You animal!
Linking human and animal behaviour in stand-up
What do you find annoying or peculiar in other people’s behaviour? (We’ll come onto what other people find annoying in your behaviour!). A rant about it, or a baffled reaction to the bizarre behaviour, can be hilarious. (Especially if your anger or bafflement is out of all proportion to the thing triggering it). But for this inaugural post I want to take a left-field turn.
What animal does the behaviour put you in mind of? An animal analogy (or an ‘is like’) can be great for stand-up. Here are some examples from comics that I have looked at in my Zoom stand-up comedy material generation sessions.
Katherine Ryan compares men to dolphins. She says, “I’ve spent the last year touring all around the UK mostly making people angry because I have announced that I don’t want a boyfriend. And they’re like, ‘but you could get one’. I know. I love men, but I feel that men are like dolphins and that they should be enjoyed on holiday.” Here she is thinking about her and men’s behaviour in a holiday romance and asking herself what other short lived but wonderful holiday interactions have that quality, and alighting on the perfect animal.
Dylan Moran meanwhile uses a highly vivid and aggressive animal analogy to describe the television presenter Jeremy Kyle in his heyday when he is berating the vulnerable and misbehaving working class guests on his show, stating that “he’s like a drunk seagull battering pregnant voles with his beak”.
In one of my stand-up workshops, a new comic shared a story about a friend who stole from the college tuck shop (a very British expression for a shop that sells sweets (or ‘candy’) on campus). The friend didn’t just steal a chocolate bar; he’d walk out with the entire display box. (Kudos for committing to the bit. He’s probably a banker now).
Using this animal approach, the comic in the class mapped the behaviour to a ferret: his ferret like nature meant he was notorious for stealing random items and hoarding them in his den (or dorm room). This approach makes the everyday suddenly feel absurd. And there are also laughs to be had in how ridiculous the animal act-out becomes.
This approach led another comic named Kat to write a lovely bit where she compares her boyfriend to a golden retriever because he is sweet and prone to cuddling, but (as a keen rambler) also “vibrates with energy” by the door the second a walk is suggested. To further the analogy, she describes how he has got fiercely possessive over a basketball they found in the park.
You can also apply the same treatment to your own behaviour. In another clip we watched, Maria Bamford talks about her husband getting annoyed that she leaves food packaging half-open and caps off bottles. To justify this behaviour, she explains: “I am a raccoon. I need to get in there, okay? Get what’s good. Be on my way.” By committing to this, she transforms a typical relationship friction point into a lovely surreal moment.
She says, “My husband has noticed about me that I like to tear open packages of food, take caps partially off beverages and leave them out and around. And he said very kindly, very sweetly, ‘why??’” Note the misdirection here: ‘kindly and sweetly’. She doesn’t say, “my husband at the end of his tether cried out why??” She goes on:
“I explained that I am a raccoon. I need to get in there, okay? Get what’s good. Be on my way.”. She then acts out her husband’s agitated response, “Oh, but what if it goes bad? You’ll get sick.” With icy calm, as if it’s a great struggle to remain patient in the face of such idiocy, Bamford responds, “Were you not listening when I just mentioned that I am a raccoon? I can digest a ceiling tile.” She then explains she just has to fill her stomach up and “get back to the river with her friends”. This is then underlined by raccoon type noises.
Exercise 1 (Human to animal behaviour)
Try this. Identify the annoying or idiosyncratic behaviour (in yourself or others) and liken it to animal behaviour.
The trick here is specificity. Go beyond just calling someone (or yourself) an “animal” because they’re being gross. Choose a specific animal that maps onto their behaviour (or your behaviour) then commit to the act out.
Step 1: Pinpoint the behaviour. You can get some laughs out of your sheer frustration/ anger at it. Especially if this is heightened.
Step 2: Find the animal match. Ask yourself: “What creature acts exactly like this?”
Step 3: Describe the behaviour in animal terms and then give us an act-out. It could be a quick glimpse as Bamford does or you could go for a bigger performance of the animalistic behaviour.
You can apply the same approach to people in the public eye like politicians, celebrities, sports people, models…
Fundamentally we are animals. George Carlin says, “We like to think we’ve evolved and advanced because we can build a computer, fly an airplane, travel underwater, we can write a sonet, paint a painting, compose an opera. But you know something? We’re barely out of the jungle on this planet. Barely out of the fucking jungle. What we are, is semi-civilised beasts, with baseball caps and automatic weapons.” That’s a great image, beasts with baseball caps and automatic weapons. As Ricky Gervais says, “we didn’t evolve from apes we are apes”. So bring out our animal behaviour in your stand-up.