My biggest fear in attending the workshop is that I would discover that I didn't have the natural talent to be funny, yet I came away with the reassurance and confidence that I COULD be funny and so can most people.
As part of the workshop, each participant had to get up in front of the group of about 25 people and tell a joke. Geoff encouraged us to used different voices for the different character in the joke as well as to use lots of body movement, gestures, facial expressions, and accent changes where possible. All of these nonverbal effects would add to our humour and make us funnier as speakers.
So why did all of us 25 speakers want to be funny? According to Geoff, it's the hardest element of speaking to teach and also the most difficult to successfully deliver.
To reinforce his point, he asked us to name 20 NZ COMEDIANS and then to name 20 famous comedians from any country. Try it. It's not easy!
We all know that a speaker who is humourous is so much more engaging than one who is not.
Laughter makes uncomfortable situations more comfortable.
It is cathartic; it encourages an individual to purge their problems and painful emotions through the joy of laughter.
Laughter aids memory also and helps focus as it keeps people engaged and anticipating the next funny moment. The audience members will discuss fun moments long after an event and this encourages reincopration of the information that was originally conveyed.
Also, there are the documented therapeutic benefits of humour. All the more reason to strive to be funny!
Dr. Lee Berk and fellow researcher Dr. Stanley Tan of Loma Linda University in California have been studying the effects of laughter on the immune system. To date their published studies have shown that laughing lowers blood pressure, reduces stress hormones, increases muscle flexion, and boosts immune function by raising levels of infection-fighting T-cells, disease-fighting proteins called Gamma-interferon and B-cells, which produce disease-destroying antibodies. Laughter also triggers the release of endorphins, the body's natural painkillers, and produces a general sense of well-being. To see more details of their study, see http://www.holisticonline.com/Humor_Therapy/humor_therapy_benefits.htm
Geoff listed the 'key elements' of comedy as:
Timing
Energy
Characterisation
Accents
Reading the crowd (to see how open and ready are they for your humour and how far can you go)
Other important points to keep in mind regarding being funny are:
Being mindful to be open to the surrounding atmosphere and taking in all that is going on is very important.
Being able to reincorporate information previously used by other speakers is important.
General knowledge and current affairs awareness is important.
Life itself is funny and not trying too hard is important.
Telling a life story honestly will often bring the most natural and memorable humour out.
Personalising a standard joke always works better than just cracking a funny.
Finding your open and willing targets in an audience is important.
Reading people and making a mental note of those that seem “afraid” or stand-offish is important
He encouraged us to be honest about our strengths and to discover what particular form of comedy that we were stronger in.
Some suggestions he gave us in developing our humour were:
• Keeping a file of gags as you receive them
• Making sure you know your audience
• The better you know the audience, the greater permission you'll have to 'push the envelope'
• Innuendo is fine
• Swearing is generally bad
• Be ready to be told every bad joke you have ever heard by audience members who come up to talk with you after your successful session.
Geoff told us he googled 'types of comedy' and discovered there were 29 different types!
To begin developing your comedic talent, Geoff recommended practicing simple jokes.
I told a joke which got a good laugh from the audience which was thrilling.
Geoff recommended that the next time I tell it, I tell it as if I was the character in the joke and that the story really happened to me. The audience will play along and realise
I'm just being funny rather than take me seriously, but it will engage the audience if I tell it as if I were telling a personal story.
So, last night, when I got together with my extended family, guess who was the centre of attention telling jokes?..That's right…yours truly. Granted they were a 'warm' and 'easy' audience, but their laughter at the end of each joke I told continued to fuel my fire to keep going.
Who's got a good joke to share with me?
I'd love to hear your best ones or get your links to good joke sites.
Here's a link to one site to inspire you…there are countless others to explore,
So have fun and keep me posted ☺
http://www.squarewheels.com/jokes/trainjokes.html
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