FAQ

You can pre-book or sign-up on the night.

To pre book just message here with the date you’d like & we’ll get back to you.

To sign-up on the night just let the MC know you’d like to perform as early as possible and they’ll give you a spot if there’s time.

We’re now posting to our Facebook page every morning there’s a show scheduled. If we need to cancel we’ll update the post there.

We try to decide & publish if we’ll need to cancel by 2 PM on the day, but Auckland weather is notoriously unpredictable and we can be caught out so always check the page before coming down.

Tuesdays & Wednesdays, 7:00 PM weather permitting.

Our schedule is posted on the events page.

If you’re only interested in one park, check the parks page.

We have a mix of objective and subjective criteria.

Objective:

• The park must be on (or very close) to a bus route.
  Some comedians don’t drive & buses are an economical alternative.
• There must be nearby parking.
  This is so we can load / unload our sound and light gear.
• The performing area (including audience area) must be visible from the road.
  This is a safety issue.
• There must be a well lit path to the road.
  Again, for safety.
• There must be a suitable area for the audience to sit and watch the performers.
• The park must have public toilets close to the performing area that close no earlier than 8:30 PM. If there isn’t a sign, the closing time can often be found on Google Maps. Some parks have toilets which close at 7 PM, we disregard those parks.
• We don’t perform in the CBD
  1. Go to Eventfinda and drill down on comedy in central Auckland. The vast majority of shows are in the CBD, we see little point being lost in the crowd and would rather take the LOLs to the audiences.
  2. Many of the parks we would consider lack nearby parking.
• In the past we strongly preferred parks within 8 km of the CBD. This may have been a tactical error, but we wouldn’t want to go much more than 30 km.
  For transit time.

Subjective:

• We like to walk the ground and consider how we feel about it as a performing site.
• Where will the stage go, how does that relate to where the audience is likely to be?
• Is the park well maintained? One park we really wanted to use was effectively a building site.

Fantastic. Before suggesting it to us, please consider:

• Does it meet our objective criteria?
• A new park requires either reducing the frequency for each park or retiring an existing park. Point Chev has replaced a nearby park we realised wasn’t a good choice.
  If replacing, which existing park should it replace and why?

Currently we perform in five parks. See the Parks page for details:

• Potters Park, Balmoral / Mt Eden:
  This was our original park, it has a hillside so people can sit higher than the performing area and shade for those hot evenings.
  Our criteria for choosing parks was heavily influenced by our experience there.
• Jellicoe Park, Onehunga
  Like Potters Park it has a hillside forming a natural amphitheatre. There’s a little less shade, but it’s a great place to perform and watch.
• Selwyn Domain, Mission Bay
  A more-or-less flat area on a well drained thin layer of soil, over sand.
  We can perform there as soon as 1 hour after moderate rain.
• Heard Park, Parnell
  A nice boutique park in the middle of a restaurant area.
  There is permanent seating that is normally ample for 20 – 25 people and, as always, bringing your own chair or sitting on the ground is an option.
• Outside Pt Chev Library
  Like a smaller version of Heard park it has permanent seating.
  We jokingly refer to this as “The park with no name” it’s situated between Pt Chev Library and Pt Chev Plaza. When we couldn’t find it on maps & asked the library staff what it was called, they eventually decided it had no name.

We have obtained the necessary permissions from Auckland Council, the owner of the parks

We also do indoor events. This site is about the outdoor open mics we run.

Our free (to the audience) open mics are named “One Mic Stand-up“. The gigs on this site are officially named “One Mic Stand-up’s Park Comedy”.

We run wireless as much as possible. Wireless microphones to our sound desk, then wireless to the speakers. Our lighting controller, used when sunset is earlier, is also wireless.

We have 4 handheld wireless mics for use by the comedians & two body pack (over the ear) wireless mics reserved for Julia & Tessa. When necessary we also have a stupid number of wired mics that were used in late 2021 to early 2022 when there was a worry about the amount of Covid spreading through the comedy community.

Our sound desk consists of receivers for the wireless mics, a 16 channel mixer, and transmitters for the speaker links. We’ve never used more than 10 channels on the mixer, but we already had it for other purposes and it is the only mixer we have that could deal with the stupid number of wired handheld mics we used in 21-22 summer.

Also in the sound desk is a DMX lighting controller with a transmitter to the lighting stands.

The speakers are PA speakers powered by external 12v batteries.

Each lighting stand has two RGB lights & a wireless DMX receiver.

If all this sounds like overkill, it is. We assembled it from kit we already had and use for other gigs.

All the equipment we use is dual use & most of it has been sized for larger more complex shows then repurposed for park use. The same set-up is used for our indoor One Mic Stand-up gigs.

We have a philosophy of “no singe point of failure” meaning that if any one piece of equipment fails, we have a drop in replacement (not necessarily as good) that will allow the show to continue.

Some examples:

• Each light stand has two lights. If one fails we have the other and can hot switch over from the tech desk. Typically we run the lights at less than half power so audience members shouldn’t even notice.
• If the mixer fails, we carry a much simpler 4 channel mixer we can plug in to replace it.
• We use two speakers, one will do.
• If a wireless link fails, we have trip hazards (cables) we can plug in as replacements.

Safety and Speed (of set-up)

Safety:

1. Black cables draped across green grass can be hard to see in dim light.
2. People can easily trip over them.

Speed: Of set-up:

1. running cables takes time,
2. securing them to lessen the trip hazards takes more time.