Shayne-Michael.COMedy

Road Comedy NO .2: Tailoring Your Act - by Shayne Michael

In the small city of Douglas, Arizona, I did a show I would rate as a "C". I dressed in an expensive suit with a nice tie and black dress shoes. In Phoenix I looked great. In Douglas, I looked like a Mafia hit man. I got more laughs walking into the local convenience store than I did performing on stage. Apparently, in Douglas nobody wears a suit on their tractor.

This affected my set. It was early in my comedy career. I had just started traveling to the far ends of Arizona with the San Francisco Comedy Invasion. However, my act was still tailored for the suburbs of Phoenix Arizona. This hurt my shows. Take Winslow for example. The folks in Winslow Arizona knew the Eagles wrote "Take It Easy" there. But, they didn't know much that happened after that. In a sense, it was like time froze there in the 1971. A lot of my act was about 1995. Winslow didn't know anything about the popular recording artists of the time. For that reason, they didn't get any jokes about those artists.

In any city, you need to know who you're playing for. You need to tailor your act for those people. That doesn't mean you rewrite your entire act. What that means is you select from your act carefully. Sometimes you translate jokes for that city that might not completely understand the material. When tailoring your act for a new city you need to take three steps: First, know the city you're playing. Second, select bits from your act that fit their needs and translate the bits that don't. Finally, you need to reorder your act.

Step One: Knowing The City You're Playing

It's helpful to know a little about the city your playing. At the very least, know the population. You can find the population in a set of state road maps. If there are only 1,000 people, it's likely these people were born here and grew up here. Most residents have probably never left. If there's 5,000 some of them might have left, but they probably came back after they realized they weren't cut out for big city life.

In other words, if you do jokes about traffic congestion, neon lights, malls, and the number of hookers on Hollywood and Vine you will be speaking outside the their experience. Here's an example of a set In Bell Fouche, South Dakota that went terribly wrong. Bell Fouche is a biker town, by the way.

1. I'll do that joke about my father - Good call. Most people have a father, even bikers. 2. Now I'll do that killer bit about the roller coaster. - Bad call. If they don't have a convenience store, they might not have an amusement park. 3. Now I'll do the joke about the bear pamphlet - Good call. In South Dakota, bears eating people must be a hot issue. 4. Now I'll end with the bit on commercials - Bad call, most bikers don't have TVs on their Harleys...

Not Knowing The Audience Is Risky

Playing a room full of bikers can be scary. It's very intimidating to know you have to warm up for the Hell's Angels. That's even more true if you work clean. I do very little material about sex or drugs. I avoid the topics because they're overdone, and they don't interest me. When I play a room full of bikers, I make it a point to do more material about sex and drugs. I want stuff that the bikers can relate to. And again, what are the odds their carrying a TV on their Harleys and hooking up their cable at every stop.

Answering questions about the population and their schooling will help. [Though if you're in a room full of bikers don't call attention to the fact many of them have dropped out of the fifth grade.] Just use that information so you know what jokes are best left out.

Step One: Why Do You Need To Know?

On the Psychiatric Comedy Tour I played cities in Nebraska the same year as ASU beat Nebraska for the college football championship. I was introduced often as the man who won the ASU stand-up comedy contest. Anywhere football was popular I wasn't. That was true until I added the comment, "What are you so upset about, do I look like I was on the team?" At the time, I was 40 lbs heavier.

Where can you learn about the town? The best source of information is still the town itself. Talk to the people who live there. How do they talk? How do they dress? How do they feel about government? How do they feel about religion? How do they feel about out of towners? What subjects are taboo? On our tour, we usually had lunch in the town and asked the waitress, "How do you like living here?"

Step Two: Selecting Bits That Will Work

In at least one city if you call a woman the "C" word, you are loved. In that same city, if you make fun of Jesus, you're a jerk. Now, if you do a joke where Jesus calls a woman the "C" word, you're an ingenious trend setter.

Our feature usually did bits about racist people screwing sheet. In cities that believed in racial tolerance the joke went over very well. In the Larme Wyoming, where a man was killed for being gay, they hated him after that joke. It's a very short stretch to assume someone who doesn't tolerate homosexual behavior won't tolerate racial diversity. Here's a surprise, it's a racist town. Here's another surprise racist idiots tend to carry guns. Jokes that put racist people in their place don't work when the entire town is racist. That's why I always started with a one-liner that would tell me if a town was racists or sexist before anyone agreed with my core beliefs. I didn't change my act. But I never opened with a bit that might make them shoot at me later.

I know you're saying, "I'm enlightened, why should I dumb down for a bunch of hillbillies?" I'm not saying dumb down. But you do need to be aware of the hillbillies's core beliefs. If you're going to challenge those beliefs you better be very convincing. Don't invite a gun fight. This isn't the old west; it's comedy. The guy with the Smith and Weson is usually gonna win over the guy with the killer set up and punch.

Step Two: Look For Bits That Fit The Town

Draw things from your act that fit into the town you're playing that are also the bits you feel compelled to work on. Try to choose things that would be interesting in both the city you will be playing and the city you're going back to. The last thing you want is an act so specific to Montana that you can never take back anywhere to Los Angeles. Therefore, my call on the bear pamphlet was debatable. In the long run, I would have been far better off if I spent the time working on the bit about my dad. At least, I could have brought that back to Los Angeles.

