Repeat Yourself; Repeat Yourself
Writing a joke is just the beginning
The thrill of thinking of a new premise, a new joke, sharing it with your partner or with your comedy buddies, making yourself laugh just imagining telling it on stage, it’s gotta be one of the best feelings. And then you tell the joke, hopefully it hits as hard as you’d hoped. After the show you’re hyped up, and three more premises come to you on the drive home. You look forward to the next mic so you can try them out.
This is what comedy was all about for me the first few years. I was a writing machine, and I mostly worked out at one club, Laughs Unlimited in Old Sacramento. The thrill was in generating new material. If I repeated a joke it was usually because I had a new twist to it, maybe a new tag, or I just viewed it as filler on my way to the new gags I’d brought with me.
A few comic peers told me I should repeat my jokes more, but that isn’t where the fun was for me, and I’d read somewhere that Gilbert Gottfried was known for always having new material and rarely repeating himself. I decided if Gilbert could do it, so could I.
It wasn’t until I co-founded the Coexist Comedy Tour that I started to repeat myself, by necessity. I was a prolific writer, but to write specifically about religion, well, I couldn’t keep the same pace. And as soon as I started regularly repeating my jokes I quickly fell in love with the process of developing material over time. I thought the creative part happened when I sat down to write, but doing a bit night after night, adding tags, tweaking the delivery, moving words around in the jokes, and moving jokes around in my set, finding call-backs, and writing on stage was like sculpting! I loved it.
This was on the road. When I got back to town I was still reluctant to repeat myself at my old workout room, but I needed to; it had become such a part of my process and I loved the effect it had on my set. I quickly discovered, the other comics, and the kinds of fans that regularly go to the same open mic, LIKE to see a joke develop, they enjoy the process, and if people like a joke they really don’t mind hearing it again.
Often times a joke gets better over time and I can’t quite put my finger on what changed, even when I’ve recorded my sets. I just get more comfortable with the bit, I deliver it with a certain imperceivable something, and it goes from doing good to doing great. I love putting out a new special or album, because I get to start over building a new set from scratch, but EVERY TIME, I think of some new tag, or a new way to deliver one (or more) of my bits in the days immediately following committing them to tape. Ah well.
I still get a big smile on my face when I think of a new bit that I’m excited to perform, but I’m also smiling because I know this is just the first step and I can’t wait to see where this one will end up.
Good stuff, just the thing I needed to read. I write like a madman, but was turned off from the open mic scene so quickly after starting because I was bored of the material after saying it once, even if it was well-received. It felt like fraud to repeat a joke. This really helps me imagine how I might find enjoyment in that repeated sculpting process, thanks.