Rolling with the punches

Talk that inspires

In stand-up comedy shows or workshops, it's not surprising to meet people from a xiangsheng, or crosstalk, background.

"Although stand-up is a foreign comedy style, it does share similar techniques with crosstalk," says Zhu Guangyu, a 29-year-old scriptwriter for crosstalk shows whose work has been staged during CCTV's annual Spring Festival Gala twice.

Zhu says compared to stand-up, crosstalk has a more complicated structure that requires longer periods of time to prepare new scripts. The current trend in stand-up comedy seems to revolve around current affairs, a more fleeting subject matter.

"However, as a time-honored traditional art in China, crosstalk is inclusive enough to learn from the stronger points of other forms of comedy," says Zhu.

He attended a stand-up class recently and adopted a technique that stand-up comics use to accumulate material and capture flashes of inspiration-to carry a pen and notebook and write down funny thoughts as soon as they come to mind.

For Le Xin, a crosstalk-turned-stand-up comedian, the fundamentals of crosstalk he has studied over the years have helped to hone his expressive abilities and skill at being able to ad-lib at stand-up shows.

The 27-year-old says stand-up comedians make a habit of interacting with the audience and generally deliver more punchlines per minute than crosstalk acts.

"So I tried to adapt stand-up routines into crosstalk shows, by generating more gags, and I consciously increased my interaction with the audience during my crosstalk performances," says Le.

Encouraged by the rising standup stars in Roast, the newcomer is busy honing his craft in live shows before the opportunity to show up in hot online comedy programs knocks at his door.

Contact the writer at xingwen@chinadaily.com.cn