Stop Chasing Laughs
“‘Chasing laughs’ from an audience comes from a fear that your skill and ability are valued solely by how quickly and thoroughly you can ring laughs from the room.”
You are stepping out in front of a room full of people you hope to make laugh as loudly as possible for as long as possible. To do that you want to show that you are comfortable, at ease and in control of the room, because if the audience feels that you are desperate for their laughter then they are less likely to give it to you. So, how do you step out with the very obvious need for their laughter but without letting them know that? Because laughter is what you’re desperate for, right?
Well, actually, maybe that’s the answer - before going on stage say to yourself “It’s fine if no-one laughs”.
“It’s fine if no-one laughs” is a mantra that you can use to help get you out of chasing them down. For me, and I hope for you, it leads to better shows (Better classes even. Better meetings even. Better birthday parties even!). And by ‘better’ I don’t just mean shows which get more laughs, I mean shows that go better and that you feel better about. Shows that you come off stage smiling about regardless of the audience reaction. Shows that no longer dictate your real-world well-being, that don’t have the power to put you under a cloud for a week. Shows which will be better for you.
The reason it works is because you take the pressure off and allow yourself to be fine with getting nothing back. You free yourself up to do things you actually want to do on stage, rather than worrying about controlling something you can’t control - other people’s response..
Here’s a quote from Stoic philosopher Epictetus that sums up what I’m saying:
“Take a lyre player: he’s relaxed when he performs alone, but put him in front of an audience, and it’s a different story, no matter how beautiful his voice or how well he plays the instrument. Why? Because he not only wants to perform well, he wants to be well received — and the latter lies outside his control.”
- Epictetus, Enchiridion
I appreciate that this quote sounds like an unrelatable, Roman-times thing to say that has no bearing on modern day life - for example, we all know now that lyre players objectively suck whether they perform well or not, so Epictetus is totally off there. But, despite being an ancient philosopher with a big beard and one of them stupid togas that people back then were obsessed with, I think it’s still a helpful sentiment to take on when you’re pretending to be a duck in a room above a pub.
‘Chasing laughs’ from an audience comes from a fear that your skill and ability are valued solely by how quickly and thoroughly you can ring laughs from the room. All of your choices are dictated by ‘but will this get a laugh’. By chasing laughs, you put the audience in control of how well your show goes and your ‘goal’ is to predict what they will or won’t like - something it’s impossible to know with certainty. You are, in other words, trying to control something that “lies outside your control”. Your behaviour on stage becomes reactive and your balance is all off.
Using “it’s fine if no-one laughs” is a good shorthand mantra to help get you out of that unhelpful thinking and instead get you actively making good choices. It might sound counterintuitive at first - in order to make an audience laugh we have to not try and make them laugh. Like a comedy audience is a magic-eye poster (look at it, but don’t really look at it, and sort of look past it, and let your eyes go funny, and now it’s 3 dolphins jumping out of the sea). To be clear, I’m not saying you should actively avoid trying to do good comedy. It’s just about making sure that it’s what you consider good, not just what you hope will get a quick laugh.
So, rather than trying to desperately convince an audience that you are funny, your goal becomes to perform your best and commit to what you think makes the show funnier. And that’s it. It’s not a trick that you do to secretly make the audience laugh more, it’s a way to relieve the pressure of worrying and free yourself up.
Going on stage needing the audience to love you is an anxiety that leads to worse performance and greater regret. Going on stage with an internal goal such as ‘doing what you think makes the show funnier’ leads to more confident shows and more confident performers. The added benefit is that the audience will enjoy them more too.
Again, you might think it’s still a trick “Ah, I get it, Alex, so we don’t try (wink) to make the audience laugh (wink, smile) and just worry about doing our best (wink, clapping hands, dancing man by accident, wink)”. We are of course ‘doing comedy’ and you would like the audience to see what you’re doing as funny. But, in order for you to actually do your best stuff you have to not worry about whether it will work or not. You have to be happy to fail.
Personally, when I think about how I used to feel about shows before I’d adopted this way of thinking, it often had nothing to do with how well the audience reacted. I have incredibly fond memories of scraping through tough crowds on a few laughs and coming off stage beaming. I also remember raucous, packed houses but coming off stage depressed because I felt I’d not hit some level I was hoping to achieve. In each instance, it’s actually nothing to do with the show, it was all about what I considered to be success or not. In the first instance I was content to have fun and enjoy myself on stage, something well in my control. In the latter, I made it my goal to make people laugh the most they had ever laughed and then be presented with a medal at the end, something that I could not control. In the first example I was actually putting into practice the behaviour that I now try to adopt all the time.
