Be Entertaining First

Be entertaining first. You can’t make people laugh without their attention. This is harder to do if you’re so concerned with the pace necessary to get through the material you forget to make eye contact, use the mic, and maintain a pose and body language that gels with the mood, tone, timing, of your set. Start with being almost conversational. Lure the audience in by exploiting the curiosity gap. Reveal something unexpected about yourself that raises a bigger question that only you can answer. Be mysterious. Embody the film directors mindset of show don’t tell. the more context the audience can infer about your set without you beating them over the head with it, the more naturally they will engage with you. Relax… slow down. Don’t clam up or hunch your shoulders (unless it’s an intentional gag you want to play off of), the audience is going to mirror your emotions on some level. So whatever emotion they need to feel in order to fully connect with the material, YOU need to make them feel before and during the joke.
Unless intentionally used to set up or reference for a laugh as a beat in the set… avoid the following bad habits;

Reading notes on stage
Using your phone as a cue card
Wearing Shorts or Flip Flops
Dawning Sunglasses or a hats that cast a shadow over the performer’s eyes
Holding the microphone like an asshat.

Each of these has the potential to detract from your performance in their own subtle way.

Honestly, half the battle for a new comic is literally holding the microphone properly. Hold the mic up to your mouth and by the handle. Don’t cup the top of the mic as they say “like a rapper” as this will distort your voice or even create feedback noice that deafens the entire room. Also, do fidget with the cord or connector at the bottom of the mic. Many time mics and cables are old or worn (hosts are often sentimental and like to use legacy gear for style points). If you hold it by the bottom it could wiggle the cable loose at the bottom and cut the mic entirely.

If the mic give you problems like cutting out, its probably the cord. If this happens to you, grap the cord ~9′ below the bottom of the mic and fold it back… pinning it to the side of the mic handle with your mic hand. Then pull all but a little slack out of the loop it creates and slowly rotate the microphone while keeping the cord pinned… sliding along the side of the rotating mic. Eventually you will make the contacts inside the connector touch again and the mic will work. Hold the mic firmly in this position, lock your elbot to keep it level, and try to only gesture with your free hand for the remander of the set. If you need both hand for a bit, prepare for acoustic comedy but whatever you do DO NOT COMPLAIN TO THE HOST OF AN OPEN MIC ABOUT THE STATE OF THEIR EQUIPMENT.

Try not to laugh at your own jokes and if you do ensure that you move the mic away from your mouth first. Also avoid “Chappelle tapping” the mic on your leg, it doesn’t look or sound as cool as you might think and if the moment comes that it’s appropriate, let the “fallout” sensation happen naturally. It’s not something easily scripted and jumping the gun has a way of turning audiences off… especially when/if the jokes don’t land. No amount of leg tapping is going to save a joke that didn’t land.

Try not to get too drunk, stoned, or otherwise out of sorts. Even if you’re truly “funnier” when you’re drunk. Trust me, even if it “works” you don’t want/need a crutch that adds insult to injury by physically limiting the amount of time you get to enjoy doing comedy on top of hobbling your true potential.

Wear normal cloths. Try not to wear anything too nice or way too casual especially to a showcase. Avoid the following unless you are an ice cold killer;

1. Shorts- For some reason it’s distracting, weird, and widely shunned by other comics.
2. Hats- Stage Lights + Hats = a shadow over your eyes that makes the audience disconnect.
3. Sandals- Open toed shoes are akin to shorts. We don’t know why, but its distracting for the audience.
4. Other people’s skin- Stealing a look or impersonation is good in small doses, but it doesn’t usually land for long outside of a more “improv” based show. That being said the ability to accurately mock or mimic other personalities on the fly is a valuable skill set.

If you aren’t really good at comedy yet and you want to develop better material, you might not want to undermine yourself by distracting the audience from the jokes you want to test. Anything else you convey to them will be a distraction from that goal. The cheap laughs are only useful if you know why they work. Personally, I try not to dress up anymore unless its a gig that calls for it and I’ll like to look like any Joe off the street at an open mic… not to be more relatable, but because that way I KNOW my delivery is solid. Then a modest wardrobe change to spice up my look at a showcase is the only positive nudge I can take to ensure that I look worth watching on top of having ace grade jokes that could have carried me without the tweed jacket. Just be sure to write new “I look like” material if you use generic openers and plan on switching up your wardrobe.