The Comedy Group Book: How to Run One! How to Get Laughs! How to Make Money!

Pitt

PREFACE

Theater in all its aspects is by nature the most collaborative of the arts. No one can perform in a vacuum, and mirrors never learned to applaud. Actors are as interdependent as is nature to man and man to nature.

Watching Diz White’s group was like watching the Harlem Globe Trotters or the Philadelphia Orchestra. Her company’s work exceeded the genius and virtuosity of each of its members so that the whole, in fact, became far greater than the sum of its parts.

Discipline, dedication, embellishment, restraint.

And a thousand laughs.

Sparks spark sparks in others.

HENRY GIBSON, Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In

INTRODUCTION

Ilove my job. I am an actor. I can count on the fingers of one hand other actors who have been able to say the same thing to me. They do not love their job. Mostly because they don’t have one. I am one of those rare people who can honestly say that for almost my entire career I made my living as an actor—full time.

I have avoided the fate of many an unfortunate thespian by never having had a secondary job. Well, I did have a few secondary jobs, to begin with, but not after I started my comedy group and gave myself full-time acting work for the next fifteen years straight and still counting. Actually, my job became my vocation—making the audience laugh. Making them laugh, so gut-bustingly, that they would fall off their seats and lose their contact lenses in the tears streaming down their faces.

But before I created my comedy group, when I was still finding my way, I wish I had had this book to help me get to the place where I could make an audience laugh like that and get paid for doing it. Being able to benefit from the practical advice, production information, resource guides, tips, and shortcuts it lays out would have eliminated my tortuous journey down the many blind alleys encountered in this vastly overcrowded profession of acting.

This book gives an actor the opportunity to cut to the chase. It can bring an end to the often humiliating experience of knocking on someone’s face for a job. After all, what could be more ridiculously demeaning than auditioning for a casting director who is standing on the bottom of a swimming pool in scuba gear (yes, this really happened). The poor actors were required to dive down to her and smile as they swam past! You’ll find more outrageous war stories when you read on.

The middlemen who inhabit the showbiz industry turn acting into one of the few professions that make it is impossible for a performer, like you, to apply directly to a potential employer for work. This renders you, more often than not, powerless in your search for employment. The contents of this book can restore that power to you by showing how it is possible to do an end run around all those casting directors, agents, managers, directors, network executives, and everybody else who seems to stand in the way of allowing you to do what you love best—act for a living. This is accomplished by creating your own product—a show—and making it so noteworthy that the movers and shakers come to you to supply their theatrical and programming needs.

This book shows you not only how to cast yourself in a role that is a perfect fit in a production over which you have total control but how to mount that production and make money while you are doing it.

What kind of fantasy is this? you might be thinking at this very moment. For me this was no fantasy. I made it happen. I want to pass on the knowledge and expertise I gained from my experience, and to that end my book offers a step-by-step guide to both the creative and the business aspects of setting up and running a comedy group before moving on to show how a successful comedy group can maximize its potential by reaching the top. It then shows how a group member can transition to a successful solo career.

Initially, I explain how the powerful dynamics of a group situation can be used in creating an outstanding comedy show. Next the book describes techniques for defining a group’s comedy style, casting, rehearsing, directing, producing, and writing comedy. Following this is valuable practical information on how a group can create sets, costumes, lighting, and theatrical special effects and mount a full-length, professional evening’s entertainment. In addition, the business of running a comedy group is laid out in an easily understood way and includes information on developing a business plan, forming a legal business, budgeting, raising finance, marketing, publicizing a show, and much more. There is practical information on investor relations, creating and maintaining a revenue stream, merchandizing, developing a brand image, pitching and selling a network and movie product, and a myriad of helpful hints, tips, shortcuts, and advice that would enable a comedy group to get to the top of its game. There are also a number of practical techniques that show how an individual actor can use a comedy group as a springboard to a successful solo career. The appendices contain an extensive resource guide, a list of recommended reading, an Internet support list, and other useful information for helping you start and promote a comedy group.

