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How To Promote Stage Comedy In a Geeky Way?
shaitand writes "I recently went to a renaissance festival where a man (Arthur Greenleaf Holmes) performed some of the most obscene NSFW and hilarious comedy I've seen in a long while. The show was free and he had CDs and DVDs in his bag and accepted donations. I certainly gave one. But why is this guy doing niche fairs and not HBO specials? I contacted him and he said that he would love to break out and because of his costume he has trouble and the nature of his act he has trouble getting on to traditional stages. How would you promote such an act? On further conversation he said he is an avid supporter of free flow of information and strongly encourages pirating his work far and wide. Since he is primarily interested in making money with live performance and not media sales I thought if he took this to the next level and released a DVD under a creative commons license the exposure and interest generated might help him break into new forums with his act?"
sudo make funny
First of all .. WTF is "Promote Stage Comedy in a Geeky way?" . To paraphrase a short green hairy dude "Promote or don't promote .. there is no geek in it".
Secondly .. he doesn't have an HBO special because (by your own and his estimation) he is not mainstream. No matter how much promotion you do, your potential audience will always be small if you only fill a niche.
Thirdly WTF is this doing here?!??!?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
It's a terrible, terrible show, but would give him mainstream cred. Now, if he was on Community, he'd have geek cred, but no one would see it.
Seriously, why not? Make a server and build a stage, do stage comedy on it while dodging missiles, headcrabs, and server-crashing props.
Maybe the reason he cannot get on HBO etc is because he supports the free flow of information. Last I checked the major media people hate pirating work as they believe it cuts into their profits. Kinda like Bradley Manning filling in for Jay Carney @ the White House.
I'd say what the submitter considers to be obscene is ... well, it's not obscene. Based on the description and the video on his website, the commedy is largely based on the juxtaposition of the blueness of the material and the persona of being a 1500's poet. I found the video rather amusing - I imagine it'd be fun to see live.
"Old man yells at systemd"
The first rule of underground stage theater is don't post about underground stage theater.
"Old man yells at systemd"
I've noticed the local comedy clubs have closed down. South Bend, IN Funny bone closed then Kalamazoo Michigan had a smaller club downtown that closed. Is this a national problem or just the bad economy in the area?
I saw Dunham at a local club before he got big, twice. He was a regular on the tour of local clubs I believe. I guess it was part of the right of passage for that job? Saw a stage hypnotist - with a member of our group getting hypnotized to have an orgasm with a tap on the forehead. Absolutely hilarious evening. Shame that entertainment option isn't around anymore.
Because he's not funny? I watched the promo video on his homepage - didn't even smile. He seemed to spend more time talking about how inappropriate and risque his humor is than actually demonstrating it. For a promo video, it sucked, because it caused me to lose interest in ever watching the guy again. I hope his live act is better.
But if he is that good, maybe he could be playing the casino circuit. Since gambling is already an "adult" activity, a comedian or rapper would not be disqualified for being smut-mouthed.
The truth is that casinos have gone middle class and respectable: Upcoming Events at the Fallsview Casino
Umm HBO is cable, so no FCC issues. And have you seen some of the stuff they do? Not exactly kid friendly.
Now, HBO spends millions on promoting comics and they kind of expect to make it up in subscriptions (if the guy is funny even to a very specific audience he would be safe here – see Game of Thrones – hard to be more geeky than that.) and selling DVDs of said show – which the artist freely promotes the piracy of.
Now, I am not saying HBO is the only game in the town or that I like the way they play the game (I would love to just by Game of Thrones without the other bits) - but if you want to play their game you need to play by their rules.
Except for when you're there in person. Then his information does not flow freely.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Sounds like an outsized ego in search of an audience. This guy should try a few comedy clubs in LA. If he gets invited back, maybe he has potential. If not, don't quit your day job.
It's not a site for people with humour.
10: OH I'd disagree,
20: I've been voted +5 Funny repeatedly on Slashdot. And that is proof that Slashdot users have humor, because I am funny, very funny, I know this because I have been voted +5 Funny repeatedly on Slashdot where people are well known for having a great sense of humor, I know this for a fact because well..... GOTO 20
If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
I contacted him and he said that he would love to break out and because of his costume he has trouble and the nature of his act he has trouble getting on to traditional stages.
