About a year into stand-up, Chloe Matonis did a strong seven minutes on someone else’s show. A promoter in the audience offered her a thirty-minute slot at his weekly night, and she said yes at once. The room was full. It was a good night for everybody else. She bombed for the whole half hour, and she was wearing a watch, so she knew exactly how much of it was left.
“30 minutes of bombing really will toughen you up a bit. After that, I felt pretty invincible.”
Chloe Matonis
Bombing means getting no laughs. Every comedian we have interviewed has done it, and most of them brought it up before we asked. This piece collects their worst nights and, more usefully, what they did next. Read our interview with Chloe Matonis.
Jump to: Everyone bombs · The worst nights · Why it happens · What to do during · What to do after · How to use it · Six rules · Common questions
Everyone bombs, including the famous ones
Diogo Portugal helped build the stand-up scene in Brazil and has been a headliner there for years. He says experience does not make the stage safe. “You’re never safe. And if you think you’re safe, then you’re wrong.” The night you feel unstoppable, he finds, is the night it happens. Read our interview with Diogo Portugal.
Lauren LoGiudice puts it in five words. “You’re always a bomb away.”
It is the reason the manager Barry Katz stopped performing. He began as a stand-up and could not live with the swings. “I’d kill one night and do okay the next night, do really well the next night, bomb the next night, and I’d be doing the same stuff.” The great comics, he says, do not care. “They just look at the audience as the writing partner. They know they’re funny. And clearly I didn’t.” Read our interview with Barry Katz.
It also starts on day one. Krystyna Hutchinson describes her first show as the night “you beg your broke friends to pay way too much money to see you do five minutes and absolutely bomb”. Read our interview with Hutchinson and Corinne Fisher.
The worst nights
A hundred and nine in a row
Brendon Lemon moved to Chicago in 2015, fourteen years into comedy, and found the standard far above him. He went on stage for a hundred and nine consecutive nights and bombed at most of them. The worst was a room made up entirely of other comedians. He did five minutes without a single laugh, in front of his peers.
“That bomb was so bad it shattered something inside of me.”
Brendon Lemon
He seriously wondered whether comedy was for him. What kept him in was a piece of advice he credits to Robin Williams: tell anyone who wants to be a comedian not to do it, and if they listen, it was never for them. Lemon decided to stop listening to anybody. Read our interview with Brendon Lemon.
In front of his father
Stephan Dyer had left a senior job at a bank the year before. In 2018 he was on tour in Guadalajara, Mexico. “By coincidence, my dad was in the audience — it was his first time seeing me perform. And I bombed. Hard.” Given what he had given up, it was humiliating. But he says, “I also knew that if I stuck with it, the story would get better.” Read our interview with Stephan Dyer.
Two years in basements
Marina di Marzo joined an improv team that was not good. They rehearsed sure they were funny, then forgot everything on stage. The venues were all basements, and she remembers the stages being made of hay. “It’s hard to remember the first time, because they all melt together into one big fever dream of bombing.” It lasted about two years, and she counts it as the most useful training she had. Read our interview with Marina di Marzo.
A comedy with no laughs at all
Before clown school, Sevrin Willinder toured a children’s show in a minivan. It was written for ages six to fourteen and suited neither. Then they performed it at a juvenile detention centre, to sixteen-year-olds, in a room with terrible sound. Not one joke landed. Looking back, he thinks the real problem was that he did not believe in the show himself. Read our interview with Sevrin Willinder.
Off a unicycle
Tori Morancay’s first bomb came at circus school in France, at twelve or thirteen. She was opening the end-of-year show and fell off a unicycle in front of hundreds of people. She ran backstage and cried. Then she went back out and finished. “Bombing is never going to be as bad as falling off a unicycle in front of hundreds of people.” Read our interview with Tori Morancay.
Why it happens
The comedians we spoke to gave five different causes. Working out which one you have is most of the cure.
You are not ready for the material. Portugal sees new comics copy the darkest headliners and fail. Then they blame the audience or the system. “Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes you’re not ready yet.” See where comedians draw the line on dark jokes.
The joke is built wrong. Fletcher Michael wrote a line he found very funny on the page. In the theatre it got nothing, because a whole scene sat between the setup and the payoff. “You need to make sure that your setup is as good as your punchline.” Read our interview with Fletcher Michael. Dyer bombed for two years until a course taught him how a joke is put together.
They did not understand you. Manu Maciel performs in a second language, which adds questions most comics never ask: did they understand what I said, and did my accent spoil that word? Morancay sometimes had to say a line several times before it landed. Read our interview with Manu Maciel, and see comedy in translation.
