For most of my adult life I’ve run at least dual careers. In one strand of life I work in Rhetoric. I study, teach, and create public communication in all its variations. In my other life strand, I’m a professional standup comic.
I started doing standup when I was 23. Just a few months after I finished my Masters in Rhetoric (at UT-Austin). I was teaching Comm Studies courses at the University of Louisville (mostly public speaking), and there was a new comedy club named The Funny Farm that had just opened a couple of miles from campus. I needed a part-time job, so I actually applied as a door guy there.
I didn’t actually want to be a door guy. I wanted to learn about standup. From the inside. The whole thing seemed almost mystical to me. So many amazing comics did standup -- Pryor, Carlin, Sam Kinnison, Eddie Murphy, Ellen Degeneres, and on and on. You were starting to see standup pop up everywhere.
For some reason, during the interview, my weird brain suddenly popped out with how much I always wanted to do standup. Which triggered Julie, the interviewer, to say, “Really? Cool, let’s go meet Mark, the stage manager. He’ll put you on the list for tomorrow night’s open mic.”
Uh…
Okay, my odd brain said. Sure, why not? I met Mark. He put me on the list. And the next night I found myself walking toward a glowing white light, in a room full of 200 strangers. Which felt really, really weird. But I like experiences that force you into immense learning. So I kept walking, went up some steps, grabbed a microphone and…
Started telling jokes.
And my mind just… exploded.
The thing is, I was already “trained” as a master’s level public communicator before I ever stepped onto a standup stage. I had already taught college courses. I had done academic presentations. I was comfortable doing public talks. I liked public speaking.
But the moment I performed in that club, everything changed. I instantly went from someone with loads of abstract knowledge about talking in public, and with some experience doing public talk inside protected and civilized educational spaces, to someone who was now face-to-face with an actual, live, paying, only somewhat controlled audience of strangers. Sitting out there in the dark. All looking at and listening and reacting to me.
Let’s just say, at that moment, all the abstraction went away. And I suddenly saw public communication in a whole new way.
In this series I’m going to talk about what I’ve learned as a standup that now informs how I do public talks. And the lessons are massive.
I’ve done live comedy in every kind of venue imaginable. From high end comedy clubs designed specifically for standup, to biker bars in Florida where I had to go on stage after the introduction of “Y’all shut the fuck up, we’re going to try out some “comedy” tonight!” I’ve done tiny rooms on beaches (once with only four people in the audience, two couples, so I sat down and did standup at their table with them), and high end 1000-seat theaters. I’ve done corporate comedy, clean comedy, filthy comedy, cruise ship comedy, and even “intellectualized” comedy. All over the world.
And I’ll talk about what I learned -- and how it applies to all forms of modern public speaking, from business to education, to preaching to politics -- in this little series.
So stay tuned.