, land of the misfits way.  Some days it makes perfect sense that I will sit, write and tweak and rewrite a joke, spend an hour getting ready, another 45 minutes in the subway, pay $5 for five minutes of stage time to work on material in a room full of comics who are, understandably, more interested in their own jokes than in mine...  But comics do it.  Over and over and over - sometimes multiple mics a night, just to work a bit until it's right.  Open Mics are a part of life for most comics.  Some call it practice, some call it a necessary evil, some call it a depressing soul-sucking experience that must be endured to work on your craft.  Regardless, it has to be done.  Comedy isn't born in a vacuum.  Most regular people (sane people?) have no idea the hours a comedian puts in - working their material time and time again... measuring every word, every pause, until it lands just right.  Then somehow manage to deliver it repeatedly in a way that feels unrehearsed and off the cuff.

Now that is not to say that everything is rehearsed and planned and scripted -- it's certainly not.  A great comic is able to ad lib, improv, work the room, and use the energy of the audience to guide and fuel their set.  But, there is a map...  specific jokes may be destinations on the map, whereas the roads a comic takes to get there may be different on any given night.  A comic's set is a fluid, evolving collection of work...  I mean, imagine doing a show, and the comic immediately before you has very similar subject matter and / or a similar bit.  Or say you get to a show and realize this audience of, ahem, decidedly mature comedy lovers may not relate to your chunk on dating apps and emerging technology...  better be ready to change gears and re-order your set - at a moment's notice.  

I recently had a private gig for a charitable organization.  I did some research into the group on my own, but wasn't given a lot of information from them.  The gig was in New Jersey, which is an important thing to note.  While Jersey is geographically close to NYC, it's not always... um, temperamentally / philosophically / politically, close? I had just come off several strong shows, and felt like I had my set pretty well in hand.  On the way, to the gig, it's hitting me that the venue is a (very nice) community / seniors center.  RUH ROH.  I begin to wonder if the audience is going to be... of a "certain age?" Maybe they won't respond to some of my tech references, or that porn joke (don't worry, it's actually clean)?  I re-think, re-order, re-write my set.  We get to the venue.  The crowd is as diverse in age and background as a comic could want!  It's BYOB, and as soon as I saw someone had brought a "wine wagon," I knew they were ready to laugh.  Welp.  You guessed it.  Back to the original set.  

In between these booked gigs, with real audiences and sometimes even - *gasp* PAY... we soldier on, trudging to mics regardless of weather, maybe skipping a meal here and there to save money for another mic.  Working our jokes in a room full of people who are both our contemporaries and our competition. Sometimes witnessing genius, often times witnessing a train wreck.  Oddly, this can be simultaneously entertaining and depressing.  If you are lucky, you make some friends along the way.  In a business that can be isolating - by the very nature of it, and sometimes by choice - it is good to forge relationships with the only people that understand the strange business of comedy.  Networking in a room full of people who are at once full of confidence and insecurity, who are full of life on stage and just as awkward off of it.

There is no magic formula to becoming a comic, certainly not to becoming a successful one - no degree path, no map.  It's trial and error, hard work, perseverance, talent, luck, showing up, timing, a little magic fairy dust...  and each person has a different amount of each of these in their pocket.  Two people could do the exact same thing every day - maybe one makes it, maybe neither one makes it - but we all keep going (at least until we are tired of ramen noodles).

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