The Real Reason So Many Comedians Sound the Same
How Comedians Erase Themselves (Comedy Mindhacks #91)
I have been blogging for about twenty years now, and that habit has definitely shaped me in certain ways. I started back in 2007 with a Bible & Theology blog called “Pisteuomen” (which means in Greek, “We Believe”) that ran for seven or eight years and amassed over half-a-million views. The whole point was simple: To do theology publicly and to think out loud publicly. I opened myself up to be criticized and challenged in public in real time as well as after the fact. I’ve done it this way because I’ve never wanted to hide behind seemingly polished conclusions or to pretend I had it all figured out. I’m pleased to report: I still don’t.
A few years after I stopped that blog, I shifted into podcasting and launched ProveText which has about 33k subscribers on YouTube. I’ve been doing that for quite some time now. Then, I eventually found myself doing both, blogging and podcasting about the Bible & Theology at the same time. I still write and talk about theology on my new theology blog and on that theology podcast (ProveText). For those of you who read here, you likely know that I’ve also been putting my comedy journey out in the open. I’ve made it a habit to share what’s working, what’s not working, and how I’m figuring things out along the way. You’re reading my comedy blog and you can check out my comedy podcast “Messed-Up To Set-Ups” and other forms of comedy media HERE, too.
I write almost daily, I podcast multiple times a week, and I let people see the process as it’s happening. I pretty much always have. I’ve never hidden the process; it’s been out in the open. I don’t know exactly why, but looking back, my entire adult life has been shaped by an instinct to think in public rather than in private. And I believe I’m better for it. Some people might describe what I’ve done as me “finding my voice.” Not too long ago, I would’ve agreed. Now, however, that notion doesn’t quite sit right with me. For a long time I thought finding my voice meant discovering some hidden, singular version of myself that would make everything click. I assumed there was one true voice underneath everything else, and my job was to uncover it.
That was more true in my comedy journey than anywhere else. And it led me to “try” to come off a certain way. The problem is, the more I tried to do that, the more it felt like scripted authenticity and the more I started to sound like everyone else trying to do the same exact thing. It’s like when all the students in a public speaking class sound the same way because they’ve bought into the idea that their professor wants a certain type of speech.
But that’s when I realized that, for me, the issue was not voice, it was persona. I’d been aiming at the wrong target the whole time. So, when I started into my comedy journey, I started writing a lot about persona initially. And, at one point, a more seasoned comedian than me wrote a sort of retaliatory blog post criticizing such things. Oh well! Whatever he believes himself to be, it doesn’t matter to me at all. I’ve ignored him and kept doing my thing.
In fact, the more I’ve thought about it, read about it, and written on it, the more I’ve come to think of persona as who I actually am, just turned slightly when I’m performing. It’s not fake and it’s definitely not a character I put on. It’s also not identical to how I move through every moment of my day. It’s me in “performer mode,” as it were, which means certain traits get emphasized, tightened, or pushed a little further. That core stays consistent, but the dial shifts depending on the setting. These days, that’s how I think about “persona.”
So, what about “voice” then? I’ve had a huge shift in thinking with this concept. Most people talk about voice like it is one thing, a singular thing, but in reality, it’s a range of things. Also, I think the notion of “voice” sits under the umbrella of “persona.” What I mean is: I’m the same person all the time (persona), but I’m also a dad, a husband, a professor, a comedian, an author, and more, and each of those carries a different voice. For me, the umbrella of my persona is simple: I’m Michael Halcomb, The Chief Mess-Up OR Michael Halcomb, The Chief of Everything Messed-Up. That one thread runs through everything I do, whether I am on stage, in a classroom, or at home. Even in many of my articles, just like this one, I share my mess-ups.
But, honestly, thinking about persona and especially “voice” this way has been so helpful, a breath of fresh air. Now, I’m not the only one who has noticed this. In the book Voice First: A Writer’s Manifesto a similar point is made about writers: they carry multiple voices rather than one fixed tone. I agree! And that perspective helps confirm for me that the problem hasn’t been that I have too many voices, but that I’ve been trying to collapse those “voices” into one “voice.” In doing that, I was flattening what should have been dynamic. Ahhhh! It’s such a relief to have come to this realization.
Once I came to that conclusion, things started to make more sense. I stopped trying to sound like a single, polished version of myself and started paying attention to which voice was actually present in any given moment. The mistake I’d been making was flattening everything into one voice that I thought would come off as authentic but I was actually stripping away the variety that made me, Michael Halcomb, most interesting. I was supposed to be finding my voice, but I wasn’t; I was just reducing it. I should’ve been, instead, finding my voices.
This, as I noted above, showed up most clearly in my early comedy. When I leaned into a generic version of myself, the material worked just enough to get by but not enough to stand out. It was fine, but even more it was forgettable, and that’s a dangerous place to live. The more I tried to sound broadly relatable, the less I sounded like anyone in particular, including myself. Here’s another realization: “Voice” isn’t about sounding like me in general, but about sounding like a specific version of me in a specific moment.
My dad voice is different than my professor voice, which is different than my comedian voice, but they are all still me. The consistency isn’t in the tone, it’s in the perspective underneath it. And that perspective is what begins to carry across contexts. As a result, then, I’ve come to think of voice less as something one discovers and more as something one permits.
So, now I find myself asking a different kind of question than I was asking all those years. I’m no longer asking whether something sounds authentic (though authenticity is hugely important); I’m asking which version of me is talking and whether I’m letting that voice be clear (which is real authenticity). That shift has made my writing much sharper and my comedy more honest. I’m not trying to sound like everything all at once anymore. I’m trying to sound like the right version of me at the right time.
The payoff for me has been unexpected. Once I stopped chasing one perfect voice, I stopped comparing myself to everyone else who was doing the same exact thing and, as a result, all sounding the same. There was nothing to win anymore in trying to sound authentic, because that whole game started to feel artificial. What remained was simply the work of being clear within the persona I already had.
It’s also changed how I think about growth. I’m not trying to refine one voice into something polished and complete. Instead, I’m simply trying to develop range within a stable identity, letting each voice get sharper in its own context. And over time, the many voices within me (no, I’m not schizophrenic!) have begun to reinforce each other instead of competing with each other. And what’s best is that, without forcing it, when I’m on stage now I always sound more like me, the real me, the one who’s been thinking in public for decades. ❦
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