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
Day 2: Phil Hanley
Chances are we share a sense of humor. So each day this month I’d like to give you a stand up comedy break by sharing a set I personally enjoy and, as a comedy nerd, tell you why. Here’s some reasons why I think this 2012 set from Phil Hanley is great:
• NO FAT. The laughter keeps building because Phil doesn’t waste words. Audiences reset if given the chance, but by keeping the gap between punchlines at a minimum, he never lets them.
• OPEN STRONG. Crowds don’t know if you’re funny until you are, so the sooner you can establish yourself with a joke, the better. Phil’s opening line establishes his stage personality with a laugh, and his second line is a tight misdirection joke contained in one sentence. The crowd’s delighted, and the laughs just keep building afterward.
• CALLBACKS. Watch the full set, and you’ll see how cleverly the jokes Phil plants early on sprout again later. I always feel like callbacks give a sense of coherence to a set’s construction and, in this case, a sense of closure too.
Hope you like it as much as I do and follow Phil on Instagram: @philmhanley
Day 1: Ian Edwards
If you like my comedy, you’ll probably like the comedy I like. So each day this month I’m going to share some sets I think are really great and explain why I like them so much. Here’s just some of the reasons I like this 2014 set from Ian Edwards:
• CONTRAST. Juxtapositions can not only drive home a point, if they’re original, they can be really funny. Ian does this multiple times in this set. He contrasts how much Bernie Madoff stole and how much others stole. And then there’s the juxtaposition between how Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassin treated MLK and Jesse Jackson. Five years later, I find myself thinking of this bit randomly and still laughing out loud.
• UNIQUE RACIAL COMMENTARY. Ian not only talks about racism against blacks, he also talks about how he looks at leaders in his own community. It’s a fun, original take you wouldn’t find from someone who didn’t have both a developed voice and an insightful outlook.
• PACING. A lot of good comics know how to keep the crowd off balance so they can’t anticipate when the punchline is coming. In this set, Ian has a rhythm to his speaking — speeding up, slowing down, pauses — that’s unpredictable and always gets me laughing.
Hope you enjoy it as much as I do and follow Ian on Instagram: @ianedwardscomic