Here’s another way of thinking about being ‘fine’ at silence and what benefit it can have. If you’re an improviser you will undoubtedly have memories of classes or rehearsals where you had an amazing time. It was just you and your team doing what you enjoyed and it all effortlessly fitted together into a hilarious and wonderful show. You all loved it and came away from the night on a total high. “If only we’d had an audience for that one” you said to yourselves. But, let’s imagine that in an alternate world you’d happened to have a full audience in the room and, miraculously, the same show manifested itself. Do you think you’d all have left the room feeling the same way you did in the rehearsal version? It’s unlikely. The audience’s reaction would become an additional layer of judgement that you’d use to tell yourselves whether your own performance, the one that in the first instance you were totally happy with, was adequate or not. What an unnecessary and unhelpful layer to add. Isn’t that first feeling, the feeling of you and your team deciding what makes a good or bad show, the one that you want to foster?
That’s what taking yourself out of the ‘chasing laughs’ mentality can do for you. To take you out of that unhelpful space and to start considering your choices and shows based on more than simply ‘did I get enough laughs’.
Some people may take instinctively against this theory or feel there are some holes in the argument, to which I say “shut up, no there aren’t”. But, let’s say that I’m feeling generous enough to entertain a few of these (ridiculous) ideas, and let’s discuss a few potential barriers to saying ‘it’s fine if they don’t laugh’.
You may think that not worrying if the audience laughs will lead to bad comedy. I’m not suggesting that you don’t try to do good comedy, but that you try to do what you consider good, not what you consider will win the audience over. “But, couldn’t that lead to self-indulgent shows that are awful in their own unique way?” you think. Yeah, maybe it could. If someone had totally and utterly no concern for the audience they may create a show that is impenetrably self-indulgent and only funny to the performer. But, I don’t know if that’s such a terrible thing to exist in the world. And you could certainly say that someone putting on that show will have reached a level of performance and enjoyment on stage that we’d all be jealous of. You could also likely say that they were... happier? Gasp!
You may think that being ‘fine’ with silence goes against the idea of using laughter to help us find what’s fun in the scene. But it’s not true that simply because you’re not chasing laughs you should ignore them. Of course listen to the audience and use them to help guide you. Listen and react to what’s happening in the room, just don’t make your choices from a fear of what reaction you’ll get, make them from trust in your own judgment. If it helps, we can prefix the line to make it clearer - “It’s great if the audience laughs, but it’s fine if they don’t”.
Another barrier you might feel is that you don’t trust your own judgment. “I need to worry what the audience finds funny because I don’t know”. Maybe you think you’re not experienced enough and believe that fretting about the audience reaction is necessary to help you improve. Purely using the audience reaction to help you know if you’re good or not and help you determine what is and isn’t funny is a very unreliable barometer. There are exactly 35,000 reasons why an audience may or may not find you funny that have nothing to do with exactly what you do on stage (They may all have just been made bankrupt at the same time, for example. You just don’t know). The only way you’re going to properly improve your skill and judgment is to find an internal way of deciding what you consider good or bad. And that definitely won’t come from trying to second guess what will instantly make the people sat in front of you laugh.
Stopping yourself from being obsessed with audience reaction also allows you to consider and learn from your shows in a more healthy way. After a show you can better think about what worked well and what didn’t compared to a show that just ricocheted from one attempted gag to the next. Chasing laughs makes your progress slower, not faster. Tons of great notes and improvement have been lost on stage because of someone fearfully returning to an old habit to try and guarantee a reaction. And, as you gain experience, you’ll develop from a much stronger place, one of improving what is worthwhile, rather than getting into bad habits purely for better short-term laughs.
You may also be thinking “Alex, I’ve been chasing laughs for ages now and that’s working perfectly fine for me thank you, I don’t need to think about lyre players.” In which case, that’s great. I’m pleased. But, if you find yourself doing things purely because you’re hoping for a laugh, and if you find yourself coming away from a good show heartbroken because you didn’t think you ‘got enough’ from the audience, then maybe you could do with a little bit of ‘being fine’.
To summarise this essay - and it is an essay - I believe that anyone who gets really good in any art form ultimately comes to this thought process. They may not consciously be aware of it, but their performance will embody this idea. Whether it’s because they’ve taken the time to consider it or they’ve naturally come to this perspective through experience - in other words they’ve done enough shows to not worry about what one audience thinks, confident enough to trust in their own decisions and be comfortable in silence. If you want to get better, starting to approach your performance from this mindset is going to have to come sooner or later.
So, when you’re next about to step on stage, take a breath and remind yourself that you’re in charge of whether you think you’ve done well or not. Your job is to go out and make moves that you think will make the show better, that you think make it funny. After that, it’s out of your hands. It’s fine if no-one laughs.
Alex Holland is a writer, comedian and Head Teacher at The Free Association. He has a Royal Television Society Award for creating the short-film sketch-show 'Best Friends That Love Each Other' and is a co-director of the very serious Chrysalis Theatre company.
You can see Alex performing in:
The Petting Zoo, The Cartel, Jacuzii, The Nearly News show, Chrysalis Theatre and more...
