Can you hand me the sparkly jacket? It’s showtime.
Topics on the day include drunken compliments, the differences and similarities between stand-up and magic, The harsh realities of getting older in stand up, pulling muscles and bleeding on stage, and how to make an act that can be purchased in a store unique. I’m not a pedophile.
Comedian of the week – Brian Posehn: Fart & Wiener Jokes
Email: brianmcomedy@gmail.com
Posting this pre-listen, and it’s not really on topic, but wanted the community’s input.
I run a weekly showcase on Tuesday nights. It’s been very successful and I want to start planning to expand in the fall to doing Saturday night shows. I want to run a standard host/feature/headliner setup and do more of the “underground” comedy show – not the mainstream folks, but more unknowns or local comics who are overlooked, etc. I really think it can be successful and I don’t want to direct compete with the “mainstream” club about 15 minutes away.
With that, it’d be a one-nighter setup. What is fair pay for a host, feature and headliner in this situation?
I know many of you will want to know how mnay the room can seat, what I want to make, etc… I just want to gauge your thoughts.
And for a night out, in this economy, non-comics, knowing that the mainstream club is charging $15 a ticket ($12 with a coupon), how much would you pay to see a non-big-name in an intimate atmosphere in a place that really has stellar food and fair priced drinks?
Just throwing it out there – thanks in advance for your input.
What’s the venue? You always have to keep in mind that if you are using a bar, or some other location that is already used to having business on a given night, they may not be too keen on you charging their customers to get in the door.
As far as pay goes, that’s tricky. If we’re talking about local, up and coming talent, I think $25/$75/$150 is fair for one night one show. If you’re planning on shipping in comics, that’s a whole different story.
The room is a separate room that’s set up just for comedy. We already use it on Tuesdays for a weekly showcase. We have a separate bar, intimate setup (seats about 60) and the bar/restaurant is even willing to do a dinner/show package price. I get the door, they get food and drink.
I would not be shipping in comics. They would be local.
This last podcast was interesting cause I’m a “magician” as well (street card magic). I picked it up in 2006, but put magician in quotes cause I don’t do it any more. I got tired of being the guy with the card tricks whenever I went out to a bar.
I was paid to do strolling magic for a while. That was fun, but I wasn’t into the presentational aspect. It was much more fun blowing my friends minds while they were high, than doing magic for people drinking wine and eating cheese.
Comedy and magic are similar in a lot of ways, but they also have dissimilarities. If people in a bar find out you are a magician they will ask you to do a trick, but unlike comedy you will be happy to oblige them instead of blow them off. Like comedy you get “hecklers” with magic, but they’re are far less likely to ruin the show for everyone else, since other people are still amazed even if that one guy isn’t and tell you so. It is however super rewarding when you’re able to shut them down with a badass trick that they can’t figure out.
The biggest similarity I see is the impact of You Tube. You’ve probably heard comedians comedians complain about the fact that people now record unfinished bits of their set and post them to you tube without permission. Well, magicians are having an even harder time with that, cause people will order trick tutorials, then make their own you tube videos teaching people those same tricks for free. There are a lot of magicians who make their living from creating and selling new illusions, so tutorials posted on you tube are directly affecting the artist, much like the posting of jokes that are still being crafted.
The main differences as I see it are:
1) Unlike comedy, magic is easy. You can learn to do some amazing shit if you put a couple months of practice towards learning the basic mechanics of card manipulation. People will think that you’ve been doing it for years, cause most lay people have never seen stuff like the Ambitious Card routine, so they have no idea what illusions can be achieved. (This is not true for all manipulation techniques. For example, the Classic Pass takes years to perfect, but for the most part the basics of card magic are simple. Once you get those down, you will sometimes be able to watch a trick and recreate it from scratch.)
2) This sounds stupid, but magic is a great way to impress girls. I’m not kidding. That’s not why I got into it, but I’m telling you, if you do a great card trick in a bar for a cute girl, she is very likely to give you “fuck me” eyes. I know that sounds stupid, and I thought the same thing when I started out in magic, but I swear to you it is true. (The exceptions are the girlfriend who hates you because her friend is flirting, and the girls who straight up don’t like magic.) For me it was at times a benefit, but most of the time it was just kind of annoying, especially when that girls boyfriend was there as well. As far as comedy is concerned, let’s face it, no one wants to fuck a comic.
3) Magic is much more portable than comedy. People have to specifically seek out comedy, or with comedy in bars they have to pay attention when they might not have been planning on it. With magic you can be in the middle of a conversation and just say, “Hey, want to see a card trick?”
If anyone’s interested in a good place to start with card magic just let me know. I also have some opinions on specific magicians that I’ll probably post later. I’m tired of writing right now.
Off topic, but I did my first open mic Wednesday.
In retrospect it went well. In the moment, I felt that I was bombing and started to edit my jokes on-the-fly in an effort to recover. Bad idea since that only increased my anxiety.
Thankfully I made a recording that I was able to review and see that it was pretty decent. My anxiety wasn’t obvious to anyone but me. While performing, for some reason my brain wasn’t processing that people were enjoying my material.
I love stand-up and I’m happy to acknowledge that I’m far from a natural and that any success that I have will be result of work rather than an accident or luck.
The open mic I was at will be running every Wednesday and I be going back in a couple weeks.
One strange thing about the show I was doing was that all of the other comics were really young (people are allowed in bars in Manitoba at 18). It felt strange being 31 and feeling like the “Old Guy”. If this remains the norm I’ll have to be sure to have something that addresses the age gap ready.
I’m not trying to plug my show here but my co-host put the recording at the beginning of the most recent episode of Hotcakes, if there is any interest in hearing it. http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Hotcakes/~5/qhI8QAr2WPA/hc80.mp3
Hey Gwardo, big ups for your first time going up! And great habits already – recording every set is a must. I’ve gotten lazy, and need to keep doing it when I go up, still.
Anxiety is natural. If you stop getting nervous you should find something else to do