Last decade has seen the emergence of stand up comedy as one of the sought after form of entertainment. A lot because of the stress & pressure faced by everyone in today’s life, no surprise a dose of laughter is a perfect way to unwind and get refreshed. With time this form of entertainment has also become a key part of corporate events as well. Be it employee town-halls, family day events , sales meets or channel partner events , we can find stand up comedians gripping the audience accolades with their jokes and punch liners.
Event organizing team cannot afford to go wrong in their selection of stand up comedian. A wrong choice could turn a much anticipated session of laughter into a moment of embarrassment with poor jokes or use of obscene language. You tube channel is flooded with videos of numerous stand up comedians which make the whole idea of selecting a stand up artist really confusing. So one needs to crystal the selection process while hiring a stand up comedian. Here’s a list of 6 key essentials which you must consider as you book a stand up comedian for your show :
Style Selection : Every stand up comedian has a unique style and masters in a particular genre… To share more insights, like famous stand up Artist Amit Tandon specializes in clean comedy and cracks most of his jokes around family situations, another popular artist Zakir khan is very popular among youth with his jokes around situations with Gen Y.
Female stand up comedians like Aditi Mittal , Neeti Palta , Aishwarya Mohanraj has also made a name for themselves with their own unique style. TV/OTT celebrities like Vir Das, Sunil Grover (Gutthi), Bharti Singh , Sugandha Mishra , Ali Asgar also perform in live events. Emerging stars like Rajasekar Mamidana, Anshu Mor also provide interesting options to choose from within a reasonable budget. If there is language preference then stand up comedians with language specific genres like Hasya Kavi could also be considered.
Budget : While selecting any artist , it is important to define what kind of money needs to be spent. The budget range starts from INR 50,000 onwards to quite a few lakhs depending upon the artist’s popularity and experience.
One can further find ways to optimize their budget by selecting local stand up comedian artist to avoid travel cost.
Content Guidelines : Every corporate has to follow a certain content guidelines to be used during its events. One needs to ensure that these content guidelines ( like no jokes on issues sensitive to company’s culture like gender , inclusivity , no personal remarks on employees , no use of obscene language etc.) are shared properly with the artist. It is also recommended to watch videos of the artist beforehand so that artist could be properly briefed on what to include or exclude during the performance. This is a very critical part of having a stand up artist performing in your show , as sometimes the artist could crack a joke which is not as per corporate culture and that could turn out to be really embarrassing for the organizing team.
It is important to do a proper briefing call with the stand up artist booked for the event. The briefing call should be attended by organizing committee members so that content guidelines could be shared with the artist.
Content Repetition : During lockdown & otherwise lot of us keep seeing videos of stand up artists for entertainment, so it might be a possibility that stand up artist may end up cracking jokes which are already available on youtube channel.
A good stand up artist keeps the content for live events separate from what is available on public forum. So its important to highlight this point during the briefing call with the artist so that your event audience get to hear unheard jokes or punches.
Session structure : A stand up artist session lasts for 30 to 40 minutes. Sometimes clients want to break the session in two parts and schedule some other event agenda between the two sessions. This may not be a best practice and ideally it should be a one session & structure should be discussed with the artist beforehand. A stand up act is a lot about the momentum and flow which grips the audience with artist jokes. Usually any artist takes an initial few minutes to warm up the audience and set their laughter buds to his or her style, so it is recommended to not break the flow in between by breaking the session in two parts.
Technical Logistics : For a virtual show it becomes very important to streamline technical essentials with the artist. One should ensure artist to take session through a stable and high speed WiFi or LAN network, high quality webcam and a proper tested sound system so that there are no technical glitches to break the flow during the session.
We recommend to do a dry run with the artist atleast a day before on a stimulated environment so that all these essentials could be checked before the show. For a physical live, it is important to ask artist about tech rider requirements so that sound, mic and light arrangements can be made as per artist requirement. Also it is advisable to call stand up artist atleast an hour before the show so that he or she can do a dry run, set up the level of sound , mic & lights to avoid last minute surprises on the stage.
www.engage4more.com simplifies the whole process of stand up comedians booking by listing stand up comedians under various categories like clean comedy, emerging stars, youtube artists ,language wise , celebrity stand up artist, location wise selections etc. . More importantly , team understands your budget and give you the best negotiated industry rates with no convenience fee charged. Engage4more team also do entire hand holding in terms of artist briefing on content guidelines, logistics support etc so that you can also enjoy the performance along with other event attendees.
So next time , you want to thrill your employees or event attendees with a stand up artist performance, do visit www.engage4more.com and make your booking with a single click.
Author : Deepak Chaudhary
