The Wonderful World Of Online Comedy - Part The First

The arts as a whole has, as we all know, been massively affected by the pandemic. Theatres, music venues and comedy clubs have all shut their doors and are yet to reopen in any meaningful way. While some venues are beginning to put on outdoor comedy clubs (and the utterly bizarre sounding drive-in comedy clubs in which laughter is replaced by people honking their horns), the main outlet for comedians has been to try and convert their shows into something that works online. It has led to some interesting stuff and I have found myself becoming more and more immersed in it…

Daniel Kitson - Live Show With Intro / Q&A
This has been the model for a number of comedians - using a live show with an audience as a streaming event wrapped around with an intro or Q&A from them. It works well as a model; I previously wrote about Daniel Kitson’s show here but he’s not the only one doing it. GoFasterStripe, who release live shows for largely up-and-coming or overlooked comedians, have been doing something similar and are worth checking out. They have a club / subscription model which, for £5 a month, gives you a downloadable copy of every show that they produce throughout the year, as well as tickets to their live events (online now rather than in-person).

NextUp Comedy Festival - Zoom-Based Comedy Shows
The next model that I’ve discovered is the "live comedy gig done over video chat" format - and, yes, it is done like a regular video call in that, should you so wish, the performer can see and hear you as well as you being able to see and hear them. NextUp is a comedy streaming channel which, in a similar way GoFasterStripe (and with some small overlap of shows), champions more of the comedians who don’t necessarily get as much mainstream publicity as others. Throughout the month of July, they ran a daily festival (so 31 shows in total) with a selection of different comedians - some well known, others relatively new.

I wasn’t sure if it would work at first and it was a little odd to begin with but the audience interaction can really work in these shows. I’m not normally a fan of a lot of audience work and certainly wouldn't have participated if I was at a “real life” live show but I have, over the course of the festival, found myself turning on my camera and allowing myself to be seen. It can get a little derailed sometimes if the performer allows themselves to go down a rabbit hole with a member of the public who seems to think that they're just having a personal private chat with them or, as can often happen in real life, seems to think of themselves as a comedian but most the pros were adept at handling this. If anything, it seemed to be a more pleasant experience for the comedians as they were getting people who are genuine comedy fans and not pissed up groups of stag and hen dos.

The selection of acts was pretty strong as well. Of the acts that I’ve seen before, the ones that stood out were Mark Watson, Josie Long and Tim Key with Key in particular leaning into the Zoom nature and producing something that would only work as an online gig. Overall, though, the highlight has been discovering some new acts that I hadn’t seen before - Jessica Fostekew, Kiri Pritchard-McLean, Anna Mann, Jordan Brookes (who also used the format to do something that would only work on Zoom) and Maisie Adams are all now firmly on the list of acts to follow.

One of the shows, however, has led me down a whole new avenue of internet comedy…

To Be Continued