Step By Step to Stand-Up Comedy Chapter Eight

Greg Dean’s Rehearsal Process

If you want to be free of self-criticism when you perform, you have to rehearse free of self-criticism. Greg Dean’s Rehearsal Process lays out a format that will eliminate self-criticism from any performance or presentation.

Phase One: Preparation
-Designate a Critic Spot and a Rehearsal Space
-Choose a Joke or Routine to Rehearse
-Identify the Experience That Inspired the Joke
-Explore the Details of the Experience
-Decide How to Enact the Experience

Phase Two: Enacting the Experience
-Portray Self Pov
-Evaluate
-Portray Character Pov
-Evaluate
-Portray Narrator Pov
-Evaluate

Phase Three: Practice Performing
-Decide How to Communicate the Experience
-Perform the Joke or Routine
-Evaluate the Performance

Let’s Rehearse!

Rehearsal Process Worksheet

SAMPLE

LET’S REHEARSE

Your goal in rehearsing is turning your material into sensory experiences from all relevant POVs as though it is actually happening to you, then you can remember your show as you would a story about a real experience you had. The effect this will have on your audience is they will not just watch you tell joke, but enter the movie of your show.

Unlike my other techniques described previously, this Rehearsal Process is not a step by step procedure, but rather a series of interactive phases. It requires you to evaluate the experience within the joke and then decide, based on that evaluation, how to enact the experience and perform the joke. To do this you may need to move back and forth between the steps as a means of coding the experience in such a manner that will make it easy for you to respond with the joke.