Standup Careers: Independent performers need to be talent, manager and bookkeeper all in one

It’s no laughing matter.

Working on a routine, booking gigs, managing finances and actually performing as a comedian can be a full-time grind not for the faint of heart. It could leave a person laughing ― or crying ― hysterically in the corner.

Those who have been in the profession for some time know the challenges they face, and if they want to make a living making people crack up, they need to adapt and get creative to overcome those challenges.

Since comedy, especially the stand-up variety, can be a hard industry to track due to its very nature, getting an exact estimate on how many people are working comics in the U.S. can be almost impossible. Several sources cite different numbers ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand.

What can be tracked, however, is how much money the industry generates. According to a list of statistics generated by Zipdo.co, a work resource company, comedy clubs in 2019 took in about $300 million in revenue. Platforms such as Netflix, which airs several stand-up comedy specials a year, and Comedy Central make millions a year off the art.

Yet working comics can sometimes struggle to survive.

Being able to perform regularly helps to be seen and more exposure can definitely help a career. Comedy clubs, such as Lounge at the End of the Universe in Boise, offer a place for comics to perform, as do comedy festivals like the annual Comedy Fort festival in Boise.

But the competition to get into such places can be fierce.

Dylan Haas, the director of Comedy Fort, said headliners at the festival are invited, while secondary acts have to apply and be accepted to perform.

“We bring in people who are on their way up, and that’s been my fortune. I keep my finger on the pulse to see who’s out there working,” he said. “We open for submission to anyone who wants to come submit to be a part of the festival.”

Haas said the festival gets about 150 submissions each year, and then Comedy Fort organizers have the task of narrowing down those submissions to between 20 and 28 comics that they’ll invite to perform. He estimated about 85% to 90% of those accepted were from out of state. Though the two headliners typically have their travel and lodging covered and are paid to perform, secondary comics typically pay their own way to get to the festival and have to take care of their own accommodations.

“Everybody gets paid a little bit of money, but we don’t see that until they get here and we give them the money,” Haas said. “So, it’s kind of more of a surprise and it’s not going to cover much, maybe some food,” though he added that he tries to spoil the performers with “artist amenities.”

But he also has an objective to make sure the experience is a great one for comics, so that they will spread the word to garner more interest from other working comics.

“My entire objective is to make sure each performer has as much fun and is catered to the degree that I can the whole time they’re here,” he said.

According to a report published by Science Direct, “Stand-up comedians are one of the few groups that both create and perform their own new material. They write their own material … but they also perform it in front of an audience. They have the freedom to interpret and vary their own jokes as much as they want and refine them through endless comedy shows. Thus, comedians may be similar to both creators and performers in some aspects but not others.”

In addition to writing and performing their own material, some have leaned on past experiences to not only inform their comedy routines, but to delve into other arenas such as corporate trainings and teaching others how to unlock their inner funny person.

Idaho-based comedian Megan McCaleb began her career in stand-up after being in the corporate banking world for several years. She took her experiences in that 9-to-5 job and parlayed them into not only a comedy career, but work as a corporate trainer, a podcaster, author and a “Yes, And” business improv coach. Underlying everything she does, she said, is connection.

“There’s definitely a lot of misconceptions around comedy,” she said. “Yes, we need to make people laugh, and the way that happens is with connection. We need to not only know how to connect with our audience and be relevant, but ― what I personally learned and I think a lot of other comics can attest to this ― is you have to be really connected to yourself.”

That requires knowing who you are, she said, knowing your voice and your experiences and how those have affected you to deliver them in an authentic way that will resonate with the audience.

“Because that’s when people laugh is if they can lean to their buddy and be like, ‘Ha!’ because they remember a time they did that or there’s something very relatable or human about it,” McCaleb said. “It’s kind of a deeper art form than I think some people might give it credit for.”

Since McCaleb is also a single mom with four children, performing regular gigs is not as conducive to her personal life since most clubs operate later during the evening and usually Thursday through Sunday. That being the case, she performs corporate shows which are typically during the day, or she’ll perform evenings on weeks that she doesn’t have her kids.

“I still bob and weave into just shows and then keynotes and trainings and all that stuff, but it’s all happening,” she said. She also only picks the jobs that she considers are going to be fun, while managing her own schedule and working on her material.

Another mom of four, Karen Manthey, is a 20-year improv veteran (and, yes, she’s embraced the joke around being ‘a Karen’), who coaches public speaking for various corporations and organizations, using her improv skills to help her trainees in team building and collaboration.

Manthey, like McCaleb, embraces the improvisational tactic of “yes, and” in her training sessions. The method basically requires the improv performer to accept what a fellow performer has said and then expand on that.

“I love watching people grow in confidence and creativity,” Manthey said. “There’s just something special about watching the light go on in someone’s eyes for the first time when they are willing to step into that scary space of ‘yes, and,’ which is the worldwide improv theme.”

Currently, she has a contract with Blue Cross of Idaho, training people in various departments on public speaking, so stand-up gigs aren’t really on her radar, though she does work with ComedySportz, an improv group in the Treasure Valley. However, she still manages a full schedule that is different every day.

“Sometimes it is packed to the gills with meetings or trainings that I’m running, and other times I am playing catchup,” Manthey said. Other times, she’s working on invoicing, networking and other tasks, though she said her schedule is much more freeing than a typical office job.

“I’m not to the point that I’m so busy that I’m running training every single day that I can’t catch up,” she said. “If that was the case, then I’d feel like I’d need a personal assistant, but I just stay pretty structured and organized. And there are times when I just say I really can’t do that or I’ll pass it off to somebody else.”

Her schedule is such that, even though it amounts to full-time work, it’s fluid enough to feel freeing.

Even though it can be a lot of work, one of the things that keeps bringing performers back to the comedy trenches is the same thing they ultimately do the work for: laughs.

“There’s nothing better than making people laugh,” Manthey said. “I’ve always been the class clown. I’ve always wanted to make people laugh. I’m the seventh of 11 kids, so I think I went into comedy, too, just because I wanted to be seen.”