The Case for Comedians Taking Time Off
I took an entire month off of shows and boy are my arms tired
Since 2015 I have spent the first 10 days of August in South Dakota. A life in comedy brought me to a musical festival during a biker rally in Sturgis: aka The Buffalo Chip (aka the Best Party Anywhere). I host comedy shows (LOTS of crowd work for people day drinking — I love it), facilitate games, biker stunts, and occasionally conduct backstage interviews. A few years ago I started adding more time off after the festival to explore the neighboring states.
Something happened as I was zig zagging through Wyoming and Colorado. All of the time off from the comedy life back home (where I have two weekly shows, teach several weekly classes, and book the comedy club) made me a better comedian.
I’m tempted to qualify this by saying “that’s not rocket science, I know” but I’m starting to think that…maybe people don’t know how important time away from what you do can be. Yes, comics, spending less time on stage can make you better on stage.
The same way a joke premise can bore an audience because it’s been done ad nauseam, you can bore yourself by getting up on stage at the same places, with the same people, at the same time every week. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in routine. But I’m beginning to believe that gripping too tightly to your routine is bad for you.
Last year, for the first time, I committed to a month off in Utah. The time was spent being a tourist in The Mighty 5 national parks. I read lots of books, spend hours in nature every day, and spent as little time thinking about comedy as possible.
Naturally, many comedy ideas appeared “out of nowhere” during this time. You remember that time you spent hours grinding away on a punchline and then you gave up and took a walk and then it was hot outside so you took a shower? Then either on the walk or in the shower the punchline magically appeared? Our brains LOVE that. Our brains are like “WHOA” when we do that. Seriously, please take a shower.
Don’t even get me started on the health components of this. Seriously, please don’t. Because I am not an authority on that world whatsoever. I follow Andrew Huberman on instagram but I cannot listen to his podcast because it’s like a foreign language to me. But yes, durrr, standing up and taking a walk outside when the sun is out is good for your body. Where are my 50,000 instagram followers?
I do, however, feel enough authority in the comedy world to say this: Build time off into your creative routine. If you cannot pull off a whole month then start with 3 days and then increase it gradually. This is hard, I know. Both years I planned on taking a month off and I came home a couple of days earlier. But I was excited about getting back to what I love to do so this felt triumphant. Also because I spent way too much money on trail mix which became problematic.
Now that there’s a “season” to my time off, I never get to a breaking point. By the time June and July roll around, I can smell the month off in August. When I get back around September I hit the ground running and am sooo ready for a busy Fall.
Comics, I implore you: take time away seriously. You’ll be better off because of it.
Chris Trew is a comedian based in New Orleans where he books Comedy House and runs the longest running comedy event in the South, HELL YES FEST. He teaches improv classes online right here.