CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION TO STAND-UP COMEDY
Awesome experiences and adrenaline highs 1
The beginning 5
A brief history of stand-up comedy 6
So what opportunities can stand-up comedy offer you? 9
Your Personal Inventory – what skills do you already have that could be useful? 16
The next stage of development 21
STATE-MANAGEMENT – CONQUER STAGE-FRIGHT AND ELIMINATE PERFORMANCE ANXIETY
Managing your mental state – how to remove fear from your life 23
Influence of your unconscious mind 24
So what is hypnosis and how can you use it? 29
Scientific models of the unconscious mind 34
It’s your unconscious mind that makes you funny 38
So what is Neuro Linguistic Programming? 40
Are your beliefs holding you back? 42
Achieving your goals 46
Managing your mental state to create stress-free performing 47
We are not our emotions 49
Understand how your mind stores memories 52
Analysing your beliefs and memories 55
Turning negative experiences into positive ones – analysing your Visual Submodalities 57
What are you saying to yourself? 58
Let’s play with your feelings using Emotion-based Submodalities 62
Relationships between your sense-based submodalities 64
How to use Metaphors to permanently change how you feel about something 66
Change how you picture yourself using the NLP Swish Pattern 69
Develop your confidence with a Circle of Excellence 71
Hypnotic Trance Induction – cycling through your senses 75
Speak directly to your unconscious through the use of a pendulum 78
Controlling your emotions – Spinning Technique 81
Changing how you feel – Michael Chekhov’s Imaginary Centres technique 84
Build good feelings that you can trigger when you need them – the “Anchoring”
technique 84
Anchoring – immerse yourself within an imaginary character 89
Anchoring – wearing masks (or a clown nose) 91
Anchoring – creating Anchors through movement 91
Relaxation Techniques – scanning your body and releasing stress 93
Relaxation – using memories of a happy place 95
Using breath management to control stress responses 96
Using Meditation to control stress levels 99
Focused Meditation 100
Detached Observer Meditation 102
Next steps 103
DEVELOPING STAND-UP COMEDY MATERIAL
The science of making people laugh 105
Gender bias in humour 112
Keeping a straight face 112
Gallows and black humour 113
Comedy Theories of Humour 114
An outbreak of comedy from the Central African Medical Journal, 1963 118
Corpsing 119
Differing types of laughter 120
Anaesthetic effects of laughter 121
Roots of comedy 121
Is comedy culturally specific? 122
Strategies for generating new comedy material using unconscious focus 122
Generating comedy through movement – Darwin’s Thinking Path 124
Political Humour 125
Developing raw stand-up comedy material 128
Idea Generation 129
So you think you are not funny –perhaps you could begin by telling stories from your own life 129
Begin to examine jokes and analyse their structure 130
Simple Joke Structures 132
Gaining new perspectives using Perceptual Positions 140
The ethics of stealing other comedians’ material 142
Birthing of new comedy material 143
Exposing the myth of ‘comedy on tap’ 145
What type of comedy do you wish to play with? 146
The importance of Comedy Timing, Rhythm & Tempo 147
Noticing your own personal Comedy Production Strategies 149
Improvisation 150
Next steps 151
GETTING UP ON-STAGE AND MAKING THEM LAUGH
How to hypnotise your audience – Comedian as Trance Inducer 153
Is it useful to use aggression to control your audience? 156
Give the audience humour that connects with their lives – ‘Mirroring and Matching’ 156
Anchoring your audience to build laughter 157
Using sensory based language patterns 158
Controlling the speed and tempo of your comedic delivery 158
Things you can do to break connection with your audience 159
Building connection and rapport with your audience 160
How do you pace and lead a low energy audience to a better state 161
Metaphoric language patterns – Comedians dying, killing, slaying and battling to the death 162
The strategy for overcoming the comedian’s biggest fear – “dying” on-stage 165
Using the tension of disconnecting with your audience during the performance 169
Should comedians regard the experience of “dying” on-stage as their worst fear? 170
How to deal with Hecklers 171
Getting ready for your stand-up performance – how to future pace the perfect gig 173
CONCLUSION 179
NOW YOU’VE READ THIS BOOK... 181