5 Tips For Success: Jet Eveleth

Jet Eveleth is highly regarded as a powerful improviser and teacher. She gave us some quick insights into her world and her unique viewpoints on her definition of "success" and what it takes to be a great comedian.

WOMEN IN COMEDY: Tell us a bit about your background and how you ended up where you are working today?

JET EVELETH: I moved to Chicago in 2001 and studied and performed at every place that would let me. I'm a member of The Reckoning and I currently perform in the show Absinthe in Las Vegas. www.Absinthevegas.com

WOMEN IN COMEDY: When did you first decide you wanted to be involved in comedy?

JET EVELETH: What I do always felt like the only choice.

WOMEN IN COMEDY: What avenues allow you to make a paid living as an improviser?

JET EVELETH: Making money was never my goal in comedy or improv. My interest was to dream on stage with other dreamers. I wanted to dive deeper into an art form that looked like magic. It's like chasing the surf, to me it's a way of life.

WOMEN IN COMEDY: If you could give one piece of advice to your younger self when you started on your career path, what would it be?

JET EVELETH: Find a Camera and start shooting!

WOMEN IN COMEDY: Please give us your top 5 tips for women and girls in the industry that you think will help empower and educate them on how to make a paid career for themselves in comedy?

JET EVELETH:

1. Find anything that resembles a stage and play, play, play.

2. Play so much that you don't have time to think and talk about yourself, others or the work.

3. If you ever have the choice, and you do, choose laughter.

4. You have to have perspective in real life to find the comedy in a scene. Find the lightness in life, in all situations before you approach the stage, because nothing changes when you step on a 6 inch platform. If you don't constantly see the humor in life, (and you are not in the the middle of a war) you may not be a comedian.

5. To me there is in happiness an element of self-forgetfulness. You lose yourself in something outside yourself when you are happy; just as when you are desperately miserable you are intensely conscious of yourself, are a solid lump of ego weighing a ton. -J.B. Priestley

Some final thoughts...

I'm not the right person to give advice on making money in comedy. I dedicated my life to this stupid thing because it is what makes me feel alive. Most of the time I worked for free because I just wanted to play with my friends. When people ask me how to make money or how to be famous doing improv comedy I am afraid that I can not help them, because that very question reveals the work means something very different to them.

I will say that the work can transform you if you let it. Dedicate yourself to it by being vulnerable and fearless. Give yourself over to it. I've gone hungry for the art. I've eaten food out of the trash and gone sleepless nights in freezing apartments. I've been physically threatened by men and women in the theaters but I never saw it as my problem and I was too busy booking stage time to think about it. It is very dangerous to get distracted from the main objective-- being the funniest mother fucker in the room. I also saw difficult experiences as an opportunity to gain dimension for future improvised scenes and characters. I know what I love so everything looks like a sacrifice for the stage. Don't be a victim or a hero, just play.

It's very hard to feel that someone has stolen your power if you think everything is funny. But I also have a fucked up sense of humor.

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