Hi! Each day in the month of May, I’m sending out some stand up I really like. (I’m guessing you’ll enjoy it too if you like my comedy.) Day 3 brings us Darryl Lenox from 2013. Here’s the set and some tools he uses that I think make it so good:
• REPETITION. By repeating a phrase, comics can get people to zone into the premise of a joke. In the middle of the set, Darryl repeats, “It might work, but it probably won’t,” with each example, and each example gets a bigger and bigger laugh. By the end, he doesn’t even have to say it, because the phrase automatically plays in the audience’s head. It’s sort of like a comedy preacher, and the payoff is multiple applause breaks.
• MULTIPLE EXAMPLES. The idea of a blind person trying to commit suicide is funny. The way Darryl makes this joke stand out is by coming up with a series of examples of how this could play out. He could’ve moved on after one example, but by thinking creatively of others, he’s able to get the most juice from this idea.
• SPECIFIC LIFE STORY. Sometimes the fear is that the material will be unrelatable, and being basically blind is something very few can relate to. But because Darryl is drawing from his own life and then giving us analogies that we can relate to, he takes an experience very few us will go through and gets us to laugh about it. In the process, we’re delivered an original set no one else could’ve created.
Hope you like it as much as I do, and check out Darryl on Instagram and Facebook: @darryllenox