10 Comedy Questions with Sam Gordon
Sam Gordon is hilarious. As a comedy student and teacher I want to dissect her jokes in order to absorb their power, but as a regular old human person it’s probably healthier to just enjoy them.
She’s worked with a lot of comedy folks whom I very much admire (Mark Kendall, e.g.) and she teaches classes with Action Show Studios whom I know and love. She also hosts and runs shows around town with Windy Peach comedy. Those shows bring people out even to brand new comedy venues who have just opened their doors which is no small feat.
In short, Sam exemplifies comedy craft. Great personal work, big effort to present other people’s work, and classes to help bring new comedians into the community in the future. We should all be so inclined.
I reached out to her with 10 comedy questions, and I’m pleased to present her thoughts below. She also blogs regularly on comedy so check that out for even more.
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1. Is there anything that someone can do right now, regardless of where they are, to help them improve as a comic?
Write and edit! You might not have the opportunities you want to perform but you can always work on jokes. I would also suggest seeking out comedy that speaks to you, study it and figure out what about it is funny to you. I learned a lot by watching other comedians of all levels- even the people you don’t like can teach you something about stand-up.
2. Is there anything comics should do every day?
Freewrite! You might feel like you don’t have anything to say, but you are always wrong. Even if you don’t have a joke on the surface, you have thoughts, experiences and feelings that can become one with enough mining. Even if it is only 10 minutes of sitting down and jotting down what is in your brain, it is a good practice to keep ideas flowing and on the days that you really, truly have nothing to say- go back and read your old pages, fresh eyes might help you find a new bit.
3. What’s the difference between being funny with my friends and family and being a standup comic?
Familiarity- your friends and family know you, they know your morals, your perspective- maybe they even share it. But an audience doesn’t know who you are so the context for the things you say changes. I think the best comedians are able to make an audience feel like they’re having a funny conversation with an old friend. If you can figure out how to get onstage and share yourself, the audience will have an easier time understanding you.
4. When you’re refining a joke, are there certain steps you take? What’s that process like?
I like to write jokes out so I can see what they look like word for word- I find that it is easier to edit when I see all the pieces of something. I’ll usually write a joke out a few different ways, changing the order of words, taking some out, etc. Once I have what I think is a good version, I say it onstage and see what happens. More often than not it is when I am saying the joke out loud that my best ideas for tags come to me- it’s always nice to do that in front of people to see if they laugh but usually talking out loud to myself works too.
5. If you were starting over and a genie offered you a choice between the world’s best jokes or the world’s highest on-stage relate-ability, which would you choose?
I would love to have the kind reputation where the writing jobs line up just hoping for my punchlines. Sometimes I worry that I’m getting by on my personality, it would be nice to know that I am an undeniable joke machine.
6. Do you prefer to write jokes, find them on stage, or do some hybrid thereof?
I do a mix of both, I like to pitch ideas out loud and edit on paper. Usually I’ll jot down a premise and then take it to open mic or if I already have a punchline in mind, I’ll sandwich it in between two older jokes during a showcase. Personally, my ideas flow best when I’m talking out loud- I’m talking to myself right now as I type these answers! I have a lot of audio on my phone that is just me talking to myself about jokes I’m working on.
7. Is there anything you wish you could implant into your students’ minds on day one that would save them a lot of time?
-You will get better if you stay home at least one night a week to listen to your old sets and write down what worked and rewrite what didn’t.
-You will have more jokes to tell if you just go out and observe the world. Go do a non-comedy activity so you can relate to an audience.
-You will have more fun the next night if you stay home quietly watching your favorite tv show and fall asleep on the couch by 10 PM once in a while.
-You will not get better if you’re running the same undeveloped 5 minutes 6 nights a week.
-You will not have anything interesting to say if all of your experiences are at the same open mics with the same 30 people.
-You will not have the energy to be a supportive part of a show if you are exhausted and bored. The most bitter person in the room is rarely the funniest.
8. Are there any comedy-related light bulb moments that have stuck with you?
It seems silly now but I remember when I realized that I didn’t have to tell stories exactly as they happened and how much funnier that made my jokes. Before I felt like someone was going to fact check me and I couldn’t leave anything out or I’d be in trouble somehow. Now I know how to “find the funny” in something and ditch the rest.
9. Have you ever had a moment where you got a laugh but had no idea why? Did you try to unpack it or just leave it and take the laughs?
It happens all the time but usually I don’t realize that I don’t know what was so funny until I try to repeat the moment. Sometimes you’ll have a riff on stage that really lands and you think, “Wow, I just stumbled into gold!” but it isn’t until you try to repeat the moment and it doesn’t work that you realize, “No, I’m trying to catch lighting in a bottle.” Sometimes a laugh is just in the moment and can’t be repeated- that is what is kind of special about live comedy. If you’re there, you get to be part of it and if you’re not…well, you missed it.
10. If it were possible to craft the perfect comedy moment for you, what would it look like?
To me the most fulfilling laugh I can get is when I have a joke that I think is “done” and then I have a moment on stage where I stumble into a new tag. Usually it’s because of something that has happened earlier in the show, be it a reaction, a specific person in the front row, the comic before me- something has happened where there is a palpable energy in the room and we are just on the same wavelength. It’s almost like we’ve bonded for the evening and now we’re just a big group of friends hanging out.
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Thanks again to Sam Gordon for being so giving with her time and expertise. Find out more about her on her site here at http://www.samgordoncomedy.com and more about us at http://sceneshop.us
