Go Bananas: Telling jokes for votes
By Michael Wells
First off I just want to say if you ever get the chance to go to Go Bananas in Cincinnati, you need to do it.
It's an amazing club with a very intimate atmosphere. Recently I had the privilege of being in the Go Bananas Funniest Person in Cincinnati contest. I have done a few comedy contests before and I love doing them.
This was my first time ever being on stage at Go Bananas and all I have to say is I loved it. I may not have advanced in the contest, but I told my jokes I wanted to do and had a great set. I was disappointed not to hear my named called at the end, but I learned so much from it.
>>>>LEARN more about Go Bananas Comedy Club
Each comics gets 5 minutes to tell their jokes. If it's your first time telling jokes, 5 minutes can last a lifetime. However, if you have been doing comedy for a while, 5 minutes is just a tease. So in 5 minutes you have to tell some of your best jokes in hopes of advancing. What I learned in these 5 minutes is not to rush your jokes.
I had an idea about how long my selective material would take, but I overlooked one thing. People laugh at jokes and you need to account for laughs when telling jokes. As I was doing my set at Go Bananas, I started to realize that I'm getting behind in my jokes, and I wasn't going to finish all the ones I had planned. Because of this, I started to make big mistakes.
>>>>MORE FROM MICHAEL WELLS: Different ends of the spectrum Part 1
I started to step on my laughs. Stepping on laughs means the audience is laughing at one of your jokes, and rather than let it continue, you tell the next joke. Now you have stopped good laughs to go into another joke that might not get any laughs at all. You are killing you momentum over and over again. Doing that in a contest setting is, well, stupid and will never help.
So what I learned is to let the jokes sit. Allow the audience to laugh, then go on to the next one because you are only hurting yourself.
To end this article I just want to thank Go Bananas for letting me tell some jokes and showing me that it's not the quantity of jokes, but the quality of jokes that gets votes. I can't wait to go back.
