When people find out you’re a stand-up comic, the most common reaction is, “I can’t do that. I get so nervous in front of people.” I was talking to a friend about getting nervous before shows, and I told her that I don’t get nervous. But after reflecting, I realize that while spiritually accurate, that’s not entirely true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’ve performed in front of audiences of a thousand in a casino’s theater, and an audience of one in a small ice cream parlor, and I honestly enjoy it every time. The nervousness I feel isn’t a fear that I’m going to lock up, forget my set, or bomb. I’ve done all of those, more than once, and I know that I’ll recover. I’m good at this. An off night doesn’t change anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I do get nervous though. I’m nervous about being too mechanical in my execution. I’m nervous about not being fully present in the moment on stage. I’m nervous that I won’t make the connection I want with at least one person in the audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Don’t get me wrong, this is all about getting laughs first. But, after you’ve been doing it awhile, you learn it’s easy to get a laugh. It’s a little harder when you care about what you say in order to get that laugh, but not much. There are a number of tried and true formulas to it. After watching myself for thousands of hours, I know the formula I tend to rely on is this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It works every god damn time. Math is math.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But that’s not all I want. I want a connection to the audience. I want that invisible filament that forms between my head and their heart. I want them to laugh, but I don’t just want the autonomic response. I want them to remember why they laughed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’m not knocking the formula. I’ve worked with comics who just do the math and kill every time. They’ve made careers out of it, and I absolutely find many of them funny. Also, god bless that formula, because sometimes you’d rather be in bed than in a VFW hall in the middle of Nebraska, and that formula is the only thing stopping you from a 20 minute rant about the confederate flag you saw displayed on a church as you drove into town. The formula guarantees you get paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But any time I get to just talk to the audience, and tell them these stories I love, I remember why I wanted to do this in the first place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, I get nervous. I’m nervous that I’ll just be kind of ordinary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When people find out you’re a stand-up comic, the most common reaction is, “I can’t do that. I get so nervous in front of people.” I was talking to a friend about getting nervous before shows, and I told her that I don’t get nervous. But after reflecting, I realize that while spiritually accurate, that’s not entirely true. I’ve performed in front of audiences of a thousand in a casino’s theater, and an audience of one in a small ice cream parlor, and I honestly enjoy it every time. The nervousness I feel isn’t a fear that I’m going to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christophercyr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christophercyr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christophercyr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christophercyr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christophercyr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/christophercyr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309,"href":"https:\/\/christophercyr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions\/309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christophercyr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christophercyr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christophercyr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}