Staying True in a Business That Rewards Compromise
An Important "Note To Self" (Comedy Mindhacks #86)
When I first started blogging about comedy just over a year ago, I remember seeing a veiled response post from another comedian, someone much more “veteran” than me, complaining about how comedians, especially younger ones, need to just shut up and stop talking so much about things like persona. (Gotta love it when comedians are policing each others’ speech but…that’s beside the point.) The point seemed to be that comedians like me should spend less time thinking and more time performing. Maybe there is some wisdom in that. But honestly, I couldn’t care less what that person thinks.
If I want to, I’ll write and post about “persona” every day. If I want to, I’ll make a podcast about persona, write books about persona, start a website about persona, and so on. I’ll talk about what’s on my mind and what’s important to me. Anyway, what I’ve come to realize is that something like “persona” isn’t just an elusive idea or stage trick or a branding exercise. Above all, it’s a form of clarity! What I mean is: once you start dialing into your persona, you are forced to answer some deeper questions about yourself. Who are you? What do you actually believe? What kind of humor feels honest to you? What kind of humor feels like a cheap imitation of someone else? There are a million other questions like this that could be asked.
What I’m getting at is: the process is not just about building a persona on stage. It’s about discovering who you already are, whether on stage or off. And once you start to see that clearly, you become a lot harder to move in life. When you know who you are and what you are about, you are less likely to bend just because someone says you should, whether it’s a producer, agent, booker, fellow comedian, fan, or whomever. That matters in comedy because this business has a way of constantly inviting you to compromise. Sometimes it’s small compromises. Sometimes it’s much bigger ones. You can ignore your faith, ignore your values, ignore the people who actually matter to you, all in exchange for a little attention, a little notoriety, or a brief moment where the room feels electric or you do something you’ll regret the rest of your life.
But those moments pass. They are fleeting. Eventually, the lights turn off, the crowd goes home, and you still have to live with yourself…even when the stage is empty. So, perhaps this post is really a “Note To Self” more than anything else: Remember who you are, remember what matters, and guard that with everything in your being. Because if you lose that, honestly, it doesn’t matter one bit how many laughs you got along the way.
JOKE WRITING COURSE: By the way, if you have any interest at all in learning about your persona, how to write some jokes, or doing stand-up comedy, check out my online joke writing course, “The Joke Writer’s Lab,” HERE.
JOKE MEMORY COURSE: My companion course to “The Joke Writer’s Lab” is now live: “The Comedian’s Memory Lab.” Learn how to conceptualize, organize, and memorize your entire comedy set. This method works for 10 jokes or 100, a set that’s 3 minutes of 1 hour. You can get it HERE.