Katherine | September 22, 2009
I’m still making my way through Comic Insights: The Art of Stand-up Comedy by Franklyn Ajaye. It’s one of the most intelligent books I have read on the subject for a very long time.
Ajaye speaks largely from his own experience, then presents his interviews with a diverse range of other stand-ups. This gives readers a [...]
Katherine | September 7, 2009
One of the most crucial aspects of performance is keeping your energy up. I’m not saying that you have to have an upbeat hyper persona, just a powerful presence that galvanises people’s attention. I have seen perfectly good jokes fall flat because the performer’s energy went flat. Here’s a list of things you can do [...]
Katherine | August 29, 2009
Since I discussed stage movement last Friday, I thought this Friday I might lay down some technical details about stages and stage blocking for the beginners.
As a comedian you are going to be potentially facing four types of performance spaces: proscenium theatre, theatre in the round (arena), thrust (platform or open stage), and a space [...]
Katherine | August 22, 2009
I recently had a chance to catch up with some of my TV watching. Top on my list was the 2009 Raw Comedy Finals on the ABC. This is the national competition that uncovers some of Australia’s finest comedy talent. It was an interesting mix of comedians. We had men, women, duos, musical acts, doing [...]
Katherine | July 24, 2009
For standup comedians your most valuable asset is your voice. As such you will need to take good care of it. The last thing you want is for your voice to become hoarse or raspy during a performance, or worse still, lose it all together. Ongoing abuse of your voice can result in vocal cord [...]
Katherine | July 12, 2009
Dressing for success in comedy is a whole different world than dressing for success in any other field. You aren’t dressing to fit in, you’re dressing to stand out. Here are some tips on what a comedian ought to wear.
Persona
We all have a multitude of facets to our personalities and can be five different people [...]
Katherine | June 12, 2009
Today’s exercise has to do with microphone technique. This is crucial. Your audience has to hear you, if they are going to respond to your comedy. Roaming around venues recently I’ve become acutely aware of the variety of microphones with which you might have to cope.
Rule Number One
The first rule of microphone technique is to [...]
Katherine | June 6, 2009
Now that you know something about the inner life and world of your character, it’s time to have some fun. It’s time to play dress-ups!
Before you get started one element of stock-taking needs to be made. Have you created:
A normal character living in a comic world.
A comic character living in a normal world.
A comic character [...]
Katherine | May 29, 2009
I generally like working with a character’s insides first, because then the outer details write themselves once you start focusing on them. However, that does not make the details insignificant. Quite the contrary. Good storytelling is more about showing than telling.
The fact that a character chooses to send pink carnations instead of roses on a [...]
Katherine | May 23, 2009
Eek! It’s Saturday! How did that happen? Probably because I spent part of Friday crying that I was about to lose a customer, money, and a friend all in one fell swoop. Nothing like running your own business to get into these sorts of tangles. I even forgot to clean the kitty litter.
So, let’s buck [...]
