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"Take your favorite comedian, the one that's closest to your personality, and write it as if they were saying it," says Haines. "It's not so much to copy them, but to develop your style from emulating other people."

Millwater, who began performing as a magician at age 11, wears an expression that seems frozen in the post-punch-line "eh?" even when he's not trying to be funny. At 15, he was the youngest to win the Society of American Magicians' Magician of the Year award by 20 years. Now 28, he still incorporates magic into parts of his act, which is now mostly stand-up.

"There's a whole series of psychological symptoms that leads to stand-up comedy," Millwater tells me. "Usually, it's a rough childhood; probably not [being] very physically imposing, because sense of humor is a defense. Attention starved. Validation -- that's one of the things that I need.

"There's also a need to please people. There's no better feeling in the world than having a room full of people telling you you're great all at once. No better feeling in the world than strangers hugging you and knowing that it was just you that did it. That's addicting." His eyes begin to tear up at the thought.

At the headliner level, Millwater is adept at reading his audience to determine what material will get the most laughs. It starts with his opening: "My name is Johnny and you guys are in for a treat tonight, because I'm manic depressive and you caught me on a good day." The joke isn't funny, he tells me, but it has a couple tests in it.

"I leave a pause after Johnny, one to establish my physical presence on stage and two because if they're a talkative crowd, they'll say shit right away. And I'll know how to work around them and use it when I need to." After saying he's manic depressive, he makes a crazy face. "There's no punch line there yet. And if it gets a laugh there, that means they can be guided."

After the opening, he follows with "booby jokes" to gauge how prudish the audience is. "If they're offended as a group they'll say with their bodies, 'I'm laughing but it's not the right kind of laugh.'" Millwater also puts in the joke because he says it helps with his "heterosexual street cred." He says wearing a shirt with flames, and sometimes including a magic trick he calls the Animal Balloon Trick of Death, in which he swallows a giant balloon, can give the audience a certain perception of his sexuality. In certain places, he doesn't care if the audience thinks he is gay, but "playing in small towns in the South, Middle America and places out west like Montana, you can't even joke about homosexuality as a concept."

Millwater explains: "With stand-up, funny is defined by -- I want to use the word -- beauty, perfection. You start with that chunk of marble as the joke and then over years, you hone it and you craft it until it's the perfect joke. And you have that perfect joke and you know it's going to get a laugh every time, and it's about you, and it's just great." Jerry Seinfeld has said a joke takes five years before it can mature to reach its full potential.

Zimmerman has only been working on his "on the prowl" bit for four months, and Millwater starts his critique of it:

• ANGUS LAMOND
• Joe Zimmerman performs at SK Netcafe's open mic night

"Everything needs to be tighter. For every two sentences you have, you only need one for pretty much the entire set." Millwater gives Zimmerman more pointers about timing and selling jokes. When Zimmerman says to his date "you're loose," Millwater tells him to say it in a more hurtful manner, or if he chooses to go with a sillier approach, he should break up the contraction and draw out the "oo" sound. "Instead of saying, 'you're loose,' go with 'you are ... loooose,'" Millwater says.

When Zimmerman is tabulating the number of women he's slept with, Millwater tells him: "Play it up with your body that you're going to go up to 60, 70, 250. Just sell an infinite number, then go, 'three.' And a bigger pause between 'three' and 'ish.' You'll get two laughs instead of just one."

Other suggestions in the workshop are for actual jokes.

Zimmerman's stand-up buddy Valencia asks him about his decision to change the answer of favorite ice cream flavor in the bit to boring chocolate.

"It didn't get a laugh before, so I was trying to shorten the set-up," says Zimmerman.