Not only did I transform myself into an actor who worked all the time, but by creating my comedy group, I became an award-winning comedy playwright, an accomplished director, a profit-making producer, an effective publicist, a creative art director, and a nominated screen and television writer into the bargain. Creating and running my comedy group gave me a job that was a life-changing experience. It was hard work, but what fun and laughs I had.

Now tell me this … Do you love your job?

DIZ WHITE

A good rule of thumb is if you made it to thirty-five years of age and your job requires you to wear a name tag then you’ve made a serious vocational error.

DENNIS MILLER

1 WHY CREATE A COMEDY GROUP?

IN THIS CHAPTER

Waiting for the Phone to Ring

The Product

Various Comedy Group Aspects

Being Your Own Boss

Laughter as a Vocation

Creating a comedy group was the best thing I could ever have done for myself. It stretched every bit of talent I had. It empowered me. It gave me more fun and laughter than I could ever possibly imagine. It raised my self-esteem. It made me a grown-up. It gave me wonderful new friends. It changed me from a whiny out-of-work actor/victim into a hyphenate—an actor-writer-director-producer. It improved my math. It cured my shyness. It made me use my imagination twenty-four hours a day. It gave me an agent. It gave me an education in business. It allowed me to meet talented people I admired. It broadened my outlook with travel. It gave me a presence in show business. It gave me steady acting work. It got me out of the suburbs. It made me work really, really hard. It gave me a body of work that makes me proud. It gave me a family. It gave me awards. It allowed me to fulfill my mission—making people laugh. It gave me a way to get to the top of my game. It gave me a life.

WAITING FOR THE PHONE TO RING

If you are a ruthlessly ambitious solo actor hell bent on stardom with an incredible ego, the drive of an army general, high-up connections in showbiz, and a ton of talent and are young, thin, and stunning, not a team player, and prepared to sell your soul to the devil, then read no further. Creating a comedy group is not for you. Go be a star!

But for the rest of us, being an actor might go something like this: So you’ve got some training as an actor. You have an agent. You have a secondary job that keeps the wolf from the door and allows you time off for auditions. You are all set. And then you sit and wait … and wait … and wait. And the phone never rings. That’s what happened to me.

Before I had begun the waiting game, I was living in London and attending art school, studying graphic design and illustration. Art school was a riot with a big chunk of my time spent being funny with the other students. My friend Tony, an artist, was acting in his spare time. He and I used to riff comedy jokes and pranks all day long. He had just joined a comedy improvisation group that performed at lunchtime on the London fringe theatre circuit and invited me to come and see him perform his show.

Do you make your family and friends laugh so hard they do spit-takes? Do people you know frequently say,You are really funny—you should be working more? If so, it’s time to start your own comedy group.

From the front row of a tiny theater in the Tottenham Court Road, I watched Tony perform a funny show, toward the end of which he suddenly pulled me up onstage to improvise a scene with him. I had never been on a stage in my life, but instead of being scared, I just went with the flow.

It was easy! It was no different from our joking around in the art studio, and I was amazed when the audience laughed at our scene. Suddenly a lightbulb turned on in my brain. It was possible to do this stuff for a living. You could actually get paid to joke around and have a good time showing off in front of a bunch of people. The acting bug bit me right there and then.

I got some training as an actor. I got an agent, then a secondary job in a public relations company to keep the wolf from the door. Then I waited and waited—but the phone never rang. Does this sound familiar?

It gradually dawned on me that the phone would never ring. Well, I might get offered an extra role here or an understudy role there but nothing much more. Also I found I was spending too much nonproductive time trying to get a solo career going. By now the comedy performing I had done had hooked me on making people laugh. It was so rewarding to have audience members come up to me after a performance to tell me that I had made them feel terrific. I got such a buzz from it.

Unfortunately, as a solo actor I was only performing about 5 percent of the time, and this performing didn’t pay any money as it was usually in showcase plays. I was chasing agents, interviewing managers, auditioning, going to callbacks, getting new photos, networking, reading all the trades, going to casting workshops, and hustling every conceivable angle. I was doing everything but land an acting job.

