Matthew Hart Comedy: FIND: Your Truth and Pain

FIND: Your Truth and Pain

By Matthew L. Hart

Humor Writer/Comedian

Author of:

Uncle Matty's Halloween: Jokes, Bits & Anecdotes

What were you really into when you were a kid?

I used to play POGs a lot.

POGs are these little cardboard disks with cool graphics on them. Just a huge dumping ground for pop culture imagery.

In my school, the most popular POGs featured an 8 Ball, from billiards.

I would learn later that was actually a drug reference.

I'm sure my parents might have been worried, cause I had a bunch of them.

The game is played when each player selects a POG and stacks them face down on top of each other, and the object was to flip both POGs over with a Slammer.

A Slammer is a heavy, plastic or metal disk that you threw on the POGs to get them to flip.

You could play for Slammers, too. Same rules applied.

If you flipped over both POGs or Slammers, that person got to keep both. So, your collection would grow that way.

When I was in elementary school, POGs became this huge fad.

And, there were these plastic tubes you would store all your POGs in and they became these status symbols in the halls.

I think the ultimate tube was called a 'Lava' tube, it was like, six feet long or something. And, these POGs are only a couple of millimeters thick.

Whoever had a lave tube, was stacked.

Anyway, it only lasted a year in my school because too many kids were crying about losing their POGs and parents pressured the school to shut it down because they considered it a form of gambling. "The children are gambling! Good heavens!"

Eventually, my group grew up into the marching band in high school and we played "High/Low," mixed vodka with our Poweraid and followed the football team around on a co-ed bus. "Good heavens! The geeks are fornicating!"

Maybe they had a point.

The Official Pog Milkcap Collector's Guide (Pog)

FIND: Your Truth and Pain

A joke seeks to tell the truth, just before it kinks the outcome.

Have you ever heard someone say, "It's funny because it's true."? This is what I'm talking about.

We want to discover what is true, so that we can make fun of our pain.

I FOUND THE TECHNIQUE IN THIS BOOK:

The Comic Toolbox: How to Be Funny Even If You're Not

Truth and pain is said to be the theme of a joke.

Similar to the topic, a theme has the ability to carry across an entire show, giving us a way to relate to an entire group of people.

Once we establish a commonly held truth with the audience, it's just a matter of adding punchlines to our jokes that will diffuse our pain with laughter.

When we are trying to find a truth to explore, it's very important to understand our audience.

To do this, we want to identify situations that our audience would be familiar with, either by first hand experience, or at least something they have been exposed to.

And, unless you want your microphone cut off mid show, try to discover truths that your audience will agree with.

This is what it really means to know your audience:

The truth is, that people are much more comfortable laughing at situations they feel superior to and, the pain is, they aren't always right but, might be right now.

For working Comedians,

I always say, "The Majority wins."

My goal is to entertain as many people as I can in the room. The audience will tell me what they like with their laughter.

Hecklers are typically the minority of the room. And, when I say minority, I mean, typically, there's more people in the room that understand the jokes.

And, out of respect for your audience, you must address hecklers swiftly, so that the rest of the room can enjoy the show they came to see.

Remember, you have the microphone, you are in charge, and you are expected to do the job you where hired to do.

Don't back down, but be professional.

Not every heckler deserves to be traumatized and humiliated.

If you can pull some improv humor out of a heckler's truth, you might even make them laugh and get them back on your side.

It's at least an opportunity for some crowd work.

Once you know the age group of the people you are trying to entertain, you will want to figure out, what general situations they find themselves in.

You can niche down even further by focusing on gender, race, or even income level, but, I would caution you from niching down too far.

If you niche down too deep, you will be excluding segments of your audience.

Unless this is your goal, to alienate your audience, which has been done successfully in the past, I suggest going as broad as you can.

Set your intentions for this session now. You can always change your mind later, but let's get focused.

My intention is to reach the most people possible. So, I will be using the broadest situations for my target audience that I can find.

GET FOCUSED

If you discover that your audience is made up of 9-13 year olds, what situations are they most likely to be in?

What about a demographic made up of hormonally charged High Schoolers?

How about that awkward 19-25 group in college, at home, or starting their careers? There's lots of niching down you can do with this audience.

I would even ask the question, "Which one of these segments has the money to buy a ticket to my show or purchase an album or, a DVD?"

Unless you're doing charity work or maybe just enjoy the art of comedy, you should always ask this question when you're targeting an audience.

A good place to start before writing is to ask, "Which demographic has the most disposable income?"

Then, "How can I relate to this group of people in an authentic way?"

To answer the authenticity question, you will want to discover what they do with their time.

A great way to do this is to find people in your target demographic, and talk with them.

Ask them:

What are your hobbies?
What kind of jobs, if that applies, do you do for money?
Where do you live?
What do you read?
What do you watch?
How do you entertain yourself?
What is important to you?

Once you get an idea of what your target demographic does at work, for fun, and their home life, you can start to figure out what universal situations they may find themselves in.

For example:

A 78 year old man just got dumped off in an old folks home.

General situations might be:

Watching TV all alone
Sadistic Nurses
Feeding times
Bed times
Soul-crushing loneliness

As you can see, once we have identified our target demographic, we can start picking apart the truth of their situation.

You begin to see an entire show developing before your eyes.

You even have a place you can perform with an audience that will relate to your material.

How about, AN OLD FOLKS HOME?

Talk about a captive audience!

I'll leave it to you to discover a way to get paid.

Now, let's discover the truth and pain of these universal situations of our post-retired demographic.

Let's pick apart the topics of their situation to identify their truth and pain.

The truth about watching TV all alone is, that it's boring.

The pain about watching TV all alone is, that it's all your body has the energy to do.

The truth about Sadistic Nurses is, that you rely on them for your survival.

The pain about Sadistic Nurses is, that they won't let you die!

The truth about Feeding Times is, that you need nourishment.

The pain about Feeding Times is, that you're not hungry when food is served.

The truth about Bed Times is, that the power is turned off.

The pain about Bed Times is, you aren't tired enough to fall asleep.

The truth about Soul-crushing Loneliness is, that you feel betrayed.

The pain about Soul-Crushing Loneliness is, you lovingly fathered twelve children every day of their life and now they won't even visit you on holidays.