Performer Power (Tessa & Julia Clement) produces live shows in New Zealand. One type of show we produce is comedy line-up shows (“Open mics”). This document sets out our business practices for our line-up shows in parks and our ethical standards. It is a reduced version of our full kaupapa which includes indoor venues.
Who are our stakeholders?
We recognise three stakeholders for shows in public parks.
- The Audience, who wish to be entertained in a predictable way. I.e. made to laugh.
- The Comedians, who wish to perform in front of a receptive audience to practice and tune their comedy routines in an environment where they are respected
- The producers (us) who wish to enhance their reputation as producers by running successful comedy nights meeting the wants of the other 2 stakeholders. We are both also comedians so we recognise in ourselves the same things we recognise in other comedians.
What we are doing
Our goal is to provide a comedy show that meets the wants of all our stakeholders. We do this by:
- Finding and arranging a venue,
- advertising for and selecting performers,
- advertising for an audience,
- providing good lighting & sound and
- running the show as smoothly and professionally as possible.
How we treat people
We treat people with respect.
- We treat the parks with respect.
- We treat performers with respect.
- We treat audience members with respect
We may not always be in a position to give feedback, but if you ask for it and we have time we’ll give you our honest opinion.
For Audience Members
We understand that you are wanting to be entertained, we do our best to arrange a varied comedy show.
- We will attempt to start the show on time and keep it moving.
- We will run the show for at least 90 minutes.
- We will do our best to ensure different styles of stand-up comedy in the show.
For Performers
We do not involve ourselves in formal training or development programmes for performers but we aim to help performers develop their skills in the following ways.
- We provide stage time for performers at all levels to test out material or practice in front of live audiences.
- We actively encourage people who wish to try stand-up for the first time to give it a go. Pre-booking is preferred, but if we have time we’ll accept people from the floor
- We allow performers to nominate, within reason, how long they want on stage rather than having a fixed set length for performances. This means
- Beginning performers can pick a length less than the normal 6 minutes.
- People transitioning from the 6 or 7 minute sets of open mics to the 10 minute sets of paying gigs can test & practice their longer set
- Experienced comedians wanting to test longer pieces have the opportunity to run it in front of an audience.
Code of Conduct
We have not developed our own code of conduct as we believe that there should be a single code of conduct used by all comedy shows in New Zealand. The New Zealand