Two Great Comedy Classes; One Great Price!

Comedians love what they do. They love what they do so much, many of them never get paid work yet keep going! But let's face it: That feeling of satisfaction is so much greater when it comes attached to a paycheck, right?

On Saturday February 25, Rooster T. Feathers is offering two great classes designed to help you get paid work and gain fans to keep your career going. Take one, or both! $35 for each class, or $50 if you take both.

got work?

Are you wondering…
…why you're not getting booked?
…why other people are getting booked and you’re not?
…if you're ready to get booked?
…what bookers want?
…what is the next step to get paid comedy work?
…if your promotional materials are up to snuff?
…who to call? And when?
If you want the answers to these questions, and more, you should get them from an expert in the field. Someone who books comedians for a full-time professional comedy club, who knows agents and managers. Someone who is honest and not afraid to tell it like it is....Wait a minute....We know someone like that! This one-and-a-half hour class is led by Heather Barbieri, veteran comedian and owner/booker of Rooster T. Feathers.
Saturday, February 25, 1:00pm, $35

making the web work for you

Social Media Marketing for Comedians

Do you have a fan page? Are you blogging? What's your Klout score? When’s the best time to tweet? Have you claimed a unique URL for your Facebook page? Do you even know what that means? The Internet has changed the way comedians promote themselves and opened up huge opportunities to gain fans around the globe, but it can also be overwhelming. This class will show you how to make the most of the free tools now available to comics online, manage your online “image,” promote yourself to bookers, grow fans and share original content. This one-and-a-half-hour session is taught by comedian and Roosters' marketing manager, Beth Schumann.
Saturday, February 25, 3:00pm, $35

Both classes will be held in Roosters' showroom, 157 W. El Camino Real, Sunnyvale, CA 94087. To secure your spot, email roosterbookings@yahoo.com or call 408.736.0921.

The Comedy Animal: A Primer

Animal from The Muppets

Last night and tonight we've got a special show at Roosters, Outsourced Comedy Tour, featuring Raj Sharma, Kabir Singh, Sammy Obeid, Shanti Charan and Imran G. I don't know all the comedians on the show, but I do know Kabir (winner of the 2009 Rooster T. Feathers Comedy Competition) and Sammy (winner of the 2008 competition) well enough to know that they are both a special breed of comedian--the Comedy Animal. That got me thinking...

Homo Standupus
In any comedy community, particularly any local comedy community, you've got Pros, Newbies, Dabblers, Hobbyists, the Forever Clueless and Animals. Everybody is a Newbie, or open micer, once, at least for a little while. Pros typically start out as Animals but lose some of their wilder attributes as regular work can be quite taming! Dabblers and Hobbyists have no intention of giving up their day jobs, and The Forever Clueless, well, they will always be with us.

How to Spot a Comedy Animal in the Wild

Here's a list of behaviors and traits of what I call a Comedy Animal.

1) A Comedy Animal seemingly lives on comedy alone. She has seen every stand up comedy special since Richard Pryor: Live in Concert. He talks about comedy constantly. That is, whenever he is not listening to a comedy podcast like Marc Maron's WTF, or Jimmy Dore's Comedy and Everything Else or Jimmy Pardo's Never Not Funny. He can't understand people who have never heard of Bill Hicks, and he really dislikes Dane Cook fans.

2) A Comedy Animal will kill for stage time. This means he or she is out there every night of the week, or as many nights as possible, driving long distances and making no money just to get five minutes on the mic. He will start his own room, a completely thankless job, just to get more stage time. She will use her vacation days to go on a Tribble Run. (If you don't know what that is, read this.) Why? Because the Animal instinctively knows that the only way to get to the top of the stand up comedy food chain is through stage time.

3) A Comedy Animal is a risk taker. She will take those gigs opening for a band from the 1960s with one still-living original member and one half-dead original member  at 4:00pm in the parking lot of a mall. Is she a glutton for punishment, or eternally optimistic? He might quit his day job long before it seems prudent to do so. But that means he also has the nerve to call that booker, agent, promoter, radio show host, etc. when chances are he'll never hear back. A Comedy Animal knows that rejection comes with the territory, and you can't fear it or it will eat you.

4) A Comedy Animal often judges non-Animals harshly. Comedy Animals usually look down on the Dabblers and Hobbyists or, even worse, resent them for taking valuable stage time away. If you're not willing to drive three hours to a backwater town to perform in front of toothless drunks for $25 and a drink ticket, you're not "serious about your art." Once I heard one comedian ask another, "You drove here from Sacramento?" The response to this innocuous-sounding question was a snide, "Yes, and you would too if you were a real comedian." Wow. Just trying to make conversation, dude.


I haven't said anything about how funny or talented the Comedy Animal is. Kabir Singh and Sammy Obeid are both very talented, likable, good writers and great performers. They are moving up very quickly in the comedy world and we expect to see great things from them. But what happens when a Comedy Animal is not funny, talented, likable, a good writer, etc.? Eventually they morph into The Forever Clueless.

Maybe we'll talk about care and feeding of the Comedy Animal in a future post. (It is OK to feed them after midnight, but whatever you do, don't get them wet!)