How to Have Fun at Open Mics

Photo: Redherring1111 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0. An open mic in Los Angeles, 2014.

If you do not have jokes yet, start with How to Start Stand-Up Comedy. If you are locking a product, read How to Develop a Tight Five. This is the night in between: the mic as a place you get to play.

A tight five is a job. An open mic is a gym you are allowed to enjoy. If every list feels like a showcase, you will hate standup and your five will stay stuck in the same order because you were too scared to move it.

Have fun on purpose

Fun is not clowning. Fun is trying the sentence you were scared to say, or putting the closer second to see if the set still stands. The room can tell when you are only protecting a score.

Show up early. Talk to the other comics. Stay for two people after you. The hang is part of the night. A mic you leave in the parking lot is just a timer.

If you bomb a new tag and laugh at yourself on the way back to the stool, you will go again. If you treat a Tuesday bar like the Comedy Store, you will rewrite the whole five in the car and bring a first draft next week.

Rearrange the five you already have

Same jokes. New order. That is a free experiment. The opener that dies might be a closer. The bit you have been saving for last might be the one that gets them with you in the first minute.

Do not shuffle nine one-liners into a new playlist every night. Move one piece. Open with the second bit. Close with the one you have been hiding in the middle. Leave the rest alone so you can hear what the move did.

If two jokes are about the same thing, try them back to back. If the second one feels like an echo, one of them goes. You already knew that from the tight five. The mic is where you find out which one.

Try one new thing

One new joke a night. Not a new five. Put the new one in the middle so a death does not open you or close you. If it lives, it has a home. If it dies, you still had a set.

The mic is the cheapest room you will ever get for this. A showcase, a guest spot, a first-Friday club list: those are for the five you already know. Tuesday is for the page you wrote this afternoon.

Memorize the five onstage

Couch reps make cardboard. You want the five in your mouth, not in a note you glance at under the light. The open mic is how it gets there. Say it enough times, in enough rooms, that you could drop a joke if you are going long and the set still stands.

Do not read. If you need a net, use the word list. After a few weeks you will not need that either.

One word per joke

Give every bit a single word. Not the punch. The topic. DOG. DENTIST. MOM. AIRPORT. WALMART. That is a five. You remember the path, not the script.

In the car, say the words in order. If a word does not pull the bit, that bit is not in yet. Keep saying it until the word is enough.

Onstage, hit the word, tell the joke, next word. You are not reciting. You are walking a short list you already know.

Rearranging is five words on a napkin. New material is a new word you have not said out loud yet. When you can do the five from the words, in any order, you have it memorized.

Write the words on your hand if you have to, once. Then stop. The list is a training wheel. The mic is the bike.

Which night is this

Decide before you get on the list. Tonight I am locking the five. Tonight I am moving one piece. Tonight I am trying the new one. If you try to do all three, you will not hear any of them.

Then go again. In Fort Myers that is Monday at Coastal Dayz and Wednesday at Stet’s. The rest of the map is in How to Start Stand-Up Comedy in Southwest Florida.