5 Signs A Comedy Show Will Be Good
Sometimes It Really IS the Room (Comedy Mindhacks #142)
I’ve never been and never will be a fan of hole-in-the-wall restaurants. They’re just not my thing. I’ll take a chain or something familiar over something scroungy and unkempt any day. I mean, there are certain restaurants out there where I can tell within about five minutes whether I’ll enjoy the meal or not. Is the place busy but not chaotic? Does the staff know what they’re doing? Is the menu fresh and 1-2 pages long? Does what’s coming out of the kitchen smell good? Now, none of those things alone or even together guarantee the food’ll arrive and taste better than a leather wallet. But they are good signs.
I’ve noticed that comedy shows pretty much work the same way. After performing in all kinds of places, from comedy clubs to cafes to outdoor events and so on, I’ve started recognizing certain things that make me think, “This is gonna be fun.” Other times, I walk into a room, look around and, within 10 seconds think, “This is gonna be a challenge.” Occasionally, I walk in, see the setup, and immediately think, “This is gonna suck!” In each instance, the show hasn’t even started yet, but the room is already talking.
Like with restaurants, that doesn’t mean I can predict exactly what’s going to happen. I can’t. I’ve performed in rooms that looked fantastic and turned out to be difficult, and I’ve performed in places where everything seemed wrong but somehow the show worked. Stand-up is live entertainment, which means there will always be an element of unpredictability. Still, I’ve noticed five things that usually tell me something about the kind of night I’m about to have.
The Sound System Is Good: This one sounds obvious but it often goes unnoticed until someone finally takes the stage. Telling jokes on a mic that constantly gets feedback or feels cheap and hollow so that every time you adjust your fingers it pops, really sucks. Good comedy depends so much on timing, but timing doesn’t really matter if half the audience can’t hear setups and punchlines. A good microphone and sound system remove an unnecessary obstacle between the comedian and the audience. A crappy sound system forces everyone in the room to work harder. But of course, people aren’t there to work; they’ve worked all week. They’ve paid to have a fun time and a terrible mic or speakers can get in the way of that. A good sound system also tells me something about the people producing the show. As a performer, it tells me that someone thought about what the comedians would need but also cared enough about the audience to make sure they could hear. When I walk into a room and hear crisp, clear sound coming through the speakers, that’s a good sign.
The Venue Is Actually Designed for Comedy: Piggybacking on the previous point, this one’s huge. The truth is, some rooms just make laughing easier because they’re designed for it. Despite being somewhat claustrophobic, as a comedian I love low ceilings, tight walls, dim lighting, and audiences sitting relatively close together. I especially love rooms without televisions, pool tables, blenders, kitchen noises, random conversations, or some guy right up front trying to order mozzarella sticks during my show. Laughter, of course, is social. When people hear others laughing around them, the laughs have an almost magical way of spreading.
People Paid for Tickets: I’ve produced and performed in plenty of free, non-ticketed shows, and some of them have been fantastic. Still, there’s something different about an audience that intentionally bought tickets to see comedy. Paying even a relatively small amount creates a level of commitment that doesn’t necessarily exist when comedy is simply happening somewhere people already happen to be. My point is: Paid audiences have already decided, before even showing up, that comedy’s what they’re doing that night. They’ve got some skin in the game, so to speak. That also usually means they’re more willing to sit down, pay attention, and participate in the experience. A free audience might be there for the drinks, food, friends, or because someone dragged them along. Ticket sales don’t guarantee a great crowd, but they’re usually a decent indicator that people showing up actually came to see a show.
The Lineup Is Strong: I rarely perform as the only person on a show, though it has happened, especially for private events. For the most part, I’m working with others and the comedian(s) before me can make my job easier or significantly harder. A strong comedian gets the audience laughing, builds trust, creates energy, and then hands that energy to the next person. A good lineup can make or break that. Along with being funny, professional comedians show up when they’re supposed to, respect their time, watch the light, support the other performers, and don’t create drama. They understand that they’re part of a larger show rather than treating the entire evening as a delivery system for their handful of minutes. When I see a lineup filled with people I know are both funny and professional, I usually expect a good night.
It’s Friday or Saturday Night: This certainly isn’t a universal law, but comedians have long talked about how the night of the week can make a huge difference regarding the success of a show. Friday and Saturday audiences often show up with a completely different mindset than audiences earlier in the week. They’re going out, meeting friends, having dinner, and looking for something fun to do. They’ve mentally transitioned from work mode into entertainment mode. For me, Saturday nights often feel especially good. There’s no workday immediately behind the audience and, for many people, no workday waiting first thing the next morning. The audience can typically relax a little more, stay out a little later, and settle into the experience. I’ve had great shows on other nights, of course, but when I see Saturday night on the booking, I generally like my odds a little better.
So, here’s something interesting I just noticed in writing those points out: None of them really has anything to do with the jokes I wrote. What’s wild about stand-up is that I could bring the exact same jokes to two completely different rooms and have radically different experiences. One room might have great sound, low ceilings, paid tickets, a killer lineup, and a packed Saturday-night crowd. The other might have a microphone from 1987, twelve people scattered across a brightly lit brewery, and a trivia game happening six feet away.
All that matters because it’s super easy for me to judge myself entirely by the response I received. If I crush, I assume I performed brilliantly. If I struggle, I start wondering whether the jokes stink, whether my delivery was bad, or whether I’m getting worse. Sometimes those things might actually be true. But sometimes I’m comparing performances without accounting for the conditions in which those performances happened. Now, does that give me permission to blame the room every time a joke fails? Nope! Not at all. It just means that I need to evaluate my performances with contextual nuance.
There have been times when I’ve performed poorly in a good room, but other times where I’ve performed well in a difficult room. In fact, there’ve also been times where the room was so good that it probably made everyone on the lineup look a little better than we actually were. I can’t control everything, of course. Even if all these things are in place, audiences can still be weird, comedians can have off nights, equipment can suddenly fail, and occasionally a thunderstorm can turn a comedy venue into a small freshwater ecosystem. That unpredictability is part of live comedy, and it’s also part of what makes performing exciting.
Having said that, I’ll say, too, that there’s a difference between controlling an outcome and creating conditions that give a good outcome a better chance of happening. The more I perform, the more I’m realizing that a comedy show actually starts long before anybody grabs the mic. It begins when a venue is chosen, a date and time are put on the calendar, the lineup’s created, the tickets are sold, and the sound is tested. So, these days, when I walk into a venue, I’m paying attention before the show ever begins. I’m listening to the sound, looking at the room, noticing the audience, checking out the lineup, and thinking about the night itself. None of those things can tell me exactly what’s about to happen, but together they give me a pretty good idea of what I’m working with. And more often than not, I can tell whether a show’s gonna be good or not before the first joke’s ever told.
In my view, one of the hardest parts of becoming a better comedian is figuring out what a good or bad performance actually is. A bad set doesn’t always mean bad jokes, just like a great set doesn’t always mean you’ve suddenly figured everything out. The better I get at separating what I can control from what I can’t, the better I can evaluate my comedy without overreacting to either one. That’s the kind of thinking I explore in my book Comedy Mindhacks. It’s 100 mental shifts I’ve learned from performing, writing, studying comedy, and occasionally getting things very wrong. The goal is simple: Help comedians think more clearly about the work so they can keep getting better at it. If that’s something you’re working on too, you can take a sneak peek inside HERE then get the book HERE.