Are you screwing up your open mic?

It's Wednesday night again, time for the local open mic.  There's Bob and Sally.  Here comes Sue and John.  Cletus and Marge texted they were running late, but please order their usual jalapeno poppers so they come out just as the two of them arrive.

It's Cliff's turn to host; actually, he started the thing so he hosts pretty much every week.

A couple of beers later, just after Angie does a pretty good four minutes on how her boyfriend's an asshole, Ralph takes the stage.

Ralph goes up and after a couple throw away lines, nails Jason with an inside joke one-liner that makes all the comics laugh.  Then he does a call-back to something in his larger set, but not something he did tonight.  The comics all snicker and snort with familiar delight.  Ralph smirks, throws up the double peace signs and says, "That's my time, fuckers!"  Everyone screams for joy.

If I just described your open mic, it's not really helping you in your comedy career (or Ralph's).

Open mics are for stage time.  Open mics are for practice.  Open mics are for sharpening your bits.  Open mics are for hashing out new bits.  Open mics are for a lot of things.  They are a useful tool to help comics...new, veteran and famous.

Open mics are NOT supposed to be inside joke-laden clique fests.  Yet, many become just that.

Do your best to not allow yours to fall into the clique trap.  Or, if you have no control over the event, rotate through different open mics, or leave that one all together.  It's not helping you.  Side note: you should be going to as many open mics as you can, so rotating through different ones is a good idea even your home open mic is stellar.

The issue is that we want the laugh, and we're typically afraid to fail.  We're especially afraid to fail in front of our friends.  When you hang out with the same group of comics, they become your friends. 

So, rather than try something you just came up with, to see where it goes, you go to your A-list stuff that you know works.  Or, you rip on the other comics in the room, or rip the room.  Etc. etc., you get the idea.

But getting the easy laugh in front of your gang doesn't help your career.

 "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." 

- Winston Churchill

While Churchill's quote can be applied to many aspects of your comedy career, it shows up easily in the beginning at open mics.  The best way to learn is through failure.  That's why Domino's Pizza has their new commercials where they say failure IS an option.  They encourage their chef's to try everything.  Regardless of if you like Domino's pizza, they are a hugely successful company, and have been for many years.

If your goal is to succeed by making the other comics laugh at your open mics, I feel you're missing the point.  Killing at an open mic doesn't necessarily translate to killing at paid gigs.

Furthermore, the more comfortable you get with something, the less enthusiasm you will have for it.  Think of sports teams that get rid of managers who've won for them in the past.  Did the manager suddenly suck?  No, the team got comfortable with the manager and slacked off while the manager got comfortable with the team and didn't challenge them anymore.

The way to move forward in anything is to continually challenge yourself.  That way you'll rise to the occasion, or at least raise your game a notch trying.  Doing the same open mic, with the same people, week after week can have you fall into a rut.

So, if it's not workable for you to go to more, or different open mics, you need to do your best to make yours the best it can be for you (and for the other comics).

Click here to go to my my next post, where I give you some tips to make your open mic great.