Sounds like he knows exactly why he's having trouble getting mainstream gigs. If he wants to break out, he needs to apply his skills to more relatable material with a more mainstream presentation. That's how these things work.
Do you think all those boy band guys wanted to do that pop dreck? (God, I hope not.) But that was the opportunity presented at the time so they bent over and took the money.
In comedy, you pander to the crowd. Why else would Ron White drink so much? It's a tough gig and sticking to an act with narrow appeal is a death sentence.
Barber Shop Quartets, can't get any geekier than that.
He's not on HBO because the Renaissance fair crowd is a very small segment of society.
Your average person doesn't find mildly rude poems to be that funny.
And, yes, I did say mildly rude. Not "some of the most obscene NSFW and hilarious comedy I've seen in a long while." There is more obscene, NSFW, and hilarious period comedy in Blackadder - a prime time TV show that first aired 30 years ago this June - than in the clips that I've been able to find of him. We live in an era where "offensive" comedians turn to necrophilia jokes to shock audiences because pedophilia, incest, and rape jokes aren't seen as being all that shocking anymore. A sonnet about a knothole that looks like a vagina is the work of your average high school drama club member, not your average professional comedian.
This guy is exactly where he belongs; doing niche fairs.
Are drama club scrubs trying to infiltrate this website and get a seat at the table?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
This guy seems to be all about Renaissance Faires -- boring. If you want NSFW, then look for Kevin "Bloody" Wilson, an Australian performer whose act is pure raunch. DILLIGAF forever!
HBO is the wrong place to start. All the comics there have some reputation from the clubs before they get on HBO. If he wants to move beyond RenFair performer, he should be trying to get his DVD in the hands of anyone who headlines their own comedy club shows. If one of them finds him funny, he might get a gig opening for someone with a bit more name recognition. The pay will be almost nil, but that's how people build their reputation to the point where HBO will pay any attention. Even then it's a bit of a long shot...the opening act from the show I saw this past Friday had already been on HBO.
Another option to explore...contact Netflix and offer the DVD royalty free for a year or so. If they accept it, urge anyone and everyone you meet to 5-star it in the hopes that it starts showing up as a suggestion to a wider audience.
But I wonder if his stuff isn't really that funny outside of the RenFair setting. In the context of a RenFair, that would be pretty funny because he's injecting humor into the scene that everyone is participating in. But outside of a RenFair setting, where people wear normal clothes and speak in their normal way, the humor won't play as well.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
I found it funny, when I was a teenager, now, no
there is a reason this guy is not making it, teenagers have no money
Quite seriously, read some of his material. 99%, I'm certain, kids won't understand.
I think the main reason that he isn't on HBO is simply that 99% of the adults wouldn't either.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Hi! I'm Matt "Breakpoint" Heck. You may know me as "Theodore" from the web series "Aperture R&D" (in which case I assume that's the point in the credits at which YouTube had to pause to re-buffer). Presuming nothing falls victim to arson during post-production, In a little under a year, you might see me in a film and a few other odd detours. If you lived on the Central Coast around, oh, 2001-2003, you might know me for doing stand-up comedy. If you've been to Burning Man over the last few years, you might have seen a 15,000 cubic foot helium airship I helped stick 200 feet over the Nevada desert with a Tesla coil concert under it. It's even VAGUELY possible you know me from my (cough) "music" with The Braindead Monkeys, featuring such classic tracks, god help me, as, "Terrorism!". And, if you clicked on the wrong link somewhere, there's a very outside chance you might even have read some of my short science fiction, in which case I'm very sorry, I didn't mean it, and they all lived happily ever after right after a thorough memory wipe, which I would offer you if I could.
However, in as much as I am ever actually cited or referred to anywhere, it's always from something I wrote (essays or code) in my professional capacity as (primarily) a software engineer. Far more people have used the touchscreen jukeboxes I did for Ecast, or the MPEG decoders I helped write for Xing (or, certainly, the DeCSS keys that were apparently lifted from them), or even the video games beta release I worked on, then are probably ever going to recognize my face or my voice, let alone my name. But even then, what DO people remember my name from? A few off-hand emails about Qt vs wxWindows (now wxWidgets) I wrote a long, long time ago, but which apparently had a larger effect than I had any right to expect. In other words, I am remembered for writing something that was really merely a step or so above a private message.
