Zooming Through Tough Times With An Open Mind
Mid 2020. Entertainers no can entertain, companies no can company, people no can people. I found myself at home like the rest of the world. The only thing I had ever been sure of was nonexistent. I always knew that if I could get to a room with people gathered in it, even if I had to be propped up like a patio umbrella, I could do what I had learned to do over the years, entertain. This would garner me self-worth, value to others, and of course money.
Cut to world pandemic response. Quarantine. The unimaginable. No one allowed to gather anywhere anytime. The one thing needed for me to be… me and probably, in a way, you to be you.
Three or four weeks into this I received a job offer. Not a live “in person” event as we would come to call every other event I had ever done. No. This was a “Zoom show”.
“What is a zoom show?” I asked.
“Let me just put a ‘pre-event Zoom meeting’ with the client together for you.” Came the response.
In my first meeting I pretended to know what I was doing. It quickly became obvious that the client was very well versed in the virtual arena and the bullshit arena. I was painfully inexperienced in virtual and shoveling the latter feverishly. As luck would have it this was the “Marines of fortune five hundred companies”. They needed a comedian for one of their regular virtual get-togethers and they had only solutions for me because, well, it’s what they do. They adapt and overcome.
They scheduled a small trial show, fully paid, and a follow up debut show to prep me for what I might need. They made the whole this feel like my idea and implemented my input gracefully. I learned how to do zoom comedy for high end clients and how to keep it interesting and uncompromising for me while also learning a very valuable business lesson.
When someone is resisting doing something or isn’t up to par at it that’s rarely because they don’t want to be good at it or are incapable. Most times they just need well-intended support and collaborative assistance and more importantly, an open mind. The good people who ran across me had a natural and gentle way of opening people’s minds to their own potential. They helped me open mine and away we went!
As time went by this company bought blocks of events from me and trusted me with a very sacred slice of their company culture which gave me a financial lifeline during a very hard time.
Their assistance spun me off into building a zoom/podcasting studio on my property that gave me a leg up in the zoom or virtual comedy world at a time when that was the only way to make money and it was very real money.
As a result, I not only survived the pandemic as a creative, but thrived in a field that still exists as an addendum to the world of comedy performance and another way to achieve financial stability in an ever-changing entertainment world.
I have never been comfortable putting even 51% of my eggs in one basket so having yet another way to “feed the bulldog” is right up my alley. So the next time you hear a comedian talk about how “…virtual comedy shows aren’t the same as live comedy shows so they aren’t real comedy”. Know this.
An eighty seat black box comedy club show is not the same as a five hundred seat funnybone which is not the same as a three thousand seat arena which is not the same as a special on Netflix which is not the same as a thirty-five thousand dollar corporate which is not the same as a televised comedy competition which is not the same as a raw one-nighter at a hotel bar which is not the same as a hyper hip open mic which is not the same as…. Well you get the point.
It's all comedy. It all serves the comedian and the audience in whatever way they chose. The comedian sets the terms and decides how much of it is art and how much of it is paycheck. Or they don’t. THAT’S when it is no longer comedy.
In closing I have had an incredible time learning how to use this new additional medium to perform standup comedy in an honest and creative way. I think it’s a fresh and enlightening challenge in regards to the development of material and showmanship and those comedians that want to publicly discount virtual comedy are lacking the openness to understand why what they NOW do is creative and how those terms were originally set by THEMSELVES. For them I wish a more open mind, well intended support, and collaborative assistance to help them “adapt and overcome”.