I’m a comedian, I’ve done thousands of great shows, all over the country and made countless people laugh, but every once in a great while, I mean like really really really really really rarely, I have a bad show.
Who knows why? I (and I don’t think I’m giving any show business secrets away here) do pretty much the same act from gig to gig. I mean I add and subtract jokes along the way, that’s how you build your act and get stronger, and of course the different specific circumstances of each particular gig lend itself to some improvisation and ‘tweaking’ the act you are doing. So why? Why, after eight weeks in a row of great rocking show (all different gigs at different venues) does one stinkeroo show up?
Well it does happen. I’m sure it happens to other performers but I don’t know what their experience is like so I can only go by mine. Below are several options when a show is going bad that you may be able to take advantage of:
1) ‘Save Lines’/’Bomb Lines’: These are the stand by jokes you makes when you your originally planned joke doesn’t work. Hence the word ‘bomb’ (as in your joke bombed) and ‘save’ (as in that bomb line saved your joke). These are IMPORTANT because the audience doesn’t mind that much if you bomb but what really upsets them is if they believe you are unaware that you are stinking up the joint. They’re embarrassed for you. So when you use a bomb line or a save line, you’re telling the audience, “It’s OK, I know it’s sucking and I’m upset too”. That is a great ice breaker. There are old stock lines you can use like ,”I know I wasn’t born in this town but I do believe I’m gonna die here’ and then you can make up you’re own. I used to say things like, “I wanna thank everyone who came straight from the deaf school” and “I wanna thank everyone here for helping me on my new career as a hypnotist”. One thing you have to watch out for: Some comics become so enamored of they own ‘bomb’/’save’ lines that they start to use them even when their original joke DOES get a laugh. This is super dangerous because if you keep using lines designed to help you while you’re failing, you will convince the audience that you’re failing. Only use them when you need to and HOPE that one day you’ll never use them ever again.
2) Talk to the audience: This is called ‘crowd work’ where you chat with the audience and get your laughs from interacting with them. This is something that truly only a small percentage of comedians are really gifted at. Except for those talent few, ‘crowd work’ is kind of frowned upon by a lot of industry and club owners who figure that anyone can stand up there and eventually get something funny if they keep talking to the audience and that’s not your job. However, if your set is tragically dying a dog’s death on that stage, if you see your life flashing before your eyes, then you got nothing to lose. Abandon your material that’s apparently making the audience hate you even more and talk to them. Two things people like is to talk about themselves and watch other people be embarrassed.
3) End your set: This is very tricky because this really depends on where you are. If you’re at a comedy club or a corporate event and you’re getting paid, well then you are obligated to stay up there and sweat away until your time is up. If you’re at a club and it’s an unpaid guest spot (yes dear readers, comedians perform for nothing sometimes, that’s how much we love the stage) you’re still bound to do your time BUT if it’s an unpaid guest spot and you are absolutely certain the emcee is in the room, you may be able to leave a little early. I know of no club manager who ever complained a comedians did too little time.
If you’re at a private event like a comedy roast or a birthday party, you’ll have more leeway in your decision. If it’s your own gig that you booked, you’ll obviously have the most flexibility. I did a show about two years ago that was going horribly. It was for a birthday and the whole thing went so bad that after ten minutes I left. I decided, while I was doing my act, to end it cause it was mortifying for me AND not fair to these people who were having this celebratory event. I was making things worse. I braced myself and told myself to expect to have a re-negotiation with the client once I was done. I said good night and went right to the client and told them I thought it was best to end it and I would accept a partial payment of our previously negotiated price. They agreed. The way I just described it made it sound much more quick and painless than it really was.
4) End with a ‘Joke Joke’: If you don’t know, a ‘joke joke’ is an old fashioned joke that people tell each other, you know, ‘two guys walk into a bar….’ with a big set up and punchline. If it’s really going poorly and you’re almost done, odds are some of the audience may not be listening anymore. Have a joke ready, find a good one that really makes people laugh and rehearse it for when you need it. This may be the time you need it. The funny thing about people is how they are creatures of habit and once habit people have is, when they hear someone start to tell a joke, they stop to listen.
Now you may be saying here, “Wait a minute Buddy Flip, I been telling jokes to them to 20 minutes and they’re not listening”. Yeah well you been telling them YOUR jokes for 20 minutes and I’m certain your jokes don’t sound like ‘joke jokes’. When the audience hears a joke that sounds like a ‘joke joke’, they are trained to listen. You give them one good solid ‘joke joke’ and you will leave the stage to a resounding crescendo of applause.
There’s certainly more ideas out there for this scenario and I’m not suggesting that comedians just give up if it’s not going well. You always want it to go well and you always try along the way, even when it’s not going well, to look for that word, thought or phrase that cracks them up that you can run with but, and we all know this all too well, that opportunity rarely arises once a set starts going south.