How to do standup in 3 days

I've spent the last week building a stand up set.

Yes you read that right. After years and years of being sort of anti-standup (thank you 1990's for that legacy), I was cast in a role that encouraged it. In fact, it required it. The Comedy Roast of Scrooge was a skewering of Charles Dickens' famous miser, administered by most of the major characters from A Christmas Carol. Then Scrooge does his roast of everyone, including the audience. Hilarious in idea, but the actual process was such an intense prep with only 3 rehearsals, and as many days to write a set for the first time.

How to write a standup set in 3 days

Subtitle: You probably can't, but it's possible in 5

Day1
I came in thinking "oh I can do this" with the addendum "by opening". Thankfully, I didn't have anything to do on Day2, because the feedback at the first rehearsal was "you have work to do, by opening" since I had nothing yet written. By midnight, I had my first draft: wordy, over explained, low payoff on the joke: not a great combination, but at least a start.

Day2
I starting writing from the moment I got up. I got to the point that I was trying out jokes on Rob every time we communicated during the day. He was not impressed. The rest of the day was culling and refining. I finished my set just in time to get to rehearsal and find out that it was a boring 13 mins, and it needed to get down to a hilarious 7.

Day3
I took the morning off, but started back on it just after lunch. I spent nearly 5 hours culling, rewriting, using a thesaurus for word choice, cutting, recutting. I got the set down to a good series of laughs at 9 mins, but at rehearsal it was still too wordy. And it was clear the tact I had taken was too soft, it needed to be quicker, shorter, more for the throat. I felt angry, hurt, betrayed, scared. I went to bed telling Bob Cratchit jokes and trying to figure out how to grill Jacob Marley one little bit harder.

Dayoftheshow, y'all
I woke up telling jokes, everything had a punch line. That continued while in the line at Starbucks for a eye-opener. I called Rob to confess my fear of failure, and it continued there. I fired up my old laptop determined to start over, cutting out nearly every original joke I had and ending with 7 jokes on a really blank page, almost all about Tiny Tim. I sat down and wrote every new joke I could. I added at least 25 new jokes, only to cut more than half. Then I did that again. Now I had an interesting set, but it needed order. I flew through and sorted them out to a solid two page set. But there were still a few clunkers that I held on to for prides sake.

At performance, I pulled it off with a lot of charm but it was still slow and too long.

Refinement
Ok so this is now Day5 for those that are counting. Maybe you can do it faster, given that Day1 was largely wasted. All my previous days experiences made this day a blast and made it easy as pie. Firstly, I had a performance with an audience under my belt, so I knew which jokes didn't work. If I couldn't get the joke out quickly -- if I stumbled too much on the delivery or if I couldn't deliver on the punchline, it was marked for cutting. Here are my suggestions:

1. Focus on the goal to give your audience a great time.
2. Nothing is sacred, don't hold on to anything.
3. Be a mercenary about editing the setup. The goal is to get it down to the fewest number of words to get the punchline.
4. Be kind to yourself: start with a goal of two mins of solid jokes. Then build up. Don't try the other way, like I did; it only caused more work in culling.

Letting go of the rope

A number of years ago, in a crowded bar some friends of mine were talking about letting go of a rope. I had no idea what they meant, and so inquired. They said they were talking about becoming a professional artist, how much it was like hang gliding. They described a boat towing the glider in the sky, and then you release the rope and fly on your own. They said that as long as the boat was towing you, you could never experience the exhilaration of flying.

As they described this, I broke out in a sweat. It's a thrilling, apt and terrible analogy - all at once. And so began my descent into denial.

• You don't have to be a professional to be an artist. (very true)
• Professional artists have to sell out. (compromising is part of any business)
• The skills that are necessary to be an actor are the opposite of what's needed to become a professional. (and that my friends is why the support industries started)

I said all those things and about 10 more years worth of arguments against. And then five years ago, I accidentally fell into the professional world slightly again. What ensued was nothing short of self-sabotage, if I'm being honest. I started getting some notice, hooked up with an agent who said, "We can do this". I followed that with moving out of town and breaking the entire structure of my life: left my cheap apartment, centrally located; put everything in storage; cashed out my 401(k) and moved into my parents spare room.

Sure it was a cop out. But I'm going to state here and now that I think that was a necessary journey for me. I needed to do that to decide for myself where I was going, and also to rebuild the structure so that it was secure. Now I have an amazing boyfriend and home life, solid friendships, a killer agency repping me.

How do these two stories fit together? They don't. It's a mixed metaphor at best. I've tried writing this post for almost three months and each time it gets worse. So -- honestly -- the only tie together is that they both are about going professional and about my life right now...

Oh also, I'm letting go of the rope.

The magic healing powers of the cookie bar

Putzing about in the kitchen is really relaxing!

Ack what a week! Rush rush rush and it was filled with seemingly endless deadlines and prep. Then to top it off, last night on the way to dinner, my boyfriend Rob got some bad news. His mood was down and he was upset for the rest of the night. So I woke up this morning and decided, "I know how to help him out..." and frankly help myself too. I headed to the kitchen to blow off some steam and to relax with some baking. Cookie bars could do the trick...Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookie bars, to be exact. I love the salty-sweet flavor, and nothing is more comforting than that creamy, melty chocolate while they're still warm. BUT...and it's a big one...Rob is allergic to tree nuts, so the nut addition in the recipe was out. I heard of some folks adding bacon to the recipe and I thought that might be a great replacement to the crunch and richness of the nuts. Luckily I had some chilled bacon grease handy and I saved a few slices of bacon from breakfast  to add to the batter.

A few of the ingredients needed to change
the trajectory of the weekend.

Follow the recipe here to make these delicious cookie bars. To make the bacon version, I suggest replacing 2 Tbsp of the softened butter with 2 Tbsp of chilled bacon grease. Bacon grease is soft generally even when chilled in the fridge; just don't use liquid bacon grease as it won't mix the same way. Replace the nuts with the same amount of real cooked bacon bits. To do this, simply cook the slices as you normally would (I prefer to cook them in the oven on a cooling rack on top of a jelly roll pan at 400 degrees), then dice them into small bits with a sharp knife.


 Baking something for someone else really has a two-fold effect, and we both felt better from this small gift. Now I have a happier boyfriend, and my weekend is saved. And dang, these cookie bars are good! The salty meatiness of the bacon mixes well with the chocolate, and the chewiness of the meat is a nice surprise.

Throwing it Back

I ran into my old agent while in her offices for an audition last week. She brought out this beauty from 2005, taken by Timmy Samuels at Starbelly Studios.

Running to auditions

Yesterday I had an audition in an older part of town. Cool open studio space but it was sitting on the third story of a very steep flight of stairs. With all the excitement and energy, I quickly jogged to the top only to reach it. Only then I was winded and in need of my inhaler.

They probably wondered why I was so breathy in my monologue. Lol