by Neil W. McCabe

Many comics struggle with rejection. Erin Judge, a regular at Rick Jenkin’s Comedy Studio in Harvard Square, came to comedy because of rejection.

Judge said when she was at Wellesley College, she was turned down by every singing and acting group on the campus, except for a Christian choir.

Rather than sing hymns, she joined the school’s improvisational comedy troupe, Dead Serious, she said.

During her senior year, Judge and another student started a weekly comedy show, Judge said. “We were doing stand-up without realizing we were doing stand-up. We were just talking about the funny things that happened to us during the week and making people laugh.”

After college, Judge said she went on a trip to Minneapolis, where she signed up for a comedy open mike night.

Judge said once she was on-stage, she had an interesting experience. Although, she only did three minutes, a very loose three minutes, when she was hit with the spotlight in front of the audience, for the first time she realized how much she wanted to be on stage.

There is a transition from being funny with friends and family and being a professional comedian, she said.

There are structures to jokes and more than anything else, an obsession with time, she said.

The standard relative measure that comics used is how many solid minutes their routines are, she said.
“Thirty seconds is a long time on stage for a comic.”

“It is an interesting science. On the late night shows, you only have six minutes,” she said.

“As you learn the craft, you know you can’t go 10 seconds without a laugh,” she said.

Judge said it is very rare for a beginner to be funny on stage, and those few who are usually have been great observers of other comics before giving it a try.

There are comics who obsess with joke writing, but Judge said she does not. “Writing a funny joke and telling a funny story—the difference is night and day.”

“You don’t want to tell a list of jokes,” she said.