Tips for Making Your First Standup Appearance

So after some coaxing from your friends, you're ready to hit the stage and make people laugh their pants off. But before you go up, here are the top 5 tips for making your first standup comedy appearance.1. Bring friends.
Some people might discourage you from bringing friends because it might skew your audience. After all, if you truly are funny, you should be able to make strangers laugh. However, if it's your first time, then I highly recommend you get all the support you can. Having your friends should help you feel comfortable on stage and get more confident, unless they're the ones heckling you. After you've had a few performances under your belt, then you can do without your friends, unless they really want to watch you because you're that funny.
2. Use your nervous energy.
Most people don't know how nervous you are. Use this nervousness to your advantage. Channel it to increase your enthusiasm on stage. Be animated but don't be distracting. For example, if you're going to pace back and forth onstage, put the microphone stand behind you and put some purpose to your stride. Walk to one side and make a point. Walk to the other side and make another point. Sometimes, even admitting that you're nervous can elicit laughter. For example, when there's a thin crowd I open with, "I'm a bit nervous tonight because I'm used to a much smaller audience than this".
3. Stay within your time limit.
It doesn't matter if you're killing or if you're bombing (actually it matters more when it's the latter), stick to your time. Club owners and other comedians hate comics who go over their allotted time. You're taking away time from the next comedian. Please be a professional and get off stage when you see the signal.
4. Memorize your set list.
Notice I wrote set list and not jokes. You don't have to memorize your jokes verbatim, unless you're the kind of comedian that does his or her set exactly the same every time to every audience. But at least know your set list. You should know the flow of what you're going to talk about by heart. Have an opener, a middle, and a closer. Once you commit these parts to memory you will have an easier time and can even ad lib since you know how to get back into the flow.
5. Have fun.
As a comedian, sometimes you forget to have fun. This is the original reason why you wanted to do this in the first place, so just have fun. If you're enjoying yourself onstage, so will your audience. Just keep your clothes on, unless you're Dane Cooking it.
Tim Tayag is a pioneer of point of view stand up comedy in the Philippines and Asia. He started his comedy career in San Francisco back in 1997 and has toured and performed all over the world. You can learn more about him by visiting his site http://www.timtayag.com/ or get some comedy tips http://www.timtayag.com/category/comedy-education/

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