Mastering stand-up The complete guide to becoming a successful comedian

Rosenfield has found rousing success as an educator in the world of stand-up comedy. As the founding director of the American Comedy Institute, he's had the opportunity of guiding such famous funny figures as Jim Gaffigan, Lena Dunham, and Zach Woods. In this book, Rosenfield makes his straightforward and proven-effective methods for eliciting laughter available to the public. The book is broken down into three parts: an introduction to the form, a guide to writing, and a final third devoted to delivering and sustaining entertaining stand-up throughout one's career. Rosenfield is thorough and frank though never condescending. For example, he reminds budding comics to always move the mic stand back to center stage before exiting so that the MC or next performer won't have to waste stage time doing so. Readers will glean a better understanding of tone, timing, dress code, rewriting, comic persona, and set-list organization. Using the work of unequivocally effective stand-ups (Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, Louis CK, Phyllis Diller) to illustrate, Rosenfield and his book are breeding a new generation of comedic heroes.--Eathorne, Courtney Copyright 2017 Booklist

The New York Times hailed Rosenfield (American Comedy Inst.) as "the best-known comedy teacher in the country." Read this book and you'll understand why. Even if you never attempt stand-up yourself, you'll find this quick to read guide a pleasure. It does what all truly good how-to manuals do: it shows the reader the work that lies behind a seemingly offhand form of performance and makes you understand not only how to do it but why someone would want to do it. As Rosenfield makes clear, stand-up may look impromptu, but it's not. (The one exception to this rule was Jonathan Winters, but his unpredictability made him almost unemployable on late-night broadcasts, where knowing the running time of a performance is critical to timing the show.) Rosenfield counsels would-be comedians to expect humiliating moments, even after success. (There's a section on bombing before an audience.) He comments on classic comics such as Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Moms Mabley, and Phyllis Diller as well as Louis C.K. and others working today. His examples, no surprise, are often hilarious. Verdict For anyone thinking of performing stand-up and others who like an enjoyable read.-David Keymer, Cleveland © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.