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Tonight I did my 700th and 701st show of 2009.  I’d like to hit 730 before the year’s over (that’s 2*365, or 2 shows a night for every single night of the year); I think I’m mostly on track to getting there.

Getting up on stage so much has been the most important factor in my development as a comic.  Louis C.K. made the great observation about stand-up as an art: in each art form, the artist uses a particular instrument in order to create art (for example, the saxophone player uses his saxophone and the painter uses her paintbrush) - what separates stand-up comedy from every other art form, however, is that the stand-up comic’s instrument is the audience itself.

That explains a lot when you think about it.  For example, an artist will usually warm up their instrument (for example, the singer warms up her vocal cords, the saxophone player makes sure his saxophone is in order and warmed up).  In stand-up, we try to warm-up our audience (we refer to a properly warmed up audience as a “hot crowd”); it’s just us warming up our instrument.

An artist can’t practice his art if he doesn’t have his instrument.  (For example, you can’t really practice painting without a paintbrush or the saxophone without a saxophone.)  That means that in order to practice stand-up comedy, you need to be in front of an audience.  You can practice the saxophone without being in front of an audience because the instrument is the saxophone and not the audience itself.  That’s not so in stand-up.  As a result, stage time - the amount of time a comic spends in front of an audience (in other words, the amount of time a comic spends with his/her instrument) - is of tantamount importance in growing and developing as an artist.

In fact, one of the main reasons that I moved to New York was that there was so much more stage time available here than in Boston (where I really developed as a comic and found my voice).  Hitting a number like 700 helps remind me that I am meeting the goals I set for myself when I moved to Manhattan.  Can’t wait to do the next 700 shows!