How Mike Birbiglia goes from jokes to stories to one-man show
The path of turning jokes into a narrative.
Mike Birbiglia – to Neal Brennan on Neal’s Blocks podcast – on writing a one-man show that’s funny:
You start off and you write 100 jokes that work. Well, you start off with 500 jokes that don’t work and there’s 100 that work. And then you go, “How can the 100 [jokes] be 10 stories? Or 10 chunks. And then you’re like, “Can the 10 chunks be a single narrative?”
More from Birbigs on his process:
A lot of times the best way to find out what the story is about is to walk onstage without having it completely nailed down...I’ll take recordings of telling it [onstage] four or five times, listen for where the laughs are and what the interesting parts are. Then I’ll try and write a draft of the story.
And here are some other Funny How posts about Birbigs:
If I want to be a comedian [or actor/writer/improviser/director], how do I get started?
![If I want to be a comedian [or actor/writer/improviser/director], how do I get started?](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!-1Iw!,w_1300,h_650,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5105bbc6-c7b7-4901-978f-a2ec0df3e4aa_600x840.jpeg)
6 Tips for Getting Your Solo Play to Broadway by Mike Birbiglia: 1. WRITE IN A JOURNAL. Document your life. The good stuff. The bad stuff. But mostly the bad stuff. What’s wrong with you is more interesting than what’s right. I’ve always felt like we go to solo theater to be told secrets. When I was developing “The New One” I was writing in my journal al…
Begin with your ending – and other great storytelling advice from Mike Birbiglia
Master storyteller Mike Birbiglia’s pet peeve with how normal people tell stories: Sometimes what people think is a story isn’t a story. My dad will call me and be like: “Oh, I’ve got to tell you this great story. Jim over at the post office has heard of you.” And that’s the end of the story. That’s not a story! People always say you’ve got to have a beg…