Now this is going to be a unique lesson because this is going to be on expression and gesture. Here's the thing about expression and gesture and comedy. stand up comedy has a mic and it has a mic stand. So part of what you're doing is going to be spoken for by the fact that you have to have a mic that you're speaking in. You don't necessarily have to use the mic stand. Now, for the first few years that I did stand up comedy and buy yours.

I actually mean yours. I was too scared to actually take the mic out and start talking with it. It's pretty simple. You just grab it, pick it up, move the mic stand to the side, and now I'm talking with you extemporaneously. I can move the mic around, I can gesture with both hands. I can move the mic up, I can move the mic down.

If I'm trying to express positivity, I can go like this, like oh my gosh, can you believe it? If I'm trying to express negativity, I can bend down, I could gesture downwards. I could even point using these things, but you don't have to do that. So let's return to this and just start with the most basic types of gestures and movements. One is going to be very simple. It's just going to be standing behind Find the microphone, you can go ahead and do it like this, just stand and just talk.

Now if you're rehearsing this without a mic, all you have to do is take your recording device and just hold it like this up in front of you don't move around. You don't have to gesture that much. In fact, some comedians are so low energy, but their comedy is so good that they just stand here, and they just do this, I would encourage you to do that yourself. You'll feel it in your body if it's right for you. Now, if you want to move around a little bit more, you can take the mic stand, you can lean over with it, you can turn to the side. There's great comedian and AJ Lou Becker in Los Angeles who really does this a lot.

He puts his foot on the base of the mic stand and then he leans into it turns it around looks at different areas of the audience. This is kind of a looming thing, but he holds on to the mics and keeps his energy right here. So if you don't have a mic stand, you can still practice that you're basically just holding your in both hands, your memo or voice recorder or phone and just leaning over, just leaning like this. Go ahead and try this out. Because what this is, is a process of exploration, you're going to imagine yourself in front of an audience, you're going to be reading your material, you might have your notes right in front of you or your computer right on your desk in front of you. You're going to be imagining yourself going through this, reading your comedy, doing it slowly, adding in pauses, adding an emphasis, and you're going to feel things in your body, I would encourage you to move around a little bit, get loose, shake it up, go ahead and shake yourself out.

Now go ahead and try it. If you feel yourself wanting to just stand there and read because you've just got lots of machine gun setups and punchlines. That's fine. There's a lot of one liner comedians who do that exact thing. I'm a guy who likes to move around a lot. If you can't tell.

I have a lot of personality. I like to move myself in front of the audience. If you don't have a microphone and you want to rehearse taking the microphone out of the mic stand, just imagine it. Continue to imagine yourself pulling it out. Taking the mic stand, backing it off. If you imagine this a lot.

By the time you get up to your open mic, you're gonna be fine. It's really not that big of a deal. Now When we want to talk about gesture, what I want to talk about is how gestures can inflate or reinforce a punch line or even deflate a punch line. So let's move back to the mic stand. And I'll show you how this works. When you're trying to make a point, let's say, let's say a point about slurpees.

Like I said, you could, you could say something like, you know what, slurpees are awesome. You see what I just did with my hands. They're amazing. slurpees are so cool. People don't understand that. So cool.

People don't understand that pointing reinforces a point. That's something that you don't understand. You're a person I'm pointing at you. Be careful with this a little bit because people in the audience might, might take offense to it depending on the audience or in front of but the point is this. moving your hands to reinforce a point helps bring the energy up and bring the energy down, feel it in your body. You don't have to make notes on this when you rehearse it, but when you rehearse it, you should feel yourself moving with it.

It feels a little bit like a dance and you can move it With the energy of the dance, that's really what comedy is about is moving emotional energy and moving it through the crowd using the logical bits of language and the performative bits of movement and the body and the voice. So, when you're rehearsing, what I want you to do is feel the energy in your body. If you want to reinforce a point, that sharp point at the audience gesture downwards, maybe move your hand across the room, maybe turn a couple of times to very quickly reinforce the energy is sharp. If you want to enforce very light energy, you can move your hand up, move your hand down, you can sort of lean back and forth just a little bit. Moving very lightly with things I had a punch line where I would talk about anthrax at an airport just wafting through the terminal, this hand gesture reinforces the feeling of the wafting word that really brings the audience into it and allows them to feel that same energy.

So as you move through it, ask yourself these questions. How Can I use my hands? How can I use my body position? How can I use my facial expressions? To help reinforce a point, if you have glasses or a hat, you can do these things too. You can take them off, maybe make a point with them real quick, and then put them back on.

Jim gaffigan has a famous clip where he talks about glasses, I would encourage you to look at that. I'll link it in the notes. And finally, just make sure that when you're rehearsing, you don't have to do the same movements every time. But I want you to become aware of what your body wants to do. That is going to make a huge difference. When you get on stage.

You're going to feel a natural way to do things and it's going to come out you're going to feel comfortable and it's going to make the audience really buy into your routine. So when you're rehearsing, go slowly add in pauses, add an emphasis, and now add in gestures. Keep going. You're going to do great