2 Tips On Being A Student Of Stand-Up Comedy
When I was a kid, my curiosity wasn’t something that could be satisfied with just knowing how something worked—I needed to see it work, to hold its insides in my hands and figure it out for myself. Radios, remote controls, toy cars, flashlights—you name it, I dismantled it. If it had screws, nuts, bolts, wires, buttons, or batteries, it was fair game. The goal wasn’t just to break things—something that happened often!—but to understand them, to learn how each piece contributed to the whole.
Sometimes I’d put things back together exactly as I found them. Other times, I’d get ambitious and try to combine parts from whatever I dismantled and make something new. Or, if I was feeling up to it, sometimes I’d take parts from multiple items, like a flashlight and a toy car, to see if I could create something novel. Did I succeed? Nah. Did I repeatedly shock myself and sometimes short-circuit the house? Yeah. But innovation has a price. And sometimes that price is being told “you’re the reason we can’t have nice things around here.”
Like a stalker, that same restless curiosity followed me into teen years and adulthood. Now, however, my interest is focused on something less likely to electrocute me but still able to enthrall me: stand-up comedy. For all its spontaneity, its beautiful, mysterious, often unpredictable beauty, like remotes or electronics, jokes have a working structure and so does telling them. And one of ways I’ve found to truly appreciate stand-up comedy’s complexity is to do the same thing I did with those radios and toy cars—dissect ‘em.
When I watch stand-up, I’m not just looking to laugh; I’m looking to understand. Every joke, every pause, every interaction with the audience is a moving part, and I want to know how those parts fit together to make something greater than the sum of their parts. It’s not just a show, like putting together IKEA furniture, it’s a puzzle. Except with comedy, there’s no Allen wrench and no Swedish guy to blame when it doesn’t work.
I’ll watch a special once to enjoy it, to take it in like any other audience member. But the second, third, fourth, fifth times, I take notes—copious, detailed notes, because I’m that kind of person. (If you saw my files, you might ask whether I’m studying for the bar exam or trying to figure out why people laugh.) I break down the set into sections: the opening, the callbacks, the transitions, the closer. I tag every type of joke, every kind of interaction, and even every shift in energy or rhythm. If the comedian does crowd work, I analyze the kinds of questions they ask, how they respond, and how they steer the conversation back toward their material. It’s not enough to know that a joke worked; I need to know why it worked. What expectation was subverted? What norm was violated? What universal truth or emotion or experience was tapped into?
Yes, it can get tedious. Watching the same bit five or six times, pausing and rewinding to catch a subtle facial expression or a perfectly timed pause—it’s not glamorous. In time, patterns often start to emerge, though, and it’s like finding the code beneath the matrix. You start to see that comedy, for all its spontaneity and artistry, is also deeply systematic. Certain structures and techniques show up again and again, across comedians, styles, and generations. It’s a craft, and like any craft, it can be studied, learned, and, to some extent, replicated. And that’s where the next step comes in: reverse engineering.
Once I’ve dissected a joke or a set or a piece of crowd work, the challenge is to build it back up—not as an imitation but as an original piece that borrows from structure or technique. If a joke relies on a premise-setup-punchline-tag structure or some variation of that, I’ll try to write my own joke using that framework, plugging in my own experiences and voice. If it’s crowd work, I’ll think through the kinds of questions I could ask, the kinds of responses I might get, and how I could pivot based on those responses. It’s like taking apart a Lego set, examining how the pieces fit together, and then using those same pieces to build something entirely new. Or, in my case, building it wrong and wondering why the audience doesn’t laugh.
This approach isn’t for everyone. I get that. For a lot of comedians, the magic lies in the spontaneity, the feeling that the jokes come from some deep, instinctual place. And that’s valid. But for me, some of the magic definitely lies in the mechanics. It’s enough for me to know that a car can drive; I don’t want or care to know how the engine works, how the gears shift, how the whole thing stays on the road. Not so when it comes to stand-up. I want to know exactly how it works.
In addition to my tinkering childhood, I think a lot of this also comes from my academic background. Earning a bachelor’s, three master’s, and a Ph.D. isn’t just about accumulating knowledge—it’s about learning how to think critically, how to analyze, and how to synthesize information in new ways. Research became second nature to me, and now I apply those same skills to comedy. The tagging system I use to categorize jokes and interactions probably looks more like something you’d find in a graduate student’s dissertation than a comedian’s notebook. But it works for me. It helps me see the patterns, identify the techniques, and, most importantly, learn from them.
Mark Twain once said, “Explaining humor is a lot like dissecting a frog, you learn a lot in the process, but in the end you kill it.” Now, I don’t know the full context of that statement but E. B. White said something very similar, “Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.” I get it. I get it. But I don’t fully agree, especially as both a student and practicioner of stand-up. In my case, I do dissect and learn a lot. But I don’t kill “the thing,” that is, the joke, the humor, the comedy, the laugh in the process. Instead, I reverse engineer it, build it anew, and give it a new life.
Honestly, I think it’s a misconception that dissecting something robs it of its beauty, that understanding the mechanics of a joke somehow makes it less funny. I’ve found the opposite to be true. The more I analyze, the more I respect the craft. Seeing how a master comedian weaves their material together, how they play with timing and tension, how they read the room and adapt in real time—it’s awe-inspiring, it’s life-giving. It’s like watching a magician perform a trick, then learning how the trick is done, and realizing it’s even more impressive than you thought.
The truth is, comedy is hard. Making people laugh is hard. And doing it consistently, night after night, in front of different audiences with different energies—that’s a skill that deserves to be studied and celebrated. Dissecting and reverse engineering jokes isn’t just about becoming a better comedian; it’s about honoring the art form. It’s about recognizing that great comedy doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because someone, somewhere, put in the hours to understand it, to practice it, and to perfect it.
As a kid, I tore apart radios and remote controls because I wanted to understand how they worked. As an adult, I do the same thing with comedy. The tools are different—pens and notebooks instead of screwdrivers and butter knives—but the goal is the same: to learn, to create, and to understand. Because when you understand something deeply, you appreciate it more. And when you appreciate something deeply, you’re driven to imitate it and give your own voice to it. That’s why being a student of stand-up comedy is so thrilling to me. It’s not just a hobby; it’s a lifelong obsession. And honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.