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Is Stand-up Comedy Storytelling?

July 30, 2010 by Nabil 5 Comments

Last Tuesday my workshop mates and I each took the stage at the Improv Hollywood and delivered a five minute stand-up routine. As we worked through our sets, I marveled at the fact that in an era of smartphones and instant gratification, an audience of people willingly unplugged from the world and for one hour focused all of their attention on one stage, one microphone, and one voice. Storytelling lives, I thought. Or is stand-up comedy really a form of storytelling?

Fresh off of a four-week stand-up comedy course, my answer to this question is yes, it is. However there are subtle differences between the two: Traditional storytelling tends to be longer form; stand-up tends to be shorter. Traditional storytelling tends to focus on one journey; stand-up is often about several disjointed experiences.

That said, the similarities far outweigh the differences. Both forms of expression are delivered without technology: just a stage and a mic. Both can be formulaic in their structure (traditional storytelling: beginning – middle – end; stand up: premise – opinion – act out). Both are inherently funny – and more gripping – when the performer is vulnerable with their audience.

I’ve always defined storytelling very broadly — from a tale told around a campfire to an epic projected onto a theater screen. That said, my stand-up experience was a neat reminder that storytelling, in its purest most basic form, can still cut through the most modern distractions and capture the imagination of a room full of people.

Life Lessons from Improv

July 1, 2010 by Nabil 8 Comments

This week I took a deep dive into improv via a one-week course with the Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB). As we wind down, my instructor Nick handed out a worksheet that summarizes the rules of improv that he’s worked to instill into my 16 classmates and me. The last item reads: “Final Rule: You can break all of the preceding rules, however, most of the time you’ll be better off if you don’t. Improv rules tend to be life rules.”

Given what I’ve learned in this course, I suspect that the intended meaning of this last point is that good improv is realistic. For improv to be funny, it needs to have a grounding in reality. If it’s completely fantastical, and the characters and scenarios are simply crazy, the audience will stop caring.

That said, I also interpret this in another way: the more comfortable you are with life, the more receptive the audience will be to your improv. From the two shows I’ve viewed and through my experience with my classmates, I find that the performers who consistently get the most laughs are those who truly don’t care about how they’re perceived, who are okay with complete lack of control in a scene, and who are totally focused on the moment (as opposed to the audience, or other distractions). In short, the more comfortable they are with their place in the universe (and whatever it throws at them), the more readily the audience connects with their work.

My last day of class is tomorrow, followed by a show at the UCB theater on Saturday evening. Here we go-

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Checking in from Los Angeles

June 25, 2010 by Nabil 1 Comment

If someone asked me to define my summer internship in one word, I’d say, “storytelling.” If I were given two words, I’d say, “performance ethnography.”

My goal for the summer is to get a lot better at understanding peoples’ personal stories (ethnography), and sharing their stories – as well as my own – with others in a compelling way (performance).

The first 20 days of my internship have been decidedly ethnographic. With the exception of a workshop I held for students at a community center in Springfield Missouri, my days have been spent listening, rather than talking. I felt that it was important for me to start in this order because my gut tells me that in order to tell a good story, I must first become a good listener. Over my cross-country drive, I’ve interviewed 32 people on camera, in eleven cities across America, in discussions that ranged from five minutes to two hours in length. From the electrical engineer who became a pastor in Tulsa Oklahoma, to the graphic designer who moved to Mumbai India to start a nonprofit, to the Polish refugee who built a large baking business in Chicago, most of my interviews were focused on people who took a big risk to follow a passion.

So now that I’ve arrived in Los Angeles, what’s next? Well, now it’s time for performance. In my mind performance is defined as taking an idea and sharing it with others in a compelling way. This can take many forms, from addressing strangers on a street corner to publishing a documentary. In the following two months, I plan to practice performance in three ways:
1. Open mics: Reciting stories at open mic venues throughout LA.
2. Improv: Creating stories on the fly and performing them in front of others.
3. Film: Telling story via short-form video.

To that end, next week I start my open mic training via Fresh Faces, a standup workshop instructed by the talented Leslie Wolff. I also start a one-week intensive improv course with the Upright Citizens Brigade. Finally, I plan to hit the editing room and produce a series of short, hopefully inspirational videos using the footage I gathered over the course of my journey thus far.

So there we have it: performance ethnography. Here we go-

New Mexico, Arizona, & arriving in Los Angeles

June 21, 2010 by Nabil 1 Comment

The odometer has clicked to 3,000 miles, tall palm trees line the streets, and dusty deserts have made way to a cavalcade of motorists heading to the grand blue Pacific. This can only mean one thing: I’ve arrived in Los Angeles.

The last few days have brought with them opportunities to get new perspectives on passion. Among them:
– Father Jim, the assistant priest at El Santuario de Chimayó, a famous church that has been called “the most important Catholic pilgrimage center in the United States.” Father Jim spoke about discovering his passion as a child while playing priest with his older sisters in Colorado. (Sante Fa, New Mexico)
– David, former employee of Los Alamos National Labs who quit his job to follow his passion for organic farming, and in the process developed a new form of garlic powder. (Santa Fe, New Mexico)
– Pritham, a good friend who balanced working as a full time management consultant with studying for her MCATs. She just completed her first year in osteopathic medicine and discusses the road that led her there. (Phoenix, Arizona)
– Three contestants who were auditioning for their own talk show on Oprah’s forthcoming TV network. (Laguna Niguel, California)

As I reflect on my time on the road, I feel blessed to have encountered so many unique perspectives, and also been supported so heartily by the family, friends, and friends-of-friends who were kind enough to open their hearts (and often their homes) to help make my project possible.

A few quotes that have stayed with me:
– “If you are fearful, fear will find you” – Volunteer for Heidelberg Project on working in neighborhoods with high crime (Detroit)
– “There is no such thing as a safe job anymore – Entrepreneurial baker on choosing your passion for a career versus what you think will be lucrative and stable (Chicago)
– “The unique thing about poverty in Buffalo is that it is neither entirely urban or rural. It is wide swaths of urban neighborhoods that are vacant, except for a few remaining city dwellers” – Local journalist on the new age of urban poverty (Buffalo)
– “To fail is to succeed at the wrong thing” – Engineer turned Pastor on the definition of failure (Tulsa)

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