Added to this were the negative psychological consequences of being repeatedly turned down for acting roles. Despite being a very positive person, the constant rejection was beginning to wear on me. The frustrating part was that these decisions were always completely out of my control, and many times they were arbitrary. I would be turned down because I was one inch too tall or because the producer was in a terrible mood and rejected everybody who auditioned that day.

I was also becoming aware that many superbusy casting directors and agents forget that actors are human beings. It’s not for nothing that some auditions are referred to as cattle calls. So much humiliation is suffered in the pursuit of a career, I am often amazed at the stoicism of actors who constantly subject themselves to this barrage of abuse year after year. Conventional wisdom states that a definition of insanity is doing something over and over again without ever achieving a positive result.

Do you come back from three out of every four auditions with the feeling that you want to break crockery? After these auditions do you feel that you are wasting your life? If so, it’s time to start your own comedy group and begin casting yourself in the shows you will create.

I thought I had been pretty realistic at the beginning of my quest to get work. I didn’t want to be a star. I wanted to be a working actor. I liked acting or more specifically comedy acting. I merely wanted to perform every day or as much as possible and earn a living from it.

It began to sink in that I had as little chance of becoming a moderately successful working actor who could live off my acting earnings as I did of winning the lottery. I simply had no control over my destiny.

There are just so many actors! They’re all knocking on someone’s face for a job and living lives of not such quiet desperation as they wail about the difficulty of landing acting roles and how much they hate being a waitress/waiter/bartender/Kelly temp/construction worker, and so on. Of course, I had great empathy for them, being one myself.

There are a several ways for an actor to get on the fast track to success. One way is having the good fortune to be born into a theatrical dynasty like the Fondas or the Redgraves and have yourself promoted as the famous daughter/son/relative of a long line of acting greats. Failing that, looking like a god or a goddess—correction a young, thin god or goddess—will carry you a long way. Alternatively, being able to make use of showbiz connections in high places. As the old cliché goes in Hollywood: No amount of nepotism is too much. Finally, if an actor has private means, pots of money can be spent on hiring a top publicist to gain maximum exposure. Without these advantages, the competition is pretty stiff.

You gotta laugh …

"I’m not a nurse but I play one on TV

I decided that I wouldn’t ever take another temp job after my experience with one between acting jobs in New York. My job was for an advertising agency whose client was a housing developer. The developer had taken a disused hospital and turned it into condos, which were now on the market. Another actress and I were hired to play fake nurses who would parade outside the hospital/condos with flyers to lure passersby into buying these overpriced homes. We had to wear short, tight white coats with push-up bras and low-cut leotards underneath—all this in addition to long blond wigs and stiletto heels.

With a big pile of flyers in hand, we set to work in front of the hospital/condos. On the third day of tottering around on our stilettos, we noticed a commotion a little farther up the street from us. A crowd had gathered, and after a while a frantic-looking elderly man came running up to us. Quickly, come with me, he said. We stared at him, mystified, and when we didn’t follow him, he became irate. Hurry, you two. You’re needed right now.

Some poor fellow had keeled over and needed urgent medical help. We told this man that we were actresses, not nurses, but he didn’t believe us. He yelled at us angrily. We got scared and ran in the opposite direction—as best we could in our sky-high stilettos. He gave chase. People in the street gaped as we clattered along, looking like we were taking part in a scene from a Benny Hill episode wherein a lecherous old man chases after bosomy nurses as they squeal loudly—all in speeded-up motion. We squealed so loudly that a passerby came to our aid and grabbed the angry old man before he caught up with us.

This experience motivated me into forming my comedy group. After I did, I never, ever, had to take a temp job again.

Be proactive about your career. If you are a solo actor and you are not booking jobs—don’t live on hope that it’s going to change. Hope isn’t very nourishing! Creating a comedy group offers a way to do an end run around agents and casting directors. It gives you back your power.

I had none of them, so I decided I needed to create a power base. I needed a place from which I could leverage my way above the madding crowds of actors going after the same scarce jobs.

THE PRODUCT

It finally came to me that I needed a product to sell and one that I had some chance of successfully marketing. Of course, it’s true all actors do have a product—themselves. However, the nature of show business is such that they are prevented from selling this commodity directly to the buyer.

