Funny business
The school for comedians
Neil Thornton has a mini-cassette with laughter on it. The decade-old recording preserves his first attempt at stand-up from a comedy class in New York City – including the very first laughs he harvested. He has other recordings too, of times when he bombed.
It seems comedy is like life – we learn to stand up, and hopefully get better at it. Like life, the experience is reassuringly communal: everybody dies at least once.
Thornton, teacher and founder of the NZ Comedy School in Wellington, spoke to the Sunday Star-Times about whether comedy can be taught, the pure mathematics of jokes, and whether anything is out of bounds for laughter.
Each year the school runs about five or six classes, of 10 students, in a course that culminates with a graduation performance in a packed club.
There’s a mythology, Thornton says, that you can’t teach people to be funny, ‘‘and I think that’s insane’’.
‘‘Anybody who enjoys stand-up comedy and has a sense of humour can obviously learn to be funny, can learn to be funnier than they are right now.’’
There are many pathways to getting laughs.
‘‘One of my favourites is recognition, the ‘a-ha’ of shared humanity: ‘I know that feeling, I know that emotion, I’ve thought that same thing too’. When you surprise people with that one, beautiful click of 100 people having a great moment of shared humanity.’’
The ‘‘pure math’’ of the joke starts with a set-up: a piece of factual information, not necessarily funny in itself, but something that sets up expectation, tension.
Then there is the punchline with a surprise, or twist.
Thornton says there are rules covering the targets of jokes in his classes.
‘‘Every joke has a target, every joke has a butt of a joke. Traditional butts of jokes have been women and minorities and LGBT folks and people with disabilities.’’
His number one rule is ‘don’t punch down’; his number two is to remember there’s diversity in every audience and nobody wants to pay to have a bad time.
Wellington graduate Brenda Hamblyn enrolled after discovering the comic novel she was writing wasn’t funny.
She wanted to sharpen her joke-writing skills, but experienced a surprising jolt when she delivered those jokes at the Cavern Club in Wellington and realised the only part of her set she could remember was ‘hello I’m Brenda’. But when she grabbed the microphone, everything returned to her. It was her first stand-up act, she was in the zone, and ‘‘I didn’t want to give the mic back, to be honest’’.
Since then she has continued stand-up alongside fulltime work. She has been too busy writing jokes for the stage to return to that novel.
It was the middle of summer when Mairanga White sat in the audience at a precourse workshop listening to Thornton. She was sweating but not from the heat. It was nerves, as she teetered on the edge of committing to getting on stage.
When her daughter turned 18 the actor and former broadcaster decided it was time to do something creative for herself again.
Her daughter, Ariana Millin-White, said nobody wanted to hear ‘‘mum jokes’’. ‘‘I said, ‘right, I’m determined now to get on stage and talk about you’.’’
Millin-White was in the audience for White’s graduation performance.
‘‘I was shaking inside, but hiding it . . . and you could see the terror in every one of my classmates’ eyes . . . we were all in the same boat, all freaking terrified.’’
Almost a year to the day later, White gained her first paid gig, something she feels incredibly proud of as she continues to refine her material at venues around Wellington.
Semi Cho was fascinated watching stand-up comedians and started ‘‘winging it’’ at open mic nights. At first she thought she was doing well. But the footage showed a lot to improve on.
A friend suggested the comedy school and she said it helped with everything from stage craft to joke writing.
Her time on stage feels joyful, she said. ‘‘You’re contributing to something, offering a new perspective on something, hearing people having a chill, good time really makes me happy.’’
Thornton had what he calls ‘‘my first hit of heroin’’ about a decade ago in the US.
‘‘Finally in my mid-late 30s I took a stand-up class . . . it took a huge leap of faith to put down the money on that class, and it was the only way I was going to get started, frankly.’’
He shifted to New Zealand about six years ago and was successful here too – starting the school several years ago, with classes now running in Auckland under comedian Tim Batt.
There’s always failure onstage, but it seems like it’s still better than failing at regular stuff.
‘‘As jobs go, bombing hurts, but it’s a really fun context in which to do it. Knowing that every comic out there bombs, all the time, constantly, with new material.’’
It’s just great knowing you’re not alone, Thornton says.
‘‘You’re contributing to something, offering a new perspective on something, hearing people having a chill, good time really makes me happy.’’ Semi Cho