Comedians wanted for Charity Event

Hi There,

I'm new to the forum so hello, my name is Tara, im the Office Manager of a small market research company in London. We are planning to host a charity comedy event in October this year to support three UK charities. We are looking for comedians to fill roughly 15 min slots over an evening to be held in central London. We are in the early stages of planning this event but it is obviously most important that we have the comedy on board. As all the proceeds are going to charity we wouldn't be able to pay but we could promise an audience of 150+ and that the proceeds are going to a worthwhile cause.

Please contact me if you have any interest in participating or if you would like to know more details.

Many Thanks!

Can you tell us which charities the event is supporting?

Of course, this year we have chosen to support Macmillan Cancer Support, Battersea Dogs Home and Missing Children.

No offence Tara but have you any experience in putting on a comedy event or booking comedians?

As a stand up with 8 years experience I can foresee a number of problems (and I've done a lot of these type of events so I know how they tend to go)

1) You are not paying the comedians, not even offering expenses, so the comics who are most likely to respond will be open spots who are not used to performing in front of a large audience and certainly not one who's main reason for being there is not to watch the comedy but to support the charities. You will, most likely, end up with comics who, at best, can do 5 minutes in a forgiving comedy environment but over 15 minutes will kill the room, the result will be 150 people talking amongst themselves and ignoring the act on stage.

2) Do you have a proper PA, stage area, lighting? If not it'll be the same result, the audience won't be engaged because they won't be able to see or hear the comedian properly and will chat amongst themselves.

3) You seem to be splitting up the comedy into 15 minute segments which will presumably be spread across the night, this means that any momentum built up by one comedian will be totally dissipated by the time the next one comes on. Much better to have a whole section of time devoted to the comedy and have, either, all the comedians on one after the other (perhaps have one act as the MC and introduce the other two) or with a very short break between them.

4) Not sure if this is the case, but if you have other entertainment e.g. a band, please have the comedians on before them. Music and comedy never really mix, one involves people paying attention and focussing on the performer, the other can be pleasant background accompaniment to chatting and socializing, they don't work in the same way. Comedy is incredibly fragile, music not so much.

5) Are other people at the event being paid for their time and contributions? If food or drinks are being served I would assume that the people doing this are being paid? If so why do you value their contributions but not those of the entertainment? Unfortunately this seems to be a prevailing attitude at the moment, that comedians should be willing to give up their time (and money, if you include traveling costs) for the offer of an audience (who generally couldn't care less about the performer and are not really interested) and the warm, rosy glow of supporting some, albeit, worthwhile charities.

Apologies if this post comes across as negative but as a professional comedian I'm seeing an increasing number of these sort of requests. How would you respond if I wanted you to travel at your own cost and do some market research for free on the basis that it was for charity and would be good experience for you?

Good luck with it though and if you need any genuine help with organising this event, please feel free to contact me, tonycowards@hotmail.com

Completely agree with Tony having had similar experiences with charity gigs. I'd recommend providing some answers to those questions as the vast majority of the time these events are very poorly run. Convince a comedian they aren't going to become background noise for an uninterested crowd and they might just be swayed.

Hi Tony and David,

Obviously this is an issue which is something you both feel very passionate about and clearly I have offended you with my request which was not my intention.

Your reply Tony, however, I fear is a bit ahead of yourself and also extremely rude. Nowhere in my post did I mention not having a PA system/venue, other entertainment, that we will have servers for food etc or even that we are paying for the venue!
You are also assuming that we will treat participants very cruelly, which is not the case at all! Not paying for them to perform is not the same as treating them badly. I simply wanted to get in touch with potential comedians to see if they were interested and how they would like to go about getting involved.

And yes, when starting out in Market Research as with any media-centric business, you do need to work for free initially.

Perhaps I have come to the wrong place for my request in which case I do sincerely apologise, I will look elsewhere for help.

Many Thanks.

And on that basis she is out!

I hope you are ashamed of yourself Tony by asking some questions to clarify details of the gig and hopefully getting some pro comedians like yourself to pitch in and help!!

How very rude indeed!

Quote: Tara @ June 15 2012, 2:28 PM BST

Hi Tony and David,

Obviously this is an issue which is something you both feel very passionate about and clearly I have offended you with my request which was not my intention.

Your reply Tony, however, I fear is a bit ahead of yourself and also extremely rude. Nowhere in my post did I mention not having a PA system/venue, other entertainment, that we will have servers for food etc or even that we are paying for the venue!
You are also assuming that we will treat participants very cruelly, which is not the case at all! Not paying for them to perform is not the same as treating them badly. I simply wanted to get in touch with potential comedians to see if they were interested and how they would like to go about getting involved.

And yes, when starting out in Market Research as with any media-centric business, you do need to work for free initially.

Perhaps I have come to the wrong place for my request in which case I do sincerely apologise, I will look elsewhere for help.

Many Thanks.

View original

Um, I'm not in the least bit offended, or at least I wasn't until I read that post.