There was a time early on in theater, television, and movies when agents and casting directors did not exist. Katherine Hepburn made her start by going to the theater where a play she liked was running and presenting herself to the director. He hired her! Ah, those were the days! These days multiple sets of middlemen form a cast-iron barrier between the actor looking for work and the producer, director, or network executive who can green-light an actor for a role on a series or in a major motion picture. They fend off everybody except the top echelon of performers. Like it or not, these agents, managers, casting directors, packagers, and network executives are an essential part of showbiz.

Without an agent or manager, it is almost impossible for an actor to get work. Film and television producers will not hire an actor unless he or she is represented by an agent; therefore, actors do not directly market themselves. An actor’s marketing is in the hands of representatives with a raft of other clients in their stables. This prevents them from giving their attention to one actor exclusively. To get work, an actor must get an agent to represent him or her. But today, agents and managers are so overwhelmed with besieging actors that they have to hire assistants just to fight off the desperate hordes of would-be actors trying for representation.

VARIOUS COMEDY GROUP ASPECTS

When I came up against this situation, I realized that I had to find another way of kicking down the door. I got to thinking about my artist buddy Tony’s little improvisation group, which was now doing very well. They were getting bookings on the London fringe. Also a couple of high-end pubs in London, with entertainment rooms, were booking them regularly. In addition, they had garnered some positive attention when they appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with a show that was fast and fun. They were creating a buzz and for good reason. Their hard work was paying off. Their comedy improvisation was the best, and they were rewarded with a cult following. The idea of forming my own comedy group began to take hold.

As much as I liked Tony’s group, I knew I wanted more than that. Improvisation was great as far as it went, but I wanted to put together scripted shows that could be sold to theaters as a full evening’s entertainment with props, sets, and costumes. As I had no idea about how to go about starting a group, I knew I needed to do some research so I studied other theater groups touring at the time.

Common threads began to emerge among the groups. Each one had a leader, or leaders, with a strong vision about the work they presented, and they had been able to recruit other actors to make their vision a reality. I knew it was very hard work, but the rewards seemed well worth the trouble. In fact, the more I thought about forming a group, the more it appealed to me. The comedy groups I observed were not waiting for the phone to ring. They were being paid to perform, write, and put together shows. They had control over their destiny, and all because they had a product that was marketable!

Many aspects of these groups appealed to me—the opportunity to travel, the feelings of confidence, camaraderie, and fun that emanated from them.

Travel

Start a comedy group and see the world! There are festivals all over the world where comedy groups perform, and one of the perks of performing in a group is getting the opportunity to travel abroad. I wanted my share of the adventure!

Travel had always appealed to me. I was born in London but had an American grandfather and had longed passionately to travel to the United States since I was seven years old. Of course, Paris wouldn’t be so bad either, or in fact anywhere in Europe.

I loved to travel but I couldn’t afford the time or money to do so until I started my comedy group. Shortly after I got my group going, I traveled to three European countries and a dozen cities within those countries. I spent over three months traveling within two years.

Family Aspects

As I hung around the comedy groups I admired, I became aware of an interesting dynamic within them. I saw that through working together closely, they had become a kind of family. Of course, they argued and squabbled and were not always entirely happy, but for the most part, they were tight little units. The demanding life of creating new work and touring it on the road had made them into cohesive families who looked out for each other in protective ways. Their unity and supportiveness seemed very attractive to me in my lonely struggle as one actor against the world.

Skunk Perfume

Another thing I noticed with these groups was the lack of the air of desperation that so many solo actors have. This air of desperation—known in showbiz as skunk perfume—can be the cause of many an actor’s failure. Casting people can detect desperation a mile away, costing an actor the job in spite of his or her training and talent.

Even big stars are often subjected to humiliations. There is the famous story of the very accomplished actress Shelley Winters being taken by her agent to meet a studio’s new young Turk producer who claimed he didn’t know her work and therefore demanded she audition. Having anticipated something of this nature, shortly after being ushered into the producer’s office, Shelley pulled an Oscar out of her purse and put it on his desk. Unimpressed, he claimed she would still have to audition. It wasn’t