One of the reasons why Killer Stand-up Online Course Members have a serious edge over most comedians is because they use objective performance review tactics for performance improvement as well as reinforcement that they are truly performing at a noteworthy level.
One such tool to conduct an objective performance review is Comedy Evaluator Pro, which is featured in the popular stand-up comedy documentary “I Am Comic” directed by Jordan Brady (last time I checked it was available on Netflix).
Note: You can also do an objective performance review using your smartphone and free apps as described below.
Comedy Evaluator Pro is an all device compatible web based application that allows comedians and comedy entertainers to accurately and objectively measure audience response for any particular show — no matter how long or short the show may be.
But here is how I want to approach the topic of conducting performance evaluations that can potentially shave years off the time it takes to produce a killer stand-up comedy act:
- I want to talk about the basis for conducting performance reviews of your stand-up comedy act.
- Next I will talk about what you can do right now simply using your smartphone and free apps that you most likely already have installed.
- Then I will address the advantages of using Comedy Evaluator Pro.
But before we move forward, here’s something you must know about stand-up comedy performances:
Headliner level comedy material generates an average of 18+ seconds of laughter per performing minute (PAR Score 30+).
This is indisputable and evidenced by the evaluation and measurement of accumulated laughter generated in ANY CD, video tape or recording of any popular headlining comedian since the beginning of stand-up comedy as an independent, stand alone performing art.
Bottom line: if you truly want to progress as a comedian, this is the performance level that you must achieve.
The Basis For Performance Reviews
There are only two things that happen when a comedian is on stage — the comedian is talking or the audience is laughing. Both of these events consume time and are easily measurable.
If an audience is not laughing or not laughing at an acceptable frequency (meaning the comedy material being delivered is either not funny or doesn’t have enough punchlines), well that is measurable too.
In the world of stand-up It’s called bombing — a warm and friendly comedy term that means the comedian is experiencing difficulty generating the laughs they need.
Probably the biggest and most powerful advantage of conducting objective performance reviews is that a comedian is able to determine — on a minute-by-minute basis which parts of their stand-up comedy act did or did not produce 4-6+ laughs per minute or an average of 18+ seconds of laughter per minute (PAR Score 30).
This can give a comedian the critical and objective feedback they need to make intelligent edits and adjustments as needed to get more laughs from their material.
In other words they know exactly which minutes of their act don’t have enough punchlines or have set-ups that are too long.
Another fantastic advantage of conducting objective performance reviews is that talented comedians don’t have to wait for ANYONE to tell them or reassure them that they are working at headliner level once they hit 18+ seconds of laughter per minute (PAR Score 30).
Let me put this another way…
Comments like “great set” or “you nailed it” offered by other comedians don’t give any real indication of just how well a comedian actually did during a performance.
Comments like “you’re getting better” fall into the same category — they don’t provide any indication of which parts of a bit need the most attention to get bigger and better laughs.
About Counting Laughs Per Minute
Simply counting the the number of collective audience laughs a comedian generates each minute can give a comedian a false sense of accomplishment without some indication of the actual laughter generation power of the stand-up comedy material that was delivered.
Here’s what I mean by that:
Let’s say that a comedian can generate 4 laughs each minute with their stand-up comedy routine.
If those laughs are only 1 second long, that means the comedian is only generating 4 seconds of laughter each minute. That may not quite be bombing, but it is a far cry from the laughter levels needed to move forward as a comedian.
Note: Individuals who generate headline level laughter from their stand-up comedy material cause average laughter episodes of 4 seconds per laugh (give or take a second).
I should also mention that a comedian does not have to hold the “title” of headliner in order to generate headliner laughter levels. But they do need to know exactly what they are doing when it comes to developing and delivering headline level stand-up comedy material.
Now let’s talk about how you can easily use your smartphone to find out what performance level you are working at.
Using Your Smartphone
Let me start with this:
You can objectively measure your overall audience laughter responses without using Comedy Evaluator Pro – you can actually do this using your smartphone and a couple of free apps that are most likely already installed on your phone.
Specifically the smartphone apps that I am referring to are:
- Audio recorder
- Stopwatch
- Calculator
That information is covered in this report:
The Advantages Of Using Comedy Evaluator Pro
There are some limitations using free smartphone apps to conduct objective performance reviews of your stand-up comedy routine, specifically:
1. Time involved. In order to get information beyond overall performance levels, you will need to do multiple reviews of the same recording of your act to get the more data you need to pinpoint specific areas of your act for performance improvement adjustments.
Using Comedy Evaluator Pro, ALL the performance data about your stand-up comedy routine can be obtained in a single review.
2. Getting the most specific and important performance data. It will be difficult at best to measure the actual duration of each audience laugh generated in each minute of your act (unless you are getting very few laughs).
This functionality is automatic when using Comedy Evaluator Pro. In other words, when it comes to audience laughter during your performance…
You know exactly what happened, how long it happened for and when it happened for each minute of your stand-up comedy act being evaluated.
Note: It is this information that is most valuable to the comedian who wants to specifically target areas of their stand-up comedy for performance improvement.
3. Keeping track of your progress. Using free smartphone apps to conduct your performance improvement reviews, you have to manually create your own documentation for each performance if you want to keep track of your progress. Not only is this time consuming but can also be a lot of work.
Using Comedy Evaluator Pro, a detailed report is provided that you can either print or capture a screen shot of for your records (there is a report on how to do this available in the CEP User Reports section of the website).
Wrap Up
Every comedian who steps on stage is afforded the exact same 60 seconds each performing minute to generate laughs — whether they are on stage for 6 minutes or 60 minutes.
A comedian’s value as a comedy entertainer is directly tied to the quantity and quality of the collective audience laughter they can generate.
A comedian begins to draw attention to themselves and gets exposed to bigger and better performing opportunities once they are able to approach or exceed generating an average of 18 seconds of audience laughter each performing minute.
When you consider that most comedians don’t even record their stand-up sets, much less conduct any sort of performance evaluation on their sets to make adjustments or edits to tighten their stand-up comedy material, it’s pretty easy to see why is takes most new comedians a really long time to finally come up with a solid and tight stand-up comedy routine.
Even if they make edits or adjustments to their material, they are left with basically having to guess if what they did made a difference or not.
So it should be pretty darn easy to see how objective performance evaluations have the potential to give a comedian a significant edge over other comedians quickly provided they know how to develop and structure their stand-up comedy material to generate 4-6+ laughs per performing minute right from the start.
Related article: Setting Standards For Stand-up Comedians
Related Video:
“If you run into a comedian who seems to have come out of nowhere, can kill an audience and seems to get funnier every time they perform”
That line says it all. Very inspirational. I feel like that comedy evaluator pro is merely a measure with how well you connect to the audience. It is a tool to guide to perform better and better each time.