Perform only in LA? Hit the road.
Do bar shows for hipster crowds in Brooklyn? Try an urban room uptown.
Exclusively a club comic? Get into an alt room and see how it goes.
Only do shows in front of people in their 20s? Go do a show where the crowd is parents/older folks.
If you’ve got a joke that works in all of those environments, that’s when you know you’ve really got something. Plus, switching it up makes you reevaluate your material, word choice, topics, etc.
When legendary ad man David Ogilvy felt one of his copywriters was getting too fancy with their word use, he gave them the following advice:
“Get on the bus. Go to Iowa. Stay on a farm for a week and talk to the farmer. Come back to New York by train and talk to your fellow passengers in the day-coach. If you still want to use the word, go ahead.”
Hint: You won’t want to use the word anymore.
Sounds a lot like the value you get from working the road. It gets you outside your bubble and lets you see how things land when you’re around “regular” folks.
Case in point for me: I can get away with doing a big chunk of Jew jokes in NYC. But when I do those same jokes in, say, Alabama or Tennesse, I can feel the crowd start to check out.
Erin von Schonfeldt, the exec VP of programming for Improv Comedy Club owners Levity Live, has booked shows for the network of clubs since 1997. In “Stand-Up Comics on How Digital Media Differs from Live,” she explains why the best comics are working it out live in different places.
“There are those, especially today given the viralness of digital media, who can find an audience from a single online clip and find initial success,” she notes. “But if you want to be a professional stand-up comedian, there’s really no substitute for working in front of live audiences, night after night, in multiple cities to build a real foundation.
There’s no substitute for working in front of live audiences, night after night, in multiple cities.