Tony asked some very civil questions - the sort that any sensible performer thinking about giving up an evening of[/i] his time for free might ask. He never said you didn't have a PA, he asked if you had one. Specifics are important to someone thinking about stepping out in front of a room full of complete strangers and trying to win their affection. I'm sure Tony's questions were only posed to give yourself an opportunity to allay the usual fears comics have surrounding charity gigs - ie that they're typically run by well-meaning people who don't watch a great deal of live comedy and are unfamiliar with how to best present it. That's certainly been my experience anyway.

Quote: Tara @ June 15 2012, 2:28 PM BST

Your reply Tony, however, I fear is a bit ahead of yourself and also extremely rude.

View original

This niavety suggests, along with the rest of your posts, that you could genuinely do with some help from Tony. He's a good pro with a great reputation on these sorts of things. All he was doing was asking questions that any self respecting, half decent act will ask you. If an act contacts you and doesn't ask these questions, it's likely they are going to die on their arse. As Tony said, comedy is a difficult thing to do- a room has got to be coddled and charmed; just one mistake can make a potentially great night into something utterly unpleasant for everyone involved.

For these sort of things, I always recommend trying to team up with a local comedy club to put it on for you. Offer to pay peoples' travelling expenses and in many cases acts and promoters will forgo a fee in support of the charity. For an act who can command a room of 150+ for 15 minutes at a charity event, they will be giving up paid work in exchange for doing this. Many will happily do that in the name of charity, but you have to make it a pleasant experience as far as you can- out of respect if nothing else.

No one has suggested you will treat comics badly, why would anyone think that? The failings of most comedy nights and not born out of exploitation, but by simply just not realising how didfficult it is. If it were as simple as just getting a few comics in, so many clubs wouldn't fail. If you get something wrong; book the wrong acts, the audience chats through the set, it may be be extremely demoralising for the act though who at this point his likely forgone another gig and paid out their own money to get there.

Also, comedians are poor poor souls, and could probably do with a bit of charity themselves.

Apologies if you found my queries offensive Tara, I guess it must be strange working in market research and having someone else doing the questioning.

I was actually trying to get some answers to some important questions which often get overlooked at these type of events.

A lot of people think that to stage stand up comedy all you have to do is book some comedians, push them out in front of an audience and, voila, instant laughs all round.

I've done charity events where the organisers have seen fit to call the front row to get their buffet just as I was about to go on stage, resulting in the most accessible part of my audience disappearing as I walked up to the mic. I've performed in front of people who couldn't give a toss that there was a comedian on stage because they weren't properly informed that there would be entertainment. I've done charity gigs where the people assumed that the comedians would bring the PA and where they think performing in complete darkness or bright light is perfectly okay, so apologies if I didn't have complete faith in your abilities from your initial post.

I did a gig at Tiger Tiger in Covent Garden last week for "Help For Heroes", the organisers listened to all of my advice and tried to the best of their abilities to do everything that I asked of them to ensure a good show. I was paid the grand sum of £25 to MC the event on a Friday night (roughly a tenth of what I would usually earn on a Friday night), which just about covered my travel into London (I live in Wiltshire). The result? The charity got about £2500, a good show was had by all the acts and the audience had a cracking night.

I was happy to do the gig because it's a charity I respect AND, more importantly, the organisers wanted to make sure the event went as well as possible.

Now, I'm not suggesting that you don't want to do all of these things too, but I wanted to ask some questions to make sure you're aware of how to organise this sort of event and people often think it'll be a good idea to bung on some comedians and really don't have the first clue of what they are doing. The result is generally that they book some open spots who die on their arse and everyone goes away having had a thoroughly dispiriting experience which really does no one any favours.

But hey, what do I know?

Quote: Tony Cowards @ June 15 2012, 3:15 PM BST

But hey, what do I know?

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You obviously haven't done enough market research. Poor form, Tony.

Thank you Nat for your reply. I will look instead, to partner with a local comedy club as I think It will work better for us.

Tony, I think our wires were crossed here - I did feel your response was rude initially but I appreciate you trying to advise. As I said we will try to arrange this with a local comedy club instead of approaching people ourselves. Thank you for your advice, I will bear it in mind.

And apologies to you Tara if you feel you got some sort of backlash but the truth is that comedians, like everyone else, are suffering massively because of the recession, all in a business where for every Michael McIntyre on millions, there are hundreds, if not thousands of acts struggling to earn somewhere near the national average wage.

A lot of the paid work has dried up, especially midweek and so when we see increasing numbers of these "Come and do a charity gig, there's no money but it'll be a great night" type posts on various forums we're a bit cynical about it, sorry about that.

Quote: Tara @ June 15 2012, 3:23 PM BST

Thank you Nat for your reply. I will look instead, to partner with a local comedy club as I think It will work better for us.

View original

Yep, keep your hands clean and let someone who has experience do the bits you're not sure on. Means you can focus on selilng tickets and they can maybe get a bit of exposure for the club. Make sure you let them put their name and logo on any fliers/posters/tickets too, that way when the night is a sucess, they might win themselves a few punters out of it.

Do you think Tara has ever considered public relations? Not as a vocation, just, you know, in general.

I'll get my apology in now whilst I'm online: I'd like to apologise unreservedly to anyone offended by the content (Tara), or weakness (everyone else) of the above joke.