Hey guys me and a friend are performing a stand up and sketch show that we wish to tour but have found it hard to find venues for hire. If anybody has performed at or know of any decent venues anywhere in the country that would let new performers on stage then it would be of great help. Thanks
Where are you touring? All around the country?
Quote: Chappers @ August 12 2013, 6:54 PM BSTWhere are you touring? All around the country?
yeah we are looking all over the country
This is a bit of a wide, open ended question, would you care to tell us a bit more information?
What size venues are you looking for? Pubs? Clubs? Arts centres? Theatres?
What sort of budget do you have? Or are you looking for free rooms?
How many people are you expecting to come to the shows?
Will you be charging?
What experience do you have?
Have you thought about publicity?
Organising a tour is not just a case of putting a vague post on a comedy forum, this is why professional acts employ tour managers, PR companies, agents, etc.
I'm guessing that what you are really looking for are open spot venues that will give you some stage time.
Charles Cryer Theatre in Carshalton, Surrey could be interesting.
Thanks for your help guys it's greatly appreciated, I'll be sure to check out those suggestions. In answer to Tony Coward we aren't picky about the type of venue but realistically a small venue would be best at this stage maybe 100 seat max with hopes of getting at least 30-40 people. Preferable free rooms would be good but we are willing to spend about £150 on hiring a room and charging £5 for tickets and £6 if the venue wants a cut of the ticket money. Excuse the vagueness/language of the original post but I am new to this.
Listen to Tony he always has great advice, if you guys are gonna charge £5 you need to be good and people to have heard of you, are you promoting yourselves on YouTube? have you done shows before?
If not I would suggest you do some sketches at open mic nights, pear shaped comedy like a variety of different things at their nights. Might be a better place to start than hiring a venue straight away.
Additionally you could try the Colour Theatre at Merton Abbey Mills.
This festival is over now but they do stuff there at other times of the year too.
Thanks for the suggestion Chappers. Just wanted to thank Tony and Julio for there advice after having a good think about it. This is my friends show he's the one with a performance background and has done stand up for 5 years so have been following his lead with this, the show is about an hour long so the original post was meant to be so we could just find a couple of small venues to perform in. After listening to what Tony and Julio said I suggested it maybe a a good idea to actually do small bits of the show in open slots to test the audience reaction and maybe perform a shorten down versions of the show in pubs before going all out and traveling the country. To answer Julio on if we are on YouTube we currently aren't but we do have a show coming up and plan on filming that and bits of that will be on YouTube. Thanks to everyone who has posted its been a big help
Try getting in touch with your local arts centre, they may well have a studio theatre or smaller room which they might let you have for free.
If you do eventually do this in a venue, have a think about getting a warm up act or two also to do 10 or 20 minutes before you, it will be better value for the money people spend and if they are good will put people in the right frame of mind to watch your show for an hour and be ready to laugh, you may have to split some of the money received depending on who you book to do it though.