Best places to perform live sketches

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone had any tips as to where my sketch group and I could get 5/10 minutes to perform live for the first time?

Don't know how many places in London showcase completely new talent... does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks!

I watched a couple of guys doing sketch comedy at the pear shaped comedy club (open mic), downstairs at the fitrovia the tuesday before last, they went down very well, also try spoonful of poison open mic nights, I think it is at 2 different venues, 2 nights a week, it can be a strange mix at spoonful but you are nearly always guaranteed 5-10 minutes.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for this Julio, saw this very, very late!

Will check them out.

Covent Garden?

Okay, probably too expensive.

Waterloo Station?

Finding open mic sketch nights can be a mite tricky. Going on in between stand-ups can sometimes work or can sometimes kill you. It really has been a mixed bag for my group sometimes it's gone down great other times died on our arse because people 'didn't come here to see sketches'.

My tips would be:
- Get an hour show together and do a festival. Camden is a great one that's cheap and easy to start off at. There's also Reading, Brighton, Manchester as well if you'd like to avoid going bankrupt at Edinburgh first time out. If you can't get an hour team up with another group and do two half-hour slots together
- Check our sketch nights, sketch / character nights and variety nights. Sketches tend to go down better there than at pure stand-up open mic nights. Ones I'd recommend are:
Sketchbox (Oval), ROFL and LOFL (Finsbury Park), Spoonful of Poison (as mentioned before) and from there try and get one of the 'bigger' sketch nights like Making Faces or Sketchercise. Though they aren't that easy to get!
- Find a friendly open-mic night that does take sketches. And ideally get another couple of groups to go with you. Sometimes if you're a sketch group and bring a couple of people each you can make up most of the audience and then suddenly the promoter is a lot warmer to you.

And if you know any good spots do post them up here!

Thanks for all of that - really helpful.

We've done one gig so far that went quite well, but then we did provide much of the audience. It was at the Priory Arms in Stockwell and it was mostly stand-up (and a bizarre stripping puppet) but it was sketch friendly.