There are two fundamentally different ways to be funny on stage: humor that grows naturally from the magical situation and pre-written jokes inserted into the show. After years of trial and error, I discovered that organic humor always lands better -- and understanding why changed everything about how I approach comedy in performance.
Read MoreMost people think they understand joke structure -- setup, punch, laugh. But the real engine of comedy is something hidden between those two parts: the assumption the audience makes without realizing it. Greg Dean's framework for joke construction gave me the tools to understand why my funny moments worked and why my written jokes often did not.
Read MoreMy pre-written jokes felt forced. The genuine reactions to unexpected moments felt real. The shift from memorized comedy to situational humor was one of the hardest transitions in my performing life -- and one of the most important. This is the story of how I learned to set up situations where comedy could emerge naturally.
Read MoreMost performers step on their own laughs by talking too soon. The discipline of waiting -- of letting the laugh build, peak, and only then continuing -- is one of the hardest skills in performance. I learned this the painful way: by watching recordings of myself talking over my own best moments.
Read MoreAt the center of every joke is something Greg Dean calls the Connector -- one element that can be interpreted in at least two ways. When I understood this concept, I realized that magic works on exactly the same principle. Comedy and astonishment share the same structural DNA, and the Connector is the key to both.
Read MoreScott Alexander watched Dennis Miller perform in Vegas for a full week and discovered that every 'spontaneous' moment was scripted. That lesson changed how I prepare for the unpredictable moments in my own performances.
Read MoreI learned the hard way that getting a laugh at someone's expense does not just hurt the volunteer -- it poisons the entire room's relationship with you. Judy Carter's principle of humor with compassion changed how I think about comedy in performance.
Read MoreMonths after a corporate event, a volunteer I had mildly teased found a way to tell me it still stung. That encounter, combined with David Devant's century-old principle of 'all done with kindness,' permanently changed my approach to audience interaction.
Read MoreSome performers build entire careers on edgy, ascerbic humor aimed at their volunteers -- and their audiences love them for it. The secret is not what they say. It is how they handle people physically, the character they establish from moment one, and the line they never cross.
Read MoreScott Alexander calls it 'finding your Fig Newton' -- a recurring element that ties your show together and creates inside jokes with the audience. The comedy power of callbacks goes far beyond structure. They turn a room full of strangers into a club.
Read MoreHow Mac King plants comedic elements early in his show that pay off brilliantly later. The psychology of callbacks, the pleasure of pattern recognition, and what studying King's technique through video taught me about the architecture of laughter.
Read MoreThe practical craft of constructing callbacks for magic and keynote performances. Plant, reminder, payoff structure. The three-mention rule. A step-by-step process for building callbacks into your set that make a collection of pieces feel like a unified show.
Read MoreThe silence after a joke that dies. The panic that follows. Recovery techniques that actually work: acknowledge it, move on fast, have a saver line ready. My worst bombing moment, what I learned from it, and why Ralphie May was right that you learn more from bombing than from killing.
Read MoreJudy Carter started as a magician, then became one of the most influential comedy coaches in the world. Her Ten Commandments of Comedy and the Seinfeld Strategy offer a framework for developing humor that resonates deeply with anyone who came to performance from another field.
Read MoreThe capstone of the humor section. An honest reckoning with the difficulty of developing comedy as an adult learner. Why humor is harder than sleight of hand, harder than mentalism, harder than scripting -- and why the vulnerability it demands is exactly what makes it worth pursuing.
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