You wanted to yank them off the stage with a cane. It might kill! I used to run lights at a comedy theater in Santa Monica, and I would watch comics do the exact same five minutes to one crowd and kill, then the next night, the same exact five minutes and crickets. That's why people get up and try the same joke again and again. Gilli: Those stinky joke moments beget the best improvised line. When you're storytelling, you've had time to reflect on it: You're both the storyteller and a member of the audience. One way to turn it around is acknowledging that you're in on the joke. The audience already hates you, so it makes matters worse. They try to get a laugh by being really sexual or gross or offensive. A lot of times in improvisation when people panic, they go blue. Kate: With improvisation, you're digging a hole because the second you know that they're not on your side, you try to make them like you. For some reason that's very successful, and I think it's because everybody hates everybody. If your A-material is just sucky, just start asking somebody in the front row about their lives and start making fun of them. "You guys want to hear some period jokes?"Īkilah: Everyone will tell you to do crowd work. I usually just sit at the bottom of that hole and just keep digging. I haven't found a way to turn it around, and if someone has one, I would love to know what it is. Is there a way to turn it around? How do you win an audience back?Īlison: Yeah, because I do a lot of self-deprecating stuff, but I'm always like, "Yeah, but obviously I'm obsessed with myself and think I'm amazing, or else I wouldn't be on stage talking to you." Those jokes are fun but they can be read so wrong. I could feel the audience judging me, and I was like "I'm a good feminist, I swear," but it didn't come across that way. I think I was trying to be sassy, but it didn't land. I recently used the word "bitch" on stage referring to a female character in Star Wars, which is terrible. I don't know how to explain it, but you can sense the cringe-y energy of an audience. Kate: There's a silence that is the audience grimacing. I'm looking at you." That totally works when I am talking to my friends. I'm going to die alone." Just little lines like that, where it's like, "I haven't eaten in six weeks," which everybody is like, "That's obviously a lie. In my regular life, with my friends, I'll be like, "That was fun. They're just like, "Aw, sad lady." That's my nightmare. No one wants to hear about anything bad happening to a dog.Īlison: To me, there's nothing worse than pity from an audience. Gilli: You know the golden rule of movies? You can kill a human nine ways to Sunday, but you cannot kill a dog. Are there any specific no-nos when it comes to comedy? The audience came for one thing and one thing only, and that's to laugh. There are no free passes when it comes to comedy. I was really crushing the rest of the show, and then when I came on that joke, it was a great reminder that, oh, you have to try. It's not that I think my sh*t doesn't stink, I think it smells like something I wouldn't mind eating." That's definitely my first joke that bombed. Gilli: "I'm a really self-confident person. If you've been telling a story for a while and there's no laughter and then the light comes on–oh man, you're not going to win people back at that point. I just sounded sad about being single.Īkilah: When you do stand-up, there'll either be a clock or somebody with a light to tell you that you have a minute left. It was probably me telling it without the confidence that I now have. But two percent of the time–including once, very early on–it just was met with bad groans. It's where I don't eat until someone wants to marry me." Which, 98 percent of the time gets a great response. I just get angry.Īlison: Early on, I had this joke where I said, "Oh, I'm on this wedding diet. It's just dead." You don't boo me! I decided a few years ago that I don't get embarrassed. I stood up and said, "I didn't kill the baby. Once in a scene I said that I was in a support group for people who were victims of infanticide, and the audience booed. Marcy: This is hard because anytime stuff happens on stage that doesn't work, I get to pretend like it didn't happen and move on because it's improv. I just get angry." What's the first joke you ever told that completely bombed? "I decided a few years ago that I don't get embarrassed.
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