Here are some general guidelines. If you find a bit the small city can relate to and it's a strong bit, use it. That goes double if the bit works in larger cities also. If it's a week bit nobody can relate to, drop it. If it's a strong bit nobody will relate to, try to translate the setup and punch. In other words, rewrite the joke if it were written by someone who lived in the city you're playing.

Step Two And A Half: Translating Jokes

I do a joke where I leave notes on cars I haven't hit. Then I watch the owners freak out while they look for dents that aren't there. In Bell Fouche, I would be leaving those notes on tractors. Of course this would set up another problem, my car is really no match for a tractor.

In another joke I said, "My sister missed one question on the driver's test. What bothered me was the question she missed, what do you do a red light. Jill said put on make up." It's a good joke. But it isn't a good joke in a city that has one single traffic light. Traffic bits are very specific to big city life. Unless you're playing a city as large as Cheyenne or Billings, you might loose people. For my joke I simply added the tag, "In towns with traffic lights that actually gets a laugh." In smaller cities I do the joke simply to do the tag.

Step Three: Ordering Your Set List

After you have a set list you're ready for the final step. You need to put that set list in order. Everything new and specific you observed about the town you're playing needs to come first. These bits are usually things you notice while entering the town. They have a short one-show shelf life. However, they serve an important function. They show the audience that you do know where you are. And it's important to start with that impression.

Strong bits that might be outside the scope of their experience should be in the middle of your act. Make every effort to make those bits more relatable. Your closing bit should be a strong bit that in some way ties back into your opening bit. In a perfect world, it should also be related to the town your playing. However, sometimes you just can't have both. If all else fails, just use a strong bit and don't worry about connecting back to the town or your opening.

Step Three: Saving And Reusing Outlines

There are common threads that run between small cities across the United States. Many are farming towns. These people tend to be conservative, own a lot of land and like sheep jokes but they also get jokes about real life experiences. Here's an example of how I opened at one city in Nebraska. This city was odd, it was somewhere between a college town and a farming town. I reused this set list in most farming owns.

1. Introduced As The ASU Comedy Champ 2. I Apologize (I wasn't on the team. Get over it.) 3. Open On Observations Someone Tie Dyed The Restroom (1 night shelf life. They know I understand where I am.) 3. Talk About Family 4. Talk About Traffic (This is where I started talking about hitting deers instead of congestion. Deers are much more likely to cause an accident in small cities in Montana. I still did jokes about big city traffic, but I sandwiched them between the bear pamphlet bit and "what to do if you hit a deer".) 5. Hobbies (Stronger in the city, so there it's my ending bit, here it's a middle bit.) 6. Commercials (Again after hobbies because more people have seen the commercials I talk about than have been on a roller coaster.) 7. Sex (I don't end with this in the city. The last 3 are actually completely reversed. Keep in mind, I move it to the end because again the bits are strong jokes and most people can relate to them. They don't have a roller coaster, so what else is there to do here?

Farming towns aren't the only type of town you will play. Another type of city is the small time college town. Most of these college towns were built to get the children of farmers out of farming towns without resorting to the expense of places like UCLA. People residing here tend to be younger, liberal, and they think they've had real life experiences though they can only truly relate to sex and drugs. They might be interested in traffic, if it involved having sex while hitting a deer.

In the end, you'll have one set list for the big city. You'll have one set list for medium size college towns. You'll have a set list for farming towns. You'll have a set list for college towns. You'll have a set list for a town full of mountain men and women like the kind I met in Gordon, Nebraska. Pray you never have to use the last type of set. That's usually where the guns come in. In the end, you'll have about four outlines that keep repeating. That's why you can do this once and them move on.

Step Four: Exercises:

In this section the computer will generate a fictitious town in the first table. Look at the data it gives you about the town. From your own act, use the second table to list which "bits you will keep", which "bits you will drop" and which "bits you will translate". Remember you want to choose mainly from things the town can relate to.

In the last table reorder your act. Start with strong bits the town can relate to. Put your opening bits under "Beginning". Put the material you want to keep but are the least certain of under "Middle". This would be where you put stronger material that the town might not be able to relate to. Finally, under "End" put the stronger bits you want to close with.

Sizing Up The Town

Adapting Your Act

Generating A New Set List

Summary Of This Pamphlet

In every situation you are best off knowing your audience. When traveling from city to city, you need to do it quickly. You also need to occasionally rely on generalizations. When tailoring your act for these small cities you need to take three steps. First, know the city you're playing. Second, select bits from your act that fit their needs and translate the jokes that don't. Finally, reorder your act. Doing this will help you avoid the speaking outside of anyone's experience. Remember the smaller the town, the less likely they are to understand things like traffic congestion or hookers on Sunset Boulevard.

When you reach the point where you are ready to step on stage, remember, a lot can still go wrong. In smaller cities, sound systems go out a lot. The lighting doesn't always work. Sometimes a dog runs on stage. Sometimes a cat. Which can lead to great improv lines like, "Finally some pussy." [That's only funny if it's truly improv. Don't buy a cat just so you can do the joke.] You will need to be explain set ups better. You will need to act out bits more. You will also need to work on your improv skills to bridge the gap between your life experience and theirs.

At the very least, of you've taken the time to tailor your act to the city you're playing, these challenges will become much easier to handle. Most importantly, you're odds of success will become much higher too.