The tale of Jokes and Beers
I’ve been organizing and hosting a weekly comedy show in Barcelona for nearly a year now and decided to write a little piece about what I’ve learned as it has been quite the rollercoaster.
First of all: Why would anyone ever consider starting a comedy show?
Starting a new English comedy show in a non-English country might not seem like the best idea, especially in Barcelona, where already three or four comedy shows in English take place every single night. So why on earth would anyone even consider starting another one? Well… I had my reasons…
Besides being an organizer and host, I’m primarily a performer, one of those people who try to write jokes. I performed short sets at other comedy shows for nearly two years before I even started hosting. However, my second biggest role within the comedy scene was also being a critic. Through the years, I outed quite some criticism towards other shows. Criticism including:
- Many shows seemed to be more tailored towards the performers rather than the audience.
- There was limited to no transparency on how performers got selected or how someone could apply.
- I personally needed more opportunities to grow as a performer. As a self-obsessed egocentric white guy, this might’ve been the biggest motivation.
Using the motivation of “If you think you can do it better, do it yourself”, I decided to give it a go.
Comedy Revolution
My first attempt took place during the summer of 2022. As many of the “more experienced” organizers went on holiday, I was given an opportunity to organize two or three open mic shows at the comedy clubhouse in Barcelona. This was the venue where nearly everyone decided to host a comedy show because it had all the equipment necessary.
During this period, I was also working on my comedy platform “Alegrify” and using it for the clubhouse’s website. This and other online tools allowed me to do decent online marketing for the events. I’m not gonna get too deep into this topic, I’ve already written plenty about it, but it helped to get people to watch shows.
To embrace transparency about how performers were picked, I decided to make it 100% open. Performers could sign up for the show on the same page where people could buy a ticket. This limited the chances of bias.
Comedy Revolution went relatively well due to a lot of effort in marketing. The shows reached an audience of 30–35 attendees each, which was considered a decent audience at the time, especially seeing the time slot (Thursdays at 10.30 pm).
Of course, after summer, the regular shows returned and my show shut down until December, when some late slots on Tuesdays opened up. I ended up hosting two shows that month, one going well… the other… well, causing a small riot. I’m aware that I’m to blame for the incident. I performed a piece that was not well worked out, sensitive, and not well perceived.
I learned my lesson from the riot, apologized, paid people their entrance back out of my own pocket, and hosted a better show two weeks later. I’m unaware if it was because of the incident, or any other reason, but when the new year started, I was no longer given a time slot to host shows at the comedy clubhouse.
Black Lab
In January of this year, I had to start looking for another venue if I wanted to keep hosting shows. That’s when I thought about Black Lab in Barceloneta. It was a nice pub, very center where I used to hang out on Fridays after work. As they already organized live music over there, I thought it could work as a venue for comedy as well.
Once I reached out, I learned that they just opened a new venue in Eixample. The owners offered to first try out comedy over there on Thursdays. That way, we could see if it worked and occasionally also do a show in Barceloneta. With only a short amount of time to prepare, I went ahead to look for performers.
Performing at this venue had great advantages: it was in a good location, they had a nice interior, comfy seats, and tasty beers. This definitely helped to create a show that was more tailored towards an audience. Not everyone wants to go down to a dark half-empty basement to watch starting comedians try out new jokes. Most people want a nice comfy environment to hang out. This of course would be another story for a solo show or comedy special; I’m speaking about open mics.
However, the venue also came with some issues: it was not set up for comedy or any form of live performance. The venue in Eixample did not have a stage, lighting, sound system,… In an attempt to overcome some of the issues, I ended up carrying my own crappy speaker and cheap microphone to the bar.
Due to the bar just being open, their publicity, my marketing, a solid name, the location, and probably a few other factors, caused the first show to be a great success. The bar was filled, people seemed happy and we had a good audience for the first few shows.
Boosting the volume
Obviously, a relatively small speaker and a microphone that looked like a toy were not the best gear to perform with. Luckily the bar let us use their Yamaha sound system. With the limited tips the show received, I bought a professional microphone: the Shure SM-58 (pretty much industry standard). This gave a boost to the volume, however, it still looked nothing like an actual theater.
Nonetheless, we got some good names performing at some of the first shows. Both Sid Singh and Tamer Kattan performed long sets at Jokes & Beers and gained great laughs.
It seemed that we were off to a great start.
First issues
Obviously, you can’t start something without running into a few issues. The first issues started to occur after a few weeks. People started to become less interested in the show. Since this show purposefully took place in a bar, rather than a theater, we ended up having people in the bar, not being there for the show. It didn’t happen very often, as it was a quite new bar at the time, but sometimes it got quite disruptive.
This was a difficult issue to resolve because the location was one of the show’s main selling points. It can also be challenging to sell the idea of refusing to pay customers entrance to the bar, especially when the show does not fill the entire room by itself. The only plausible thing that seemed like a solution at the time seemed to get more comedy fanatics in and ask other consumers to shut up. With some decent crowd control, I was able to mitigate the issues quite a bit as a host. However, some evenings the noise was hard to overcome.
Since my main focus was always the audience and getting as many people in as possible, the performers started getting annoyed. I received many complaints regarding having no lighting, no stage, no proper setup, and noise in the back,…
My first reaction was a bit defensive because I was putting a lot of effort into promoting and organizing the shows. At the end of the day, I am providing a free service for the performers and giving them a good opportunity to try out jokes. However, as an organizer and host it’s your duty to make people feel comfortable and always try to make the show better. By changing the setup in the bar and moving around some lamps, I tried to mitigate some of those issues.
Trouble in paradise
When I started the show, not many other comedians cared about it in general. “English Comedy in Barcelona” has somewhat of an organization/club/(cult?) where in theory people work together to embrace comedy throughout the city. They also have WhatsApp groups, including one for organizers and hosts. Since I was relatively new to hosting and due to my rather complicated relationship with other hosts, I didn’t even have any idea of the existence of such a WhatsApp group for a long time.
On the other hand, I was heavily using another one of their WhatsApp group for performers, to announce that I had opportunities available. Asking became begging at some point as I started struggling to find performers. Some people had a rough time performing at the show before and started complaining about it to other performers. Although the show was still getting a decent audience every week, we started running low on performers.
In retrospect, I regret over-using that group. My posting every single week, sometimes multiple times per week, made it seem that nobody wanted to perform at the show. Although most of the performers at Jokes & Beers were quite new, I was usually able to fill the lineup in the end.
After months of organizing and gaining a lot of audience every week, I was eventually added to the secret WhatsApp group for hosts and organizers. In there, I once asked for feedback on how to gain more and more experienced performers at my show. I sent out a survey and received quite toxic reactions from certain corners. I really had to filter heavily to find some actually usual feedback. That feedback would include some of the issues that were already known: noise in the back, poor quality microphone earlier on, no stage,…
I feel by joining the hosts and organizers group, I signed my own death certificate. I read too many things I disagreed with, things that triggered me, and comments I felt I had to react to. My life was a lot easier not being part of all the drama. Most importantly, it took my attention off of improving and caring about the show. If I would do this all over again, I would stay out of all WhatsApp groups and simply contact people personally to be on the show or put it on my own socials.
However, I did launch the website https://jokesandbeers.com and started taking sign-ups through there instead. This caused a larger reach because even people outside of the WhatsApp groups could sign up for it. Since the system only worked on a first-come, first-served basis, it also eliminated any form of bias or favoritism.
Regardless, there were a few months where I had a lot of trouble finding performers, and at some point, the number of audience started to decline. All work seemed for nothing, and how do you dig yourself out of this hole?
Fresh blood
Somewhere before the summer, we started to gain more and more new comedians. People who wanted to try out comedy for the first time found the show online or via friends. They really enjoyed the concept of an easy first-come, first-served sign-up. As a new comedian, it can be hard to find a place to perform as you don’t know anyone and aren’t in the WhatsApp groups. Those newer performers tended to bring friends or in the case of Joel and Ted, even spread flyers.
Even though, I consistently tried to get more experienced performers on the mic, it still got filled and the audience had no problem watching the “inexperienced” newbies. After getting some of them on the show week after week, they started to get more confident as well. At the same time, I gained more experience as a host as well. We slowly started to build a better and better show. With marketing, I had already proven that I could get a lot of people to watch the show. What became more important was the engagement and retention of the audience.
Summer break
During summer, I needed to focus on my solo show as I already planned to perform it at the Fringe Arts Festival in Edinburgh. Therefore, I stopped the show for the months of July and August. During that time I could also recharge as a host and organizer.
A few weeks before the Fringe, I unfortunately got into one last big fight with the formal “English Comedy organization” of Barcelona. I got so drunk and angry that I stopped drinking alcohol ever since that particular incident. It’s no secret that I personally disagree on a lot of issues, primarily related to who should and should not perform at a show. However, insulting everyone in WhatsApp groups while intoxicated might not be the best solution. I apologized the day after, but the damage had already been done. I decided to leave all the comedy WhatsApp groups and focus on the Fringe.
In Edinburgh, besides hours of flyering and being anxious about my solo show, I also found some time to get some zen at the park. In Edinburgh, I realized that I actually enjoyed doing comedy, especially with all the drama and chaos around it. I already knew that I was inexperienced, but at the same time, I discovered that some people could enjoy my comedy. It was a very expensive lesson, as it costs a lot of money to put on a show there, but I learned that I should focus on the comedy and disregard the toxicity around it.
After doing over 20 shows at the Edinburgh Fringe, I promised myself that I would turn Jokes & Beers into the best possible show, that I would stay out of the WhatsApp groups, and that I would let anyone perform who wanted to, but without having to beg for it.
To the moon
Right after the summer, the show got booted up again. The bar just did some renovations, which ensured we had more physical space to perform (or put an audience). I bought some lamps from IKEA and started experimenting with more setups. As a comedian, I was more confident because of Edinburgh, which made me a better host. The audience seemed way more engaged and we even had people coming back show after show.
To reduce the background noise, me and the bar agreed to move the show to prime time on Saturday nights. More people started showing up, and we finally got some good tips, so I decided to reinvest them into the show. Now the show has an actual DMX spotlight, proper microphone, sound system, a tiny stage, and plenty extra space to comfortably sit.
Nowadays, lineups get filled one or two weeks in advance and people are almost queuing up to RSVP to the show. The domain jokesandbeers.com gained a good amount of traction and the show is now known as a solid Saturday night comedy show.
All of that can sometimes seem bittersweet as I decided to move out of Barcelona. However, I am handing it over to some regulars and fans of the show, who will hopefully be able to keep the good vibes going until the dawn of time.
