How I Develop New Material

Plus the release of my first hour-long comedy special!

Please enjoy this piece of writing about developing new stand-up material after taking a break. OR, if you want to skip straight to the news about my new special that’s coming out January 28th and my upcoming tour dates, scroll down to where it says “Some News!”

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For about six months, I did a lot less stand-up comedy than I typically do. This is because from May through November, I was on tour with the band Vampire Weekend (Playing and singing with them! Not as a groupie!), and also traveling to film festivals in between tour dates to screen my movie On a String. I fit in some sets here and there, but there were multiple weeks straight where I didn’t tell jokes on stage at all. That might not seem like a big deal, but stand-up comics (at least the ones actually focused on honing their craft) generally perform every night, often multiple times a night. Typically my goal is to do at least one stand-up set almost every night, and that’s more or less been my life for the past ten years.

When the Vampire Weekend tour and my travels for 2025 came to a close at the end of November, I was home in NYC and ready to dive head first back into stand-up. I started saying yes to every show I was offered, even if I knew it’d be in the back room of some bar with four people in the audience — which are sometimes my favorite kinds of shows — there’s just nothing quite like the real-time discovery of how to win over four people who either most likely regret coming to a show so sparsely attended, or are very drunk, or both. What a rush! Since I’ve been saying yes to every show I can, December and January have consisted of me telling jokes almost every evening. This nightly repetition is necessary to develop new material and to keep my stand-up muscle in shape, so whether the shows are good or bad or weird, performing every night makes me feel productive and like I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing. It brings me peace.

Within that overall peace does come in-the-moment struggles, and it’s definitely taking time to really feel in-shape on stage again. This is partly because I’m rusty from the time off, and partly because I’ve been avoiding performing any material that I taped in my special back in May — coming out January 28th on Veeps! — and therefore am doing newer material that just isn’t as strong yet. If you’re unfamiliar with the process of developing stand-up material, you might be asking, “why don’t you just wait until the material is good and then go perform it?” And the answer is that stand-up doesn’t really work like that. The way you get material to be good and laugh-inducing is with the aforementioned nightly repetitions and by trying out the material in front of a live audience and seeing what works and what doesn’t. You may write a line that seems funny in your head, or that even gets a chuckle out of a couple friends, but you won’t know if the line works until you try it on stage in front of strangers. The art form is inherently humiliating, and I love it.

I record each set on my phone and listen back later. As I listen, I hear what worked and what didn’t, and if something didn’t work, I might hear an alternate way to do it in my head that would work better. I often watch other comedians perform and think, “that joke would be better if they said it like this.” By listening to my own set, I get to apply that same thought process to myself. As I listen, I take notes (“yes, that worked, keep saying it with the emphasis on that word… that premise was unclear, so that’s why the punch line didn’t land… ‘poop’ is funnier than ‘doodie,”… expand on this point with more funny examples, etc.”) Then I go try the same jokes again with those notes applied. Then I listen back again and the cycle repeats and jokes that were once loose and uncertain premises ever so gradually become “A” material.

One thing I love about developing stand-up material is trusting the process enough that I can think about a new joke that really hasn’t been getting laughs and can marvel at the mystery of what it will one day become. I think, “This joke sucks right now, but one day it’ll be my favorite joke and I can’t wait to find out how that joke will go.” Like how I imagine a parent looks at their newborn with excitement and thinks, “I wonder what kind of person you’ll become.” Am I essentially calling my jokes my babies? Yes. Is that concerning? Perhaps. Or maybe it’s nice. As an aside, this is why I get so angry when people video my shows without my permission. Please just put your fucking phone away. Seeing someone hold their phone in front of their face as I perform gives me immense stress and feels quite offensive. These jokes are my babies and sometimes they’ve taken years to develop and sometimes they’re not done and when they are done I’ll memorialize them on my own terms and you don’t get to just own them.

Anyway! Performing new material while also being out of shape due to a break can feel frustrating. My skills are temporarily weaker. But with those weakened skills comes weakened bad habits and the opportunity to leave them behind. It’s also a chance to lift off certain limitations I may have been putting on myself.

When I first started stand-up, I really only painted with one color. I was very deadpan and I delivered everything the same way. Over the last few years as I’ve gotten more conversational in my delivery of some jokes, it feels like I’ve added in another color I can paint with. The process of adding in a new color can involve a lot of bombing at first that feels like growing pains. But if I stick with it, eventually I’ve mixed in a new color that adds more depth to my act. Now, starting again with new material after a break, I’m definitely mixing up some new colors, so as I bomb on stage, I just think, that color just isn’t quite mixed yet. It gives me a positive re-frame on a set that might not have gone so well, and a reason to keep working at it. It’s another way to trust the process, which is important because if I don’t trust the process, the work feels pointless.

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Some News!

My very first hour-long stand-up special “Isabel Hagen at the Bitter End” is being released on January 28th on Veeps! You might be saying, “what is Veeps? I don’t want to pay for another monthly subscription or get another app.” Good news, you don’t have to do either of those things! Just go to this link where you can view the trailer and make a one-time purchase of just my special for $9.99 (and perhaps you’d appreciate knowing that a very good amount of that purchase goes directly to me — Veeps is a super artist-friendly platform — which is nice because I completely self-produced/paid for the making of the special myself). I do think you’ll need to make an account (sorry!) but again, you won’t have to subscribe monthly and you can watch it either:

1. On your computer, directly on veeps.com (I think?)

2. On your TV, via their app

3. By screen mirroring it from your computer or phone onto your TV, just because you like to complicate things

4. In bed on the browser on your phone as you drift off to sleep (but please try to stay awake!)

You know what to do.

But do you know what you really want to do? That’s a much harder question to answer. After asking it, if the answer is in fact that you want to watch my special, then the good news is that there’s an easy way to do it (see above)!

Now you might be asking yourself why would you want to watch my special? Maybe it’s because you’ve only ever seen short clips of me online and have never seen me do a full set. Maybe it’s because you’ve seen me live and always wished you could find a recording of that c*mming song I do at the end of my shows, and this special is the only place that currently contains a recording of me performing said song. Whatever your reason for wanting or not wanting to watch my special, I support you.

This special was taped back in May and I’m so proud of it and I hope that if you watch it, you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it.

Also! I’m performing in the following places. Come to a live show! I won’t be doing any material from the special, it’ll all be different (except for maybe one or two of “the hits”) so you can watch the special and then come get a different show in person!

CHICAGO, IL at City Winery on 2/5
BOSTON, MA at Elephant & Castle on 3/6 and 3/7
HOUSTON, TX at The Riot Comedy Club on 4/3
CONROE, TX (Houston area) at The Riot Comedy Club at GuadalaHarry’s on 4/4
TOLEDO, OH at Toledo Center for Live Arts on 5/7
COLUMBUS, OH at The Attic Comedy Club on 5/8 and 5/9
DAYTON, KY (Cincinnati area) at Commonwealth Comedy Club on 5/15
WASHINGTON, DC at Arlington Drafthouse on 10/23 and 10/24

ALL TICKETS HERE - and you can also use that same link to sign up with your zip code to get alerted when I come to your area (No spam. Trust me. You see how infrequent my Substacks are). The more zip codes I get in an area, the more likely I am to go there, so I’d love if you signed up!

Thank you.

Love,
Isabel

P.S. I made these T-shirts to sell at shows, but they’re also available online. They’re based on my “Resting Sad Face” joke.