Skills Required To Have A Successful Stand Up Comedy Career

First and foremost, it’s perhaps stating the obvious  but your primary skill is to be very funny.  A successfully stand up comedian typically has a great personality and might have observed that making people laugh comes as second nature to them and that family and friends have regularly commented on their comic abilities.

As well as the personality, a person interested in a stand-up comedy career should be able to come up with their own original jokes or be able to see a humorous viewpoint on their general day to day observations.  The more original material the comedian is able to produce the better, as this will provide options for a number of different routines.  This is especially important to stop loyal followers from getting bored of the same jokes and routine and let’s face it, a boring comedian is an unsuccessful one!

As well as having the necessary ‘funny bone’, an aspiring comedian will need to have a good memory and have quick thinking abilities.  The best stand-up comedians not only have to memorise their routines, but have the ability to come up with something humorous on the spot.  This may be improvising if something goes awry with their routine, but also interaction with the crowd which might result in improvised comedy ‘bringing the house down’!

The majority of stand-up comedians take many months and sometimes years to develop their routines.  It is more usual to develop a personal style, which most talented and famous comedians being remembered for their ‘style’.

A key skill of the comedian is to make their performance appear easy and off the cuff, which is not always as easy as it looks.  If you are still honing your skills, a good place for amateur performers to gain experience and confidence is at smaller venues that hold ‘open mic’ events.  These venues usually allow anyone to take to the stage and you may even find yourself alongside more experienced and established professional stand ups who sometimes use these open mic events as an opportunity to develop new material.

What is Dark Comedy?

Dark or Morbid humor is not everyone’s cup of tea. There are very few people who truly enjoy the style and the themes that are associated with this brand of comedy. Morbid or Dark jokes are those that take subjects that are traditionally very serious and makes light of them. Death, War, Disease, Poverty, all these are topics on which dark humor thrives. This is one of the reasons why most people find this genre of humor not to their taste and sensibilities.

Dark Jokes usually take themes like death and portray them in a funny light. This form of humor developed in the 1950’s as novelists and writers looked back at the half decade of war they had just fought and tried to caricaturize the actions taken by those that “Ran the Show”.  Slowly people started looking at other taboo and serious subjects in the same manner to find the humor within.

The 20^th century has been the most violent one in all of human history. Therefore, it is not surprising that many people now have taken such a morbid outlook to life. It now seems that everywhere we look these is misery everywhere. Under such circumstances it becomes imperative that we have an outlet where to dump our frustrations and to look at the lighter side of life just to remain sane. In these circumstances we see that more and more people today understand and enjoying dark and morbid jokes.

Once people started to enjoy these jokes more, these themes became prevalent in more mainstream media such as movies and TV shows. Over the years there have been many great Dark comedies films such as, Dr. Strangelove, Fight Club, Fargo and American Psycho. All of these films criticize modern life and its inaccuracies and paints them in a humorous manner. The best example of a morbid humor show is Luis, with the great stand-up comic Luis CK. His unique perspective on many taboo issues endears him to many people around the world. Still there are many who dislike this form of comedy because it is offensive and hurts the sensibilities of most people.