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A Career as a Stand-Up Comedian by Mirko Ceselkoski

To learn to become a comedian in South Florida is a good investment in your talent because people in South Florida do have a sense of humor and take joke as a joke. That is why you will find various comedy clubs just in one street.

There are a couple of improvised acting workshops here in South Florida which can provide good training and lessons, however, not everyone can become a comedian. You have to be a natural; otherwise it would not be worth trying. Therefore, if you are the one who makes your posse laugh even without saying a word, if you can tell the same jokes as nobody else does, if you feel you were born to make people laugh, in that case the half of the work is done.

You know you can do it, but you need to learn how to do it. Why is this necessary? Not only is it necessary, it is crucial if you do not want to get out from the comedy club with a punch on your face and it is necessary because it is not just the posse you will be making laugh, but many people you do not even know. Therefore, some of the discriminating jokes of one society group are more than prohibited. Instead you tell the joke about the Hispanic guy for example, you will mention more ethnical groups. They are inevitable, however, it is better to involve more people in the group or you would earn some enemies.

If you decide to entrust your talent in the hands of professionals, we will recommend you choose THEY improv, a specialized workshop for acting by using the method of improvisation. Their specialty is comedy. Their students are the most sought-after comedians for both private parties and public events. The lessons consist of eight-week sessions and what follows is either graduation if the competition is not grand or a 9th grade. These classes would cost you $300 which also includes a free ticket to the graduation show which would otherwise cost you $200. If you want to learn this craft from professionals then THEY improv is the place we recommend.

If you think that you do not need school training to make people laugh, then it is a matter of your choice. Another thing you can do in South Florida is become a comedian on your own device, without schools and managers. This is easy because there are many comedy clubs in South Florida so there cannot be enough comedians in South Florida. First thing you should do is choose one of the many comedy clubs in your neighborhood (in case you are a person that has a favorite comedy club in particular then better for you, you will not lose time choosing one) and attend a number of comedy shows just to see the appropriate attitude and behavior a comedian should posses.

Also, in case you do not have the slightest idea what your program should look like, write down some of the jokes the comedian would say and reformulate them to give them your final touch. In this job you have to be original, that is the fact. Once you have done all that, visit several not so renowned when there is nothing going on in that club. Once you realize that you have outdone yourself it is high time you start working as a professional and once you show people how good you are, in a short matter of time you will have your own show and your name will be in the program regularly.

Yes, that is the way South Florida has always been. Even if you don't attend lessons, you can still learn to become a good comedian just by carefully observing the pros. And South Florida has much to offer when professional comedians come to question.


Mirko Ceselkoski is passionate about cars and yachting industry. He has experience in writing on numerous subjects and topics, including learning to [the website www.breakinsfl.com cannot be found] become a comedian in South Florida. Enjoy this well-thought article dedicated to help you finding job in a less painful way.

If you think you're funny, and you want others to think so too, this is the book for you! Greg Dean examines the fundamentals of being funny and offers advice on a range of topics, including:

writing creative joke material
rehearsing and performing routines
coping with stage fright
dealing with emcees who think they're funnier than you are
getting experience
and lots more.

Essential for the aspiring comic or the working comedian interested in updating his or her comedy routine, Step by Step to Stand-Up Comedy is the most comprehensive and useful book ever written on the art of the stand-up comedian.

Reader Jean de Terre says, "I've been doing comedy for about a year now and this is the first book I read. It is not perfect, but that is not the fault of the author. To write a perfect book on comedy would probably be very difficult and probably beyond the talents of even a very famous comedian. The problem is people who know how to do things do not always know why it works or can explain it to other people. Comedy, or any type of performance, is especially tricky because it is something that is learned with experience and things learned in this way are often difficult to communicate to someone who does not have the relevant experience.

What this book tries do:

First of all Dean gives you his joke writing method. It is formulaic and unnatural. However it does have a number of virtues. In the first place it forces you, a neophyte, to begin to think analytically about what goes into making up a one-liner. This is a very important first step - it is not good enough to intuitively know when things are funny, you have to learn to analyze what the elements are which make it funny.

In the second place Deane's method does something important, which I think any good writing method does, it forces you to ask questions about what you are writing, and the answers to these questions give you the seed for the ideas for the next thing you write, or for editing what you have already written. Again this is a bit unnatural, but if you've ever written anything and tried to seriously edit it, you will know what this is like. It involves taking a critical look at your own creation and crossing out the things that don't work or trying to improve them.

Secondly Dean gives a lot of great pointers for creating material and performing and rehearsing. This is where the book really begins to shine. It is also stuff which you can come back to after you've been doing it a while. The bits I like the most were this: Firstly, using the point of view of a character to help you write, i.e. asking questions about how that character would feel.

This goes all the way to personifying things such body parts or abstract things like air, in order to write from their perspective. It's a great way to produce material or enrich material you've already written. Secondly getting rehearsal right - if you rehearse something with interruptions or other problems, those problems will likely manifest themselves on stage (at least in the early days). Thirdly, whatever emotional⁄mental state you are in the, the audience is in. This bit is gold and very deep. It is worth pondering as you progress.

What was left out, what can be found in other books:

Writing:

I think any comic can learn about writing by reading material that is meant for any sort of writer and not just comic writers. For example one bit of useful writing advice is to show people and not tell them. E.g. you don't tell someone "she was afraid" instead you show them: "She felt goosebumps on her skin and her heart began to beat faster". Secondly, detail is important and brings something to life. Thirdly, don't say more than necessary, keep it as short as possible. Fourthly, edit, edit, and edit.

A more specific point is why things are funny. I think very few authors deal with this topic properly. Only one I know has nailed it, and he isn't even an author of a comedy how-to-book, it was Ricky Gervais when he was talking to Jerry Seinfeld, Louis CK and Chris Rock. (It's on youtube). He said he thinks comedy is about empathy. In other words the audience has to be able to relate to the plight of the characters in whatever you are telling them in some way.

But more than that, they also have to be able to detach themselves from that plight and see it from a birds-eye-view, so to speak. This is because if they don't, then what you've got is closer to tragedy or drama. In comedy, it's ok to laugh at trouble, and that's because of this element of detachment. In summary: comedy = empathy + detachment (if that sounds like a paradox, then welcome to the world of comedy).

Performance:

This is the toughest thing to learn. Here I think Franklin Ajaye's book is probably the closet to the mark. Somehow your delivery needs to seem natural - like when you are funny around your friends or family. It can not seem forced or like you are trying to be clever. The reason is that then the audience will not relate to you, i.e. that will not empathize. I could write a lot about how to do that, but I think the key point is to "get out of your head" while on stage. One way to do that is to yell or at least talk very loudly and used exaggerated gestures. In any case I doubt I can give good advice on this as I'm only just beginning to discover how to do it myself.

Well I hope that helps any people who want to start in comedy. It's a tough game - you start at the bottom on the open mic scene, and the key is to persevere and be nice to people you meet. You may well find that few people will talk much to you in the first several months - that's because there are heaps of people who give it a go once or twice, and the veterans don't see it as being worth investing time getting to know someone who won't stick around. But if you keep at it, some of the folks who've been doing it for a while will slowly get to know you.

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