So, now that you know where I'm coming from, let me give you my take on a few things-- because "Silicon Valley" and "Hollywood" are going to overlap more and more, not less, and the overlap is cultural as much as it is technical. I spend some of my social time with other engineers, actors, writers, stand-up comics science fiction anthology editors, and makers (I helped run TechShop for a year or so). They all have one thing in common: burnout is a problem.
I would propose that practically everything you do in this world for love or money will fall somewhere on an equilateral triangle that we might label "Compensation", with these three vertices:
* Pay
* Fame
* Satisfaction
Somewhere on that triangle is a very specific spot where YOU would be happiest, and it probably isn't dead-center. Likewise, somewhere on that triangle is a spot where YOU are RIGHT NOW, and that is the sum of everything you are currently doing, and everything you have done.
Now, I'm not talking about your whole life, here-- hopefully your marriage isn't done for fame or money-- but I am talking about your (supposedly) 9-5 job, plus the "consulting" work that may or may not really reimburse you for the time you put into it but is damn cool, plus the hobbies and projects you participate in because you really, really want to.
The simple fact of the matter is that the vast majority of the time, the things we would like to do for pay, fame, and satisfaction do not do all three of those things. Often, they only do one of them. Worse, sometimes you go negative in a category. But the thing to realize-- and this can be maddeningly frustrating to try to explain to people who are more comfortable in (or more easily satisfied with, moo) their lives-- is that those things you do that you can't figure out why in the hell you bother? Those things that you still do even though it seems like they're just not worth it? We do a lot of those things to make the sum of EVERYTHING we do a little closer to where we'd like to be on that triangle.
Or at least, we SHOULD.
Now, I will readily assure you that
It wasn't very good...
Yes but you're being voted +5 funny by people who find themselves laughing a jokes with punchlines like 'And the funny thing was he was trying it with a TMS320c32 processor!'
Or maybe that's just me ;-)
Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
Yes but you're being voted +5 funny by people who find themselves laughing a jokes with punchlines like 'And the funny thing was he was trying it with a TMS320c32 processor!'
Or maybe that's just me ;-)
I don't see the problem
;-)
If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
Checked him out on youtube. Not bad, but inventively-obscene renaissance-themed doggerel is always going to be something of a niche market, methinks. Egad. Forsooth.
AKA "How do I market to geeks?"
How can you possibly maintain the following train of thought?
(1) "I think renaissance faire people are geeks"
(2) "I think slashdot people are geeks"
(3) "these groups form an equivalence set"
(4) "ask slashdot how to market to geeks"
(5) "slashdot tells me"
(6) "market to geeks"
(7) "reach the renaissance faire target market"
(8) "Profit!"
Seriously, I hope that the OP doesn't think that geeks form a monolithic market block, any more than Anonymous all hold the same political positions on everything.
it doesn't run linux
rewriting history since 2109
why is this guy doing niche fairs and not HBO specials?
Maybe because you're not the ultimate arbiter of what's funny and what isn't.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
yah, seems kinda dicey
rewriting history since 2109
HBO executives don't want families with young children cancelling their subscriptions when they casually click on your friend's show.
What? I'm an Aussie and even I know HBO has had some great uncensored comedy acts (the late, great, George Carlin comes to mind as a prime example), if I'm not mistaken HBO is "The place" to been seen for an aspiring American stand up?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
If he is so into giving his stuff away for free, why does his website consist of a couple minutes of youtube clips and a link to, you guessed it, iTunes (where they decidedly do not give away stuff for free)?
I've not seen his stuff live, but judging by the website examples it's quite a niche (pseudo-Seventeenth Century erotic verse). Good luck to him, but he doesn't scream out "mainstream TV comedy".
Oh, and I don't give a gibbon's toss whether he releases his DVDs for free under a Creative Commons licence, or charges twenty quid for a heavily DRM'd verson. Being in favour of piracy is totally orthoganal to being a good comedian. You're either funny or you're not, and being geek-friendly is totally irrelevant.
