Perseverance is key to becoming a successful comedian. Learn from failures and successes, find your own style, and perform at open mic nights to get noticed by comedy club owners. Jim Carrey opened for Rodney Dangerfield early in his career.
If you want to become a comedian, the most important quality besides pure talent is perseverance. Many comics that seem to have overnight successes have spent many years honing their stand-up routines at whatever comedy club would give them a stage. The best comedians are those who didn’t give up, even when they were booed by their first audiences.
Career comedians learn as much from their failures as they do from their successes. They learn how to make the crowd laugh and how to tell a joke just right. Above all, they find material that works for them and put their own unique views, attitudes and backgrounds into it. If you want to become a comedian people appreciate, learn to give them a sense of who you are by making fun of yourself and your background.
Start hitting the stage at amateur open mic nights. Write down your successes and learn from your failures. It’s a good idea to keep a notebook to jot down ideas and just little things that come to you if you want to become a comedian. You never know when just one small idea will inspire an entire stand up comedy routine. How you see the world differently than others can make your comic material interesting, fresh and funny.
Practice delivering your material in different ways – fast versus slow, for example. Watch comedians you admire and learn from what they do. Don’t copy your methods; you will have to find your own style of communicating with the public. If you don’t feel relaxed in front of an audience, consider joking about how nervous you are. Use these jokes to move on to your other material.
While there is no formal education or training to become a comedian, there is an apprenticeship of sorts among standup comics. Well-established comics often allow new and aspiring comedians to open their shows. Such was the case for comedian Jim Carrey, who, early in his career, opened for the much more experienced stand-up comic, Rodney Dangerfield.
If you want to become a comedian, you’ll need to keep performing to get accepted into pay gigs by comedy club owners. Doing well at competitions and amateur nights can be a good way to eventually get paid, but you’ll have to keep trying to get booked at popular comedy clubs. If you keep doing the stand-up comedy you love, even just on the weekends, you might get noticed by people who can accelerate your career.
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