How to Be Funny

A few months ago I had the privilege of teaching an improvisational comedy workshop about building relationships on stage. While the workshop could be considered a success, once it was over my co-instructor said of the participants,

“They did some good work but hey, I guess you can’t teach funny.”

Can’t you?

Look at all of these people, all finding something funny.

Being funny is not easy. I do not say this because of the ‘sad clown’ myth or the tale of Pagliacci or the fact that participation in any comedy circuit is a largely thankless task. I say it because being funny is, on a fundamental level beyond the professional sphere, the product of hours upon hours of effort.

People say ‘you can’t teach funny’, but to say that is to begin from a false premise. The question the people that say this should be asking is ‘can you learn funny?’ The answer to that question is undoubtedly yes. It is proven by the fact that funny people exist. If we accept that the way a human being acts is the product of all that they have learnt (a stance that any amount of armchair psychology will vindicate), then it stands to reason that a funny person, at some point, learned how to be funny. How? Simple. Whether they noticed they were doing it or not, they paid attention.

If you look through the annals of history, any individual that is extraordinary in a particular field has one thing over…