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Premise Punchtag - Comedy terms Category: Games and Entertainment > Standup terms Date & country: 16/05/2018, USA Words: 33

M.C.
Stands for Master of Ceremonies, essentially the host of a show. They are responsible for opening and closing the show, as well as introducing comics, making announcements, and maintaining order in the room.

A-Material
A stand-up set that contains what the comic considers to be his or her best and funniest jokes.

Sh*t Sandwich
The practice of a comic placing new, untested material in between two stronger bits in order to give it a better chance of making an audience laugh.

Showcase
A stand-up comedy show designed to present comics to industry scouts who are interested in finding new talent.

Tag
A secondary punchline which is added to a joke without adding a new premise. This is a popular technique because it more efficiently uses a premise to generate laughs. See this related theory post

Topical Jokes
Jokes that reference a current event. These can be as intimate as something happening in the room, or something happening overseas. The critical aspect is that the event happened recently.

Routine
The cumulative jokes involved in a single performance. For example

Segue
(pronounced Seg-way) The flow of one stand-up comedy bit into another. The segue is important because it maintains the illusion that a comic is thinking up their bits on the spot.

Set
A series of jokes told in one performance by a comic. Can vary from minutes to hours depending on the nature of the show.

Riffing
Improvised interaction with the audience. Often used by MCs to warm up a crowd, or for comics performing longer sets to modify the energy level of the room. It is also worth noting that riffing creates a strong humorous reaction by using current events, see this previous post on the topic.

Rip
Making fun of a member of the audience, another comic, or the venue. Often occurs when a heckler becomes aggressive toward the comic. For Example

Premise
When forming a joke, the premise is the initial situation or understanding to which the punchline adds humour. The premise in and of itself is not the funny part of the joke. For example

Punchline
The part of a joke that alters the premise in a way that creates humour, often through surprise or misdirection. Continuing from the example of a premise above

Middle
Any comic who is performing in a stand-up show and is neither the opening act or the Headliner. Paid and given more time than the opening act, but less than the headliner.

One-liner
A short joke in which the premise and punchline are delivered within a single sentence.

Opener
In a professional gig, the comic who performs first. Paid less and given less time than the middle or headliner.

Open Mic/Mike
A show where anyone, regardless of skill, can perform onstage. Often poorly attended and no payment is received by performers. Open mikes are considered an acceptable venue to test new material. See this related theory post on open mike etiquette.

Line-up
A group of two or more comics who will be performing in a show.

Laughs Per Minute
(LPM) A simple system to measure the success of a stand-up comedy performance. The total number of laughs are counted, then divided by the number of minutes the set lasted. A score of 5 LPM (1 laugh per 12 seconds) or higher is considered to be approaching a professional level. It should be noted that this system is crude at best, as it does not account for quality or length of the laugh. For example, a comic like Bill Cosby who takes his time setting up a premise might have a lower LPM than Carrot Top, but he is clearly the funnier performer.

Kill
A comedy performance that generates an extremely enthusiastic response from the audience.

Joke
A series of words strung together that elicit a humorous response by establishing a premise, then creating a surprise or turn to modify the premise in some way, using a punchline.

Headliner
The final performer of a paid show. They are the highest paid, and often the most seasoned or popular of the performers. It is worth noting that at an unpaid gig, calling yourself the headliner because you happened to be placed last is misusing the term and a breach of etiquette.

Gig
A stand-up comedy performance. Usually the word gig implies a paid performance.

Hack
A premise, topic, or joke that is well-explored and contains very few surprises. It is not desirable to be considered hack. See this resource for examples of hack topics.

Heckler
Any audience member who interrupts a comic’s routine. It is important to note that many hecklers mean well, and actually think they are “helping” make the show better. Because of the illusion of spontenaity that stand-up comedy generates, this misunderstanding about the importance of allowing a comic to perform uninterrupted causes a lot of conflict. See this related theory post on heckling

Door Prize Show
A competitive performance whose outcome is decided by the votes of a paid audience. The winning performer keeps the revenue generated from these paid audience members.

Closer
The last joke a comic tells as part of their set. Often contains a callback, but not always. In almost all cases, the closer should be one of the funnier bits of the set.

Comedian/Comic
These are two different things, though there is wide disagreement as to their definitions. The best comparison I’ve found is

Catchphrase
A sentence or phrase repeated by the performer which becomes a joke in and of itself. (See previous theory post on this topic).

Callback
A joke which references a joke that occurred earlier in a set. Often elicits a strong laughter response and brings a sense of closure to a set.

Bomb
A comedy performance which generates little to no laughter. See this related theory post on bombing.

Bit
A series of jokes on a single topic. Can include just one, or several punchlines, although traditionally just one premise. For example

Blue material
Edgy jokes that involve sexual topics, swearing, and/or graphic content.