Everyone thinks you’re “funny.” You’ve thought about trying to translate your humor into a career. Congratulations, so have about a million other people BUT don’t let that stop you because half those people will give up when it gets too hard or never even give it a chance.
Splitsider, the definitive website for all things comedy and comedy news, put together a short and helpful guide for starting a career in comedy. The good news — you can start right damn now. The bad news — you should start right damn now.
Here’s the idea behind How to Start Your Career in Comedy: A Guide for College Students:
“If you want a career in comedy, you’re probably wondering what you can do to get from Point A: Where You Are Now, No Comedy Career, to Point B: Amazing Comedy Career, Life Dreams Achieved. You’ve got a lot of other people who are working towards the same goal, and they are going to be both your collaborators and your competition.
More importantly, you’ll also be competing against yourself: are you going to create a YouTube video today, or are you going to spend all day watching other people’s YouTube videos and playing Dragon Age: Inquisition?Are you going to seek out the best collaborators and team members you can find? A lot of what happens in a comedy career depends on opportunity, but a lot also depends on you.”
As a “comedy person” I couldn’t agree more with the last line about opportunity. Opportunity is huge but here’s the great thing — there are always opportunities. Some are small, some are life changing, but the idea is that there are always opportunities available if you’re open to trying new things and putting your work out to the masses.
For the article, Splitsider spoke to a few people “doing it” in the world of comedy — Daniel Gurewitch, writer at Last Week Tonight with John Oliver; Shannon O’Neill, Artistic Director at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre; DC Pierson, author and member of Derrick Comedy and Saturday Night Live writer Sarah Schneider.
My favorite piece of advice, and one that everyone out there should know off the bat, is that it doesn’t matter in the least where you go to college.
In fact, you don’t even have to go to college at all to have a career in comedy. DC Pierson went to NYU, but he was quick to state that not everybody has to follow that path: “It’s criminal to tell anyone they have to go to a particular school or go to college at all if they want to work in comedy. It’s a cliche, but it’s true: no one is ever going to ask to look at your degree. I feel really nauseous at the very idea of telling somebody to go to college or not to go to college, it’s a super-high-stakes expensive decision.”
Alright, so go read the article and then go create something, ANYTHING, funny.
H/T Splitsider