About

In 2006, at the Edinburgh Festival, I watched a US stand up get a UK audience to laugh in ways I hadn’t heard them do before. Within four minutes he’d trained them to elicit a wide variety laughs, a mixture of familiar and brand new to me. I had to see it again to make sure it wasn’t a fluke. It wasn’t. Afterward, I asked the comic I was working with: “Has it occurred to you that we could invent a laugh?”

Since 1999 I’ve watched comedy evolve quickly, like in all art forms. I’ve written, script edited and directed hundreds of shows all over the world. I get results and awards for the comics I’ve worked with from expert to international level by pushing them to excel, evolve, improve and widen their skills while raising their middle.

Having a background in music has helped enormously, certainly when it comes to timing. Jazz is hard and so is comedy. Jazz and comedy are very alike because they grew up with each other. They are both insanely technical and I learned them both on purpose, by trial and mostly error.

What comedians do works in other public speaking fields too.

Growing up in the Evangelical world gave me front row seats to the very best performers in the world. Talk about consistent, and boy do they make money. Born-again Christian ministers apply the same strategies to save souls that great comics use to get laughs. Broadway actors, the greatest politicians, pop performers and motivational speakers all do this: they take a bunch of individuals and get them to cooperate. Live performance is no joke.

I’ve earned what I know. All told it took 18 years for me to comprehend the sheer breadth of discrete actions and variables a comic can use to create whatever laugh or reaction they want. The rest of the time I’ve spent trying to make all of it accessible to anyone.