Woody Allen, Jerry Seinfeld, Ray Romano, Steve Martin, Bob Newhart, and many others made their names as standup comics before embarking upon acting careers. Some, like Joan Rivers, started out as actors, veered off into standup, and alternate between the forms. And the border that separates acting from standup is apparently fairly porous. Among the random handful of standup comics I contacted, all have had at least some acting training, most have acting experience, some continue to act, and all see a strong correlation between the two. They say the skills needed for standup — honesty, discipline, the ability to create characters, stage movement and presence, communication, timing, a knack for being in the moment, even playing actions — are similar to those required for acting.
"The main point of overlap in training," says Ross Turner, "is in the concept of working from a place of honesty and truthfulness in the characters you're creating on stage." Turner attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, then did community and Equity-waiver theatre and appeared in some TV commercials. When he decided to segue to standup, he went to the San Francisco Comedy College for two years. There he learned, among other things, about creating characters even if just to deliver one line. Now, in a 30-minute set, he might portray 10 to 15 different characters.
"So much of it is about being honest and staying in the moment," agrees Cathy Ladman of standup. A comic who also writes and acts in film and TV (she was a regular on Caroline in the City and can be seen next fall on an episode of Brothers & Sisters), Ladman wanted to be a standup from a very young age but studied acting with William Hickey at HB Studio in New York and took various acting and improv classes in Los Angeles. She sees herself as the type of actor who's not a "complete -chameleon...[but] when a script calls for a character like mine, I can do it."
Among the skills she has transferred from acting to standup is a sense of discipline. Working within the parameters of a script — not to mention the strictures of film and TV acting, such as hitting your marks — has helped her, for example, when she's had to hone her comedy set for the time limitations of a late-night talk show appearance.
The mono-monikered Luenell started out as an actor, had a major role in the movie Borat, and currently has two films in postproduction; her extensive credits also include BET's Comic View. She says that among the many skills she transferred to standup comedy were awareness of the stage and of movement and blocking. "Some standups just stand there or pace back and forth," she notes. But having taken acting classes at a theatre and having acted extensively on stage (including in San Francisco's long-running musical parody Beach Blanket Babylon), Luenell has a sense of herself in the space. Standups can also bring from stage acting a certain comfort level in front of an audience. Turner says that after more than 20 years as a stage actor, he's at ease under hot lights, with a mike, and with the audience not laughing.
Always True to You
About that audience: That's where acting and standup comedy diverge dramatically. When Turner, who was accustomed to having a fourth wall, started doing standup, "I didn't realize about connecting with the audience," he says. But soon he perceived that standup is a dialogue — only with the viewers, not with co-actors.
Just as in acting, a standup comic wants to communicate clearly, be heard, be understood, says Ladman. But the entity with whom you're communicating is the audience. "You want the audience to get your point," she explains. "You want to move them; you want them to feel for you." The actions you play may differ from performance to performance, but, she says, the goal is "always to successfully complete the synapse, to connect."
"I talk, they laugh, I talk some more," adds Turner. "Laughter is a language. Sometimes it's a little titter; sometimes it's rolling on the floor. It's about being sensitive to that." From acting, he knew about finding some stage business that your character would do while you're holding for laughs, and he was able to carry that over to his standup.
Holding for laughter has to do with timing, of course, which Ladman observes is even more important in standup than in acting: "It's everything. If you're thrown off by noises in the room, or by a microphone shorting out, or by thinking of your next bit in your head," that's when you're in trouble, she says, and unlike in theatre, there's no co-actor to rescue you. Turner says he's been told he's a master of timing, a tribute not only to having acted in stage comedies but to his ability to relate to an audience. "I have more fun getting a reaction off a look or a gesture than a turn of phrase or a clever punch line," he says. "In many ways I'm still an actor: It's about the nuance rather than the words themselves."
When it comes to one of the most important aspects of acting — being in the moment — that's where acting skills and standup skills are in concert. Comics do their sets over and over, just as actors say the same lines repeatedly in long-running plays, and each time the material has to seem fresh. Esther Paik Goodhart, who studied Meisner and other techniques in New York, found improv classes very helpful in making her standup act sound new each time. She uses personal material — about being Korean-American, a converted Jew, and a former wheelchair user — in her standup act as well as her solo show, Out of the Wheelchair. She also does commercials. For Goodhart, the danger of standup is enticing; she says it's her form of bungee jumping. "Every second is different," she explains, observing that audiences almost have permission to make standup comics feel bad. "Nobody heckles a violinist!" she points out.
"Within my act," says Ladman, "I have to discover it each time." How? "I just tell the story, listen to myself, and feel it. If I'm being honest, it's going to affect me." Like Goodhart, standup comic and producer Lisa Geduldig credits improv classes, which she's been taking for about 10 years, with helping her to be in the moment, to roll with the punches. She also took some acting classes at American Conservatory Theater but says, "I'm a lousy actress. I couldn't figure out how to be someone else." For her, studying acting was as mystifying as taking Mandarin.
Ladman summarizes the differences between the endeavors: "As a standup, if you're too much of an actor, you lose the immediacy. If you're too much of a standup, you don't hook into the discipline of acting. The part of a standup's ego that's about working for laughs has to be put on the back burner when you're acting. Otherwise you're flying solo."
She also pinpoints another important difference: Good actors have to be willing to be vulnerable. But that vulnerability won't work when there's no fourth wall: A good standup has to be in charge, or the audience won't respect and trust you. "You have to really connect with another human being to be a good actor, and that involves letting your guard down," Ladman explains. "Standup is a very powerful form because it appears you're in control. When you're acting, the opposite is necessary — you need to be affected." Standup, she says, "is still really a monologue."
"My whole life is about people underestimating me and me rising above it," muses Goodhart, who clearly relishes that sense of being in control. "When it's good, it's the best high on the planet. It's like you're out of your body."