You have outgrown the jokes. Corinne Fisher has never doubted comedy because of a bad run. “When I go through a period of bombing it’s because I have graduated from that material.” Her brain is telling her to write something new, so she does. Read our interview with Corinne Fisher.
It is the wrong room. Meg Millane is comfortable saying she is not for everyone. Sometimes a crowd simply is not yours. Read our interview with Meg Millane.
What to do while it is happening
Millane separates a quiet room from a real bomb. The second one, she says, is something you do to yourself.
“When you truly, truly bomb, it’s because you give up on yourself.”
Meg Millane
Giving up means going blank and ploughing through to the end. Staying aware during a bad set is, for her, a real skill.
LoGiudice learned the same idea at a clown school in France, where failing in front of people is the whole course. “There’s no bomb unless you bomb yourself. If you connect with the audience, you can’t bomb.” Lemon went to the same school. What he took from it is that an audience turns on you “when you start to hide, or run away, or try to get out of the moment”. They feel abandoned, he says, because you have abandoned them. Read our interview with LoGiudice and her two co-stars.
Richie Schiraldi of Whisper Theatre says bombing taught him to listen and adjust in real time. “You get to find the failure and then fine-tune it into success.” He now thinks audiences usually cannot tell that something went wrong. If the next moment lands, the last one looks deliberate. Read our interview with Whisper Theatre.
And not every silence is a bomb. Jason Salmon spent years afraid of any gap without a laugh. “Sometimes the silence is not a lack of laughter. It is the build to a burst of laughter.” Read our interview with Jason Salmon, and see our guide to comic timing.
What to do afterwards
Irene Woo used to let a bad set ruin her evening and sometimes the next few days. She was a software engineer, so she designed a fix.
“Whenever I have a bad set, I get myself a sweet treat. If I bomb, I know I have a reward. So it’s not too bad.”
Irene Woo
A good set needs no reward, she says, because the feeling is the reward. Read our interview with Irene Woo.
Manu Maciel goes home, cries, and eats ice cream and pizza to sad songs. It is like a breakup with a set that was not good. Then it is back to the drawing board to work out why. “Bombing is part of the job. It doesn’t make me question being a comic, it makes me question how I can be a better one.”
Salmon writes. “If I get off stage having bombed, I’m like, look, that was rough, but I’ve got stuff to write down right now.” Danielle Slaughter gets back on. “The most important set is the next set.”
Rebecca Wolf offers something to hold on to. Even on a night when nobody laughs, somebody often takes you aside afterwards to say they liked one joke. “It reminds you that art is subjective and comedy is subjective.” Read our interview with Rebecca Wolf.
How to use it
Salmon goes further than most. He thinks something should fail every time he goes on stage, because otherwise he has tried nothing new. Only an audition or a taping counts as the real thing. “This is not baseball, where the game is every day. This is football. The game is only once in a while, but practice is every day.”
Wayne Charles II says the same in one line. “The bomb, the failure, is actually what makes you stronger.” Ian Edwards treats every bad delivery as information. “Sometimes you have to say it wrong to say it right.” Read our interview with Ian Edwards.
Matonis found a use outside comedy. She also works in sales. “Once you bomb on stage, you can handle rejection selling things.”
Six rules for surviving a bomb
- Expect it. Portugal, LoGiudice and Katz all say it never stops. Knowing that takes away some of the shock.
- Stay in the room. Do not rush, go blank or hide behind the microphone stand. Millane and Lemon both say the audience forgives a joke that fails and does not forgive a comic who has left.
- Find the cause. Not ready, built wrong, not understood, outgrown, or the wrong crowd. Each has a different fix.
- Write it down the same night. Salmon’s habit. The details fade by morning.
- Have a routine for afterwards. Woo has cake. Maciel has pizza and sad songs. Both are back at work the next day.
- Book the next one. Slaughter’s rule. A bomb and a great night are both in the past by tomorrow.
For the nights that go right, see how 28 comedians remember their first laugh. For the long view, see how comedians keep going and how they write their jokes.
Common questions about bombing
What does bombing mean in comedy?
It means performing to little or no laughter. Comedians also say they “died”. The opposite is to kill.
Do professional comedians still bomb?
Yes. Headliners with decades of experience told us it still happens, most often when they are trying new material or feeling too confident.
How do you recover from bombing on stage?
During the set, slow down, stay present and keep talking to the audience as people. Afterwards, write down what happened, work out the cause, and get on stage again as soon as you can.
How long do new comedians bomb for?
It varies. Stephan Dyer bombed for two years before a night when everything worked. Marina di Marzo counts about two years as well. Others get laughs early and hit their bad run later.
For more conversations like these, see all our comedian interviews.