Five Ways To Deal With Freezing Up For Comics

Comedians and presenters have to deal with the top fear in the world: Public speaking. People are less afraid of spiders!

So how do all of these performers deal with the idea of stage fright, doubts about their material and worst of all….freezing up on stage?

Remind them that this suit is a rental?

To be honest, I get nervous all the time too and so do many of your favourite comedians. It’s part of the job and it happens to many of us dozens if not hundreds of times. Whether is because of dealing with new material, feeling a bit disoriented (see a doctor) getting interrupted or your mother is in the audience, there are ways to handle this so that you can save your performance and keep up a somewhat professional
Here’s 5 ways to deal with freezing up or forgetting your set on stage.

1 Breathe
Take a breath. Everyone forgets their lines, their jokes and even their speech (sometimes even when it’s on the page right in front of them), you won’t be the first and definitely won’t be the last.

Make sure to regulate your chakra at the same time.

Take a second to put yourself in the present and not panic. There’s no need to scramble for the thing you wrote down to try and get the wording perfectly. If you can’t remember it that’s fine and it’s ok to let it go, take a breath and keep going. The audience has no idea what you were going to say, and while it may seem a bit off that you paused a bit or that your timing wasn’t right, you’re performing an original piece and they don’t know what is supposed to come next.

You can try to follow the general thread of the joke if you think you at least know the punchline but in times like these you might find a more interesting way to go with your joke. You’re still fresh and nobody expects you to be amazing or even have any jokes at all! So take a deep breath check whether you wanna stick on this track and then move on.

2 Laugh at yourself
Mistakes are funny. Take advantage of that fact and call some direct attention to the fact that you made a mistake. If done well, the audience will find this break in tension hilarious and laugh with you for a few seconds. This will give you just enough time to collect yourself and get back on your game.

This is an effective gambit but really only can be used once per set. Relying on it too often or even trying to turn it into its own joke can be disappointing for both you and the audience.

What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, prostate exams.

You may be about to type a comment telling me about a comic who can successfully make this into a more lasting joke or even am entire set. I’d say they’re professionals and even they know that it isn’t a consistent strategy over time unless you want to make this your whole shtick, steer clear of abusing it as a whole bit on its own.

Employ this sparingly.

3 Don’t. Stop. Talking
Some performers are blessed with the gift of logorrhea and can spill words out and make it all make sense by the end. Watch some of them a few times and you’ll start to see some patterns in how they do it and why it works for them and how you might be able to make a version work for you.

You can stop if you actually hear your teeth chattering.

Usually there are some spacer words, a bit of laughing at yourself and even a bit of crowd work if you’re feeling comfy with your audience.

If you can get a couple of seconds to clear your head and figure out where you are in your act then you might have time and space to finish your bit or you might need to move to our final suggestion, which is….

4 Have a backup
Even skydivers have a backup parachute (actually I think they might have been pioneers on this).

Have a piece of material ready and waiting that you can always jump to if you start stumbling and need to pull the plug on a bit, either because it’s not working or you’ve forgotten where it goes (this happens to the best of us. My brain is a mess!)

Typically your backup is a short solid joke that you know like the back of your hand. Usually for shorter sets comics will have an ace one minute joke that will save their set or they can use it as a quick finisher once they get the light.

I shouldn’t have pulled this cord whilst over the lake tho

Over time you’ll develop other backup jokes that you can pop out whenever you need to but make sure they’re actual jokes. As in a real setup and punchline that you’ve tested and has a pretty good. success rate. A good backup will serve you well as long as you don’t get too tired of telling it. And then you’ll probably still tell it for a year after that.

5 Practice. Practice. Practice.

I don’t have any scientific evidence as to why people freeze on stage or forget their lines but I do have some experience with “muscle memory”.

If you’re not familiar with this concept, Wikipedia does have a bit of a description

Muscle memory is a form of procedural memory that involves consolidating a specific motor task into memory through repetition, which has been used synonymously with motor learning.

This normally is just applied to physical actions in sports and repetitive work environments but it definitely applies here in performance as well.

Many performers will tell you that after telling certain jokes or stories over 50–100 times that they sometimes could zone out completely, not even paying attention, thinking about something else entirely and still perform their bit flawlessly!

How?! It seems almost ridiculous to imagine talking without being completely present and being funny no less!

This comes from all of the work and tedious care that they’ve put into creating the habit at the outset to the point that by the time they’ve done it a few dozen times it becomes second nature to them.

The more you do your jokes and the more you get on stage in general, your demeanor and your approach and comfort will start to become apparent. Eventually freezing up will be a thing of the past and you can get back to the hard part of comedy; deciding what to do with all your drink tickets!