comedy isn't easy

When you watch a comedian doing a standup routine, or watch actors performing in comedies, a lot of times it looks very natural and unrehearsed, but that is part of the trick.  Comedy is really challenging and lots of actors take it very seriously (ironically enough).  Look at the "Talking Funny" discussion with Jerry Seinfled, Chris Rock, Ricky Gervais and Louis CK (you can find it on Youtube).  They discuss how much practice it takes to seem as if you're just casually talking to an audience. 

Michael Richards, the actor who played Kramer on "Seinfeld", was a "method" actor.  (The "method" is an acting technique developed by directors and acting teachers, like Konstantin Stanislavsky and Lee Strasberg, in which an actor tries to get inside the head of the character he plays and grapple with the real emotion that the character is experiencing.  It can help an actor create an astonishingly real performance, but it can lead to excess as well, like Robert de Niro gaining sixty pounds to perform in the movie, "Raging Bull" or actors taking hours to "get into character" and even taking their performances home with them).  Michael Richards would spend long hours developing comic bits for Kramer to do and then when the other actors didn't do what he expected or wanted them to do, he would become quite angry.  He found if they weren't able to stay in character, that it was a terrible distraction to him and very unprofessional.  (He was right, in this respect.)  "Kramer" is a timeless character which Michael Richards created with a great deal of thought.  He didn't just show up on the set and hope that something would happen.  It is interesting to listen to him talk about his thought process when creating the aspects of Kramer we might take for granted:  the crazy hair, the little sounds, the vintage clothes, his entrances into Jerry's apartment.

We can learn from actors and comedians like this.  I am preparing to perform in a play called "Momma Won't Fly" and there are a lot of parts of the play that I know are supposed to be comic bits and I am really thinking about how I can get laughs out of them.  I am not inventive like Michael Richards is, and it is a daunting prospect to know that in three weeks you'll be going out on stage and the audience will be wanting to laugh, but if you don't deliver, they won't.  I keep going over this one part of the play and wondering how Michael Richards (or Lucille Ball or someone like that -- one of these really amazing comic performers) would do it.  I know they'd be funny but I can't guarantee the same will be true of me.  I'll let you know if I come up with something.