5 Things Open Micers Shouldn't Do..
5 Things Open Micers Shouldn't Do..
In the vein of last weeks article on things new comics should definitely stop doing we’re going to steam ahead this week with more bad ideas from budding comics.
(Again this is taken from a wealth of experience of truly awful things I’ve done in stand up or have witnessed countless others do so please head the warning, for your sake.)
1. Encouraging audiences to heckle
I will never understand this.
Honestly it’s ridiculous. The idea that, at your infancy in stand up you are in anyway equipped to deal with hecklers is nuts. But to encourage them? That’s just malicious to your own self esteem and the quality of the performance that every other act on the line up will have.
The common idea behind it seems to be the completely misguided notion that immersion therapy is somehow useful for comics when they begin standup with regards to one of the most anxiety causing concepts performer’s face. You can hear it in the voices of anyone when you tell them you’re in comedy. “But what about hecklers? What do you do?! HOW DO YOU SURVIVE!?!”.
Now it’s a genuine concern because sooner or later it will happen, someone will yell, interrupt, call out or insult you throughout a set. So many new comics will seek to “harden” themselves up by actively asking audiences to heckle them. The thought being that they’ll be able to test out hecklers put downs, practice their crowd work or familiarize themselves with the experience. All of this, of course, backfires spectacular. An overwhelming amount of audiences do not even want to be spoken to or acknowledged, let alone, yell things out and by encouraging them to not only do so, but do so meanly, puts them in an incredibly uncomfortable position. When you make audiences heckle you, you’re completely ruining the boundaries that a good MC or host will have worked hard to create. These are vital to ensure a night runs well and an audience is understanding of their role as a viewer and not participant. Asking audiences to be openly mean flat out makes people uncomfortable because what kind of person goes about their day hoping for the chance to tell a stranger they’re fat and they suck? And if those sorts of people are in the audience WHY WOULD YOU GIVE THEM PERMISSION TO?!
When you push people to heckle it ruins you’re set and everyone who follows because you’ve unleashed a Pandora’s box of shitty behavior that will permeate throughout the rest of the show. I don’t care that you want to practice your shut downs or face your fears. If you knew anything about crowd work you’d know that it’s far trickier to plan out things to say beyond the most rudimentary of interactions because you’re dealing with complete strangers who you don’t know. Even if you get the responses you want, crowd work in any capacity relies on confidence and spontaneity. If you’re worried about hecklers then you clearly don’t have the necessary confidence and if you’re a new act you will not have developed the necessary quickness of thought and capacity for finessing a crowd to curve audience interactions and create ideal setups and payoffs. You’re shutdowns won’t work because the audience will be able to see they are pre-planned and open mic level terrible. You’ll ruin the dynamic of the room for other acts, and you’ll have successfully realized all of your fears about hecklers are true and you cannot handle them whatsoever.
2. Inviting Friends To Shows
I remember speaking to a working comic in my home state a while back about how they never invited people to their first few shows and instead waited until they had a good routine before they let them see.
Honestly, I wish I had thought that way.
When you begin comedy, of course it’s a big leap. Especially for people who don’t come from a performance background and so it’s natural that you’d want to have people around you to support you. However comedy is a largely solitary venture and as you’ll find out when you’re first backstage or off to the side of a bar about to go up, it's incredibly lonely. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but for those who are used to social activities it can be a big adjustment. Whilst having friends or relatives at your first few shows might seem like a good idea you’ll quickly realize that you will want them to see you after practicing a while. Inviting people to empty open mics where they have to fork out money for drinks, door charges, taxi’s and meals quickly becomes expensive and you won’t be writing enough new material to make it worth the hassle. A lot of people will want to come see you when you start and that’s not a bad thing either, but keep in mind everyone hates the material they did when they started and first impressions matter. No one will care if you don’t have anyone in the crowd when you start out because at open mics you don’t make any of the money. Save those core potential audience members for when you actually need them. When you begin performing solo shows or important split bills where a few extra people on your side looks good to bookers and means extra money from a door split to fund your fledgling career.
3. Fan Pages
We get it.
Comedy can be a rush and it’ll be very tempting to confuse a few okay laughs at open mic’s as the response professionals would get. But the key word here is professional. A fan pages purpose is to garner new support for your work and keep old audiences in the loop. Why? So they can come see you perform at shows where you make money. That’s where the Venn diagram of your performing and your career converge. If you’re not working shows where you’re making money then you have nothing to tell them about.
I know the fan page might make your transition into comedy seem official but how you do on stage will be what tells people who is and isn’t a comedian.
So save the page for when you’re getting paid and you’ll have a lot more things to use it for than updating some shoddy open mics listings.
And so help me god if you put a profile picture of yourself with a microphone on any of your social media like this nugget.
4. New gear when it counts
This is an absolute turd of an experience that I was on the fence about including because whilst it’s an awful idea that you will never do again you’ll usually have to experience it once to understand why. Doing new material is a cornerstone of getting better in comedy and I encourage people to do it constantly BUT at the right time.
New material at an open mic when everyone is geared towards seeing things in their rough drafts does a huge amount of the heavy lifting involved in polishing ideas. However when you throw these rough ideas to crowds expecting a better quality of material the cracks will almost always show.
This is especially heinous when done at good opportunities to progress in your career and ruining otherwise great stepping stones. Such opportunities include featured spots on pro lineups and comedy competitions.
If you’ve been playing open mics and get the opportunity presented to you to do a featured spot on a pro stage then the expectation is that you will bring only your “A material” and rightly so. This is not the place to try premises, tags or crowd work. Go in with your best and crush as hard as you can so that you can establish a good first impression with bookers and pro comics.A huge amount of paid work comes from recommendations and bookers coming to you with spots when they feel confident in your abilities as opposed to you asking for them. If you bomb your first time with new material it’ll take countless more times to re-establish that same level of trust they showed you the first time.
This is something you’ll struggle with a lot in your career as bookers will only want your gold and it can stifle your ability to try new material but it’s not something you need to concern yourself with early on. A basic understanding is if you try 5 different sets over 5 gigs at a room and crush it 4/5 times with the same material then the booker will forgive the 5th night because they know your material and will chalk it up to a by chance dud set.However if you do 5 sets of completely different material and crush 4/5 times then the booker will, more often than not, blame you for trying new material. At the least it will affect how you’re seen by the people who pay you but at the most it can be viewed as disrespectful and rude towards those who have, in many instances, no reason to book you other than wanting to give you a shot as a leg up in your career.
DO NOT SHIT ON THAT HAND.
I bring up competitions here because usually the better run and more established competitions are done at pro rooms. This is a great chance for acts who otherwise have no reason being on a pro stage to get a feel for it. It’s often also the only time a pro booker will see your set. Given that most good competitions are run yearly that’s a long time to wait between viewings so bring you’re best. A lot of the time people are concerned about doing the same material if a competition is run in heats but don’t worry about it. Do your best 5, pro’s don’t even come up with a new 5 straight off the bat so don’t pressure yourself to.
First and foremost any self respecting booker wants an comic who makes the audience laugh regardless of how many times they’ve told the joke over the years. If it’s still getting a response, it’s still bookable. So save your artistic journey for open mics and give the people what they want Friday/Saturday whilst you soul search for meaning in a poorly lit bar Sunday to Thursday.
5. Starting a new room
This is something that frustrates working comedians to no end. The idea that comedy can just “work” in a variety of settings is completely untrue. It requires nuanced and specific details to be correctly done in a specific order all to create the idea that it’s happening naturally. When in reality even something as simple as lighting or sound can make or break a room. And when dealing with new performers there is little to no way that they’d have the experience necessary to know these details and how to best utilize all the components that go into setting up a new room. From marketing, to running a lineup, to working proper sound and lighting. All of this whilst running a huge deficit of funds because in the vast majority of instances, new comedians will run a room for stage time and not money. This misaligned system of priorities mean the room rarely has the focus placed on building a strong and good quality crowd base but rather puts all the onus on the audiences to find out about the night, turn up, deal with the poor setup and still find a way to enjoy themselves.
That’s not to say I don’t understand how people can still feel this is a good idea. When I began I wanted nothing more than to jump up at every open mic I could and I always brushed off experienced and paid performers protests that I was doing more harm then good for myself and the scene on the whole. I assumed they were just out of the know instead of being far more well versed practitioners of comedy who had run the same gauntlet only to finish and realize it wasn’t worth it.
What you need to grasp is that firstly, we do comedy because we enjoy it and would, at some point in the future, like to be paid for it. Secondly, audiences do not see comedy as often as we do. The majority of people who watch comedy see it on TV or online. The minority who see it live will see big name acts at large venues. The minority of that minority who see comedy live at small venues do so around every 6 months to a year AT BEST.
They are not going to comedy every night or even every week like you may be.
When you have a room or a scene that is just run for stage time then there is no where to go. The aim of comedy is to get it good enough that one day you can turn a profit on it right? Well if you’ve removed the price floor by offering cheap or free poorly run open mics and given audiences a bad first impression about comedy then not only will there be no where to go because you’ve established to audiences that “comedy” in your area is free open mics. But you’ll find you have no audiences because you’ve burnt them all in your quest for more stage time to perfect the dick joke you’ll use for the next 5 years.
You do not need as much stage time as you think. I have met in, 10 years of comedy, less than 10 comedians who I could say would be able to bring out enough new material to warrant regular open mics spots. For the rest, you have that 5 minutes of material down, you don’t need to rehearse it for competitions, somehow “get it polished” at comedy night without making any changes or dust off the cobwebs.
You’re an open mic comedian. There are no cobwebs.
I know this last point won’t sink in and I don’t really expect it to. So I’ll just say this. If you’ve been doing comedy for 5 years and you’re still at open mics without paid work then more stage time isn’t the issue.
Love youuuuuuu.x
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