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Mastering Stand-Up

The Complete Guide to Becoming a Successful Comedian

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Mastering Stand-Up

By: Stephen Rosenfield
Narrated by: Stephen Rosenfield
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About this listen

This entertaining and sharply written guide - for both beginners breaking into comedy and professionals seeking to improve their sets and advance their careers - examines the work of great comedians such as Louis C. K., Jerry Seinfeld, Eddie Izzard, Moms Mabley, Hannibal Buress, Sarah Silverman, Richard Pryor, and more as a means of illustrating the most important techniques of performing and writing stand-up.

Here, Stephen Rosenfield lays out a clear plan for achieving success, candidly explaining what works, what doesn't, and why. Including a 12-item "Successful Comedian's To-Do List," Rosenfield states, "Get undeniably good at each of these and you can kiss your day job good-bye. You will be a pro."

©2018 Stephen Rosenfield (P)2019 Tantor Business Aspects Entertainment & Performing Arts Performing Arts Celebrity Comedy Entertainment Funny Joke Writing

Critic Reviews

"An absolutely essential instructional guide and reference for anyone aspiring to a career as a comedian." (Midwest Book Review)
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This book was incredibly well written. This book will give you a perfect balance of the technical skills with real bits from real comedians both old and current. The performance by Stephen was not as charismatic as some of the voice actors I've heard in the past, although, I'm glad the author nerated the book.

Exactly what I was looking for!

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Being new to stand up as a performer I thought this book did a great job focusing on the key things someone like me need to focus on to be a good stand up. This book doesn’t make empty promises eg. “read this and you’ll instantly become a good comic”. What it gives are tried and true advice, with the emphasis on “if you do the work, the results will come”. I absolutely recommend this book to anyone working on being the best comic they can be.

The Stand Up Bible

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This is such an amazing book with great insights to the comedy world. The comedy stories told are broken down and explained in depth to help you understand how a joke is written.
It’s a no BS guide to start you on your comedy journey.

Thank you Stephen Rosenfield for persevering with writing this book!

Inspirational

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Felt comprehensive on a topic that is hard to be so.
Would be interesting if curious but is actionable as a guide. Just what I was after.

Thorough and Insightful

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the actual content is interesting and probably useful but this guys uses example after example and manages to make them all sound absolutely terrible.

if you want an example of how not to deliver a line this is the perfect example. he has no concept of timing, he emphasises the wrong parts and the only time he delivers any word with feeling is when he's swearing

this guy is painful

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