New Material or Not??
A student asked me a question today I get all the time, and seems to be a major concern for developing comedians in their first few years:
“Do I perform the same 5 minute routine that I performed in my first standup performance? And just perform that 3 more times in a row to try and "lock it in" (or whatever)?
OR
Do I trial some new material to give the people something new? Surely it's acceptable (if not even expected) that I just do the same bit for my first few times so I know I'm performing something worthwhile. Or do I get real kooky and just start experiment right off the bat. This is my dilemma.”
The questions everyone asks:
How often do I need to come up with new material? Should I write a new set every time? Do I just work to polish the same set? What if the audience has already seen me?
tl;dr answer:
1) Go where your energy takes you. If you’re more excited about newer material, go there. If being rehearsed makes you more confident and comfortable, do that.
2) Do whatever is going to make you a better comedian in the long run.
Long answer:
For amateur, unpaid, open-mic type shows, you should use the opportunity to do something different: new material or older material polished and revised—with new jokes, tags, inflections, asides, revisions, edits, act-outs, or whatever. If it didn’t 100% kill, fix it.
For a pro gig, you’re getting paid and want to impress the producer as well as the audience. Therefore, you should stick to polished, rehearsed bits with a good success rate.
There are two kinds of comedians that get stuck at the open mic level:
1) The one who always gets on stage with untested material, improvises a whole new set every time, and never polishes anything. Imagine listening to a musician who never practices, and every time they get onstage they play a brand-new song by ear full of mistakes and off-notes and awkward pauses. Would you buy a ticket?
Or maybe worse:
2) The one who does the same set the same exact way every time, even though they only get polite awkward laughs with 20% of it. They never change their inflections or delivery, and never fix or cut jokes that don’t get laughs. It’s like listening to someone who only knows how to play piano with one finger play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” over and over and over again….
You should strive to be better than both. Write something new, then polish the fuck out of it based on the audience’s responses, and then learn it so well that you can make it vibrant and exciting for every new audience. At the same time, you should be writing constantly so that newer better stuff can take the place of not-so-great stuff as you improve.
What would you do if you were a musician? You’d work to learn as many songs as possible, AND learn those songs so well you can play them beautifully and passionately without thinking. Every song you learn to play perfectly makes it that much easier to learn the next. Same deal with standup.
But what if the audience has heard it before? Meh. Don’t worry about it. (And if your audience is comedians, fuck ‘em) In the first place, people have terrible memories. Also, you’re changing things up, right? So one of your bits is a story (or a string of jokes in story form) the person who might’ve heard it already hasn’t heard it tonight, in this room, to these people, with this new ending.
The great joy of live comedy is not just the material, but the shared once-in-a-lifetime delight of this conversation between this skilled comedian and this audience. My biggest fans probably know most of my material by heart, but they’re more delighted by the reactions of the people around them in the moment.
So go where the energy takes you. Do you love telling this bit? Does it always kill? Do these people need to hear your point? Then say it as many times as you like. Are you bored with the bit? Then drop it or change it up. One way or the other, trust your gut, keep a growth mindset, and have fun.