Review - Performance

Day 346 (20) – InCorporated Comedy

I performed stand-up at a corporate show (for P&G) today, and it’s amazing how different it was from a normal gig.  I had the pleasure of working with Rajiv Satyal (the Funny Indian) and he says that corporate shows are the hardest to do.  I can see why.

The thing about corporate comedy is that people are often afraid to laugh (it also doesn’t help that it was in the middle of the afternoon, after a long meeting, and before any alcohol).  They’re afraid because they’re not sure if it’s OK for them to.  It’s kind of like how a room full of white people will look to the one black guy in the room to see if they can laugh at a racist joke – except for here the audience is looking at their upper management.

But despite what my preambling might suggest, the show actually went pretty well.  I did about 10 minutes – a mix of normal stuff and P&G specific material – and was solid the whole way through.  I could have been more polished, but overall was very happy.  What was bizarre was where I got the biggest laughs – it was all on the more ad-libbed stuff and always on the stuff that was specific to P&G.  And I guess in a way it makes sense, as the P&G stuff was more relateable and everyone was thinking about it, but how do you enjoy an off-hand comment about Casual Fridays over an Alphabet story?

Rajiv followed after me (or rather I opened for Rajiv – the first way I said it made it seem like I was the “big act”), and did pretty well as well, which was swell if you couldn’t tell.  The toughest part about a corporate show is knowing how to walk the line of appropriateness, or even finding wear that line is, and Rajiv was able to pull it off.

Overall it was a good day, and another milestone passed – a corporate stand-up comedy gig.  Let’s hope to having more in the future.