It's the same with musicians. If they want to give their CDs/downloads away for free, good for them. It makes absolutely no difference to how good they are. You could give me a dozen free albums of country and western or Justin Bieber songs and it wouldn't make me want to go and see them play live.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I now know that it is something to avoid like the Black Plague. Cosplay with fuckwits is not really my thing.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Am I the only one who thinks lowly of obscene comedy?
Not that it offends me, but for me the art is exactly in being funny *without* being obscene.
Judging by the examples on his website, he is actually less crude and smutty than the 16th and 17th century poets he is imitating.
Anyone who thinks that "obscenity" was invented in the late Twentieth Century hasn't read widely enough.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Firstly, congratulations on getting your guy's link onto Slashdot.
I've got news for you: there are thousands of comedians playing night after night in front of crowds of 100 or less. Many of them are subjectively better than most TV comedians. Some of them will break through. Some of them will spend the rest of their life doing it for the love of it. Some of them will make a living wage on it but no more.
There are well worn paths, and your guy seems to be on one. He's doing paid gigs.
He's pretty good at what he does, and it's great that he's carving out a niche, but I have a hard time seeing it work as stand up on TV because all of the biggest laughs that he gets are from interacting with the audience or with other people on stage and that does not fit most standard TV formats where it's one person up on a stage.
Here's a clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R25DAYbgRVc
> And have you seen some of the stuff they do? Not exactly kid friendly.
Yep...
Game of Thrones
True Blood
The Sopranos
Somehow I don't think HBO would bat an eye at some off color jokes. Now make if this comedian was a hot young chick and willing to get naked on stage, then HBO might take notice.
My daughter's high school drama/theater class has a t-shirt like that. I forget the exact wording, but some theater variation of the fight club thing.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Well, clearly he needed an extra ARM.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
The most effective way to promote someone in a 'geeky' way is to do what Ze Frank does. His followers are rabid and participatory. I get the sense your entertainer relies on audience feedback as part of his act, and would do better if he was going back and forth with people who are interested.
So, create a blog, do videos. Speak directly on topics that showcase his brand of humor. Invite the audience to do contests, send in their favorite picture of an Earl or something. Have posts that are just about those.
Build email lists with notifications about new content. Track your audience and come up with conversion goals, which could be as simple as creating an account on the site and commenting.
Develop your social media channels. Get timely posts up on Facebook with some frequency. Announce upcoming shows and ask people who is coming. Create some interesting way for people to subscribe to his channels at shows - Yorik's skull with a bar code on the top would do it.
But think about traditional ways of marketing something online. That's what a geek would do.
Yeah, but to get an HBO special, you already have to be pretty well established. The last time HBO gave specials to unknowns was back in the days when Rodney Dangerfield used to promote them on his HBO "Young Comedians" specials (helping start the careers of guys like Sam Kinison, Andrew Dice Clay, and Rosanne Barr).
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Is a stupid question. The questions should be:
"What target demographic does this comedian most appeal to?"
"Where does this target hang out, in real life and online?"
"How do I communicate with them there?"
"Does he need to change his material to reach a broader demographic?"
Asking about a geeky way to do something is falling into the same trap that burst the dot.com bubble, or shatters the dreams of many indie film-makers and musicians. If you build it, they most very likely will not come. You need to now who "they" are, what they like, and where they are, and go to them.
Yes but you're being voted +5 funny by people who find themselves laughing a jokes with punchlines like 'And the funny thing was he was trying it with a TMS320c32 processor!'
Or maybe that's just me ;-)
No. That's very, very funny. You are not odd at all. Not. At. All.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
So where's the torrent link to the DVD? Then we can see for ourselves.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Kickstarter ... 'nuff said. The Veronica Mars producers raised money to make a movie via kickstarter.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/559914737/the-veronica-mars-movie-project
Seem to me to be the best solution ... no?
I'm sure the stats here would clearly indicate that I, yes, - I - have been +5 funny more than you!
Alright we'll crown you our Cowardly Class Clown then. I need the rest anyhow.
If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
enebody knows how to... this ?
online drawing lessons