Standing Up
Standing Up
The Hardest Thing You'll Ever Do
The Hardest Thing You'll Ever Do
Your task is to write and perform a stand-up comedy routine. This is the final assignment of the semester, and it's built differently than everything before it: you are not allowed to disappear into a character. You are the material. You can build a persona (an exaggerated version of yourself, a heightened voice, an angle you lean into) but the audience needs to feel that a real person is standing in front of them, saying something they actually mean.
This is, without question, one of the hardest things you will do this year. Comedy is not like drama. A monologue can be moving even on a quiet night. A joke either lands or it doesn't, and the same joke can do both, ten minutes apart, in front of two different crowds. You are not just writing. You are gambling, live, on your own material.
Do not take this lightly.
There is no single way to be funny. Before you write a word, study a few different approaches and figure out which one feels like you:
Philosophical / observational — Bill Hicks, George Carlin. Comedy built on an idea, a worldview, a thing that's been bothering them.
Narrative — Richard Pryor, Dave Chappelle, Eddie Murphy. Comedy built on telling a story, where the laughs live inside the details.
Physical / impressionist — Robin Williams, Jim Carrey. Comedy that lives as much in the body and voice as in the words.
One-liners — Mitch Hedberg, Rodney Dangerfield. Comedy stripped down to the smallest possible setup and the fastest possible turn.
Shock — Anthony Jeselnik. Comedy that plays with audience expectation on purpose, and knows exactly how far outside the line it's stepping.
Roast / insult — Ricky Gervais. Comedy aimed outward, often at the audience or at public targets, sharpened to a point.
Musical — Bo Burnham, Tim Minchin. Comedy built on rhythm, melody, and the tension between a pretty tune and an ugly (or absurd) truth.
You don't need to imitate any of them. You need to notice what they're doing structurally, and steal the mechanics, not the voice.
Here's the part that makes stand-up so brutal: you have to build the entire context the joke needs, and then react to it, all inside a few sentences. Nobody hands you a scenario. You create it, and then you have to be funny about it.
Picture a circle with a soft, faded edge.
Inside the circle is everything the audience expects once you set up a premise. This is safe, but it's not funny — it's just information.
Outside the circle, past the edge, is chaos or things so disconnected from the setup that they don't mean anything. This isn't funny either. It's just confusing.
The joke lives right at the edge — close enough that the audience can still feel the logic connecting it to the setup, but far enough that it surprises them anyway.
"I was at the supermarket with my girlfriend." (Setup — inside the circle. Audience expects an ordinary story.)
"She wanted to race shopping carts down the cereal aisle." (Still inside the circle, but stretching it — audience is engaged, waiting to see where this goes.)
"I let her win. I always let her win. It's the least I can do, since I hit her with my car three years ago." (Punchline — right at the edge. It recontextualizes "I always let her win" from sweet to dark, but it still follows logically. That's the joke.)
Notice what's doing the work: the punchline doesn't come out of nowhere. It reaches back and re-explains something you already said. That's the difference between "surprising" and "random." Random is easy and rarely funny. Surprising-but-earned is the hardest thing in comedy, and it's what you're chasing.
Draft more material than you need. Even great comics keep maybe a third of what they write.
Read it out loud, alone, before you perform it. Timing lives in the mouth, not on the page.
Notice where you're explaining a joke instead of trusting it. If you have to tell the audience why something's funny, it isn't yet.
Perform it for at least one other person before the real thing. Watch where they laugh, where they don't, and where they get uncomfortable in a way you didn't intend.
Your Name
Written Script of Your Routine (aim for 3–5 minutes of material)
Comedic Approach/Influences (which style(s) above you leaned on, and why)
A Live or Recorded Performance
One paragraph of reflection: what worked, what didn't, and what you'd cut or change next time
You are allowed to fail. In fact, you probably will, at least a little. Every comedian does, constantly. What matters is that you understand why a joke didn't land, not just that it didn't.
Comedy that punches only downward is lazy. If you're going to be dark, be precise about it.
The bravest thing you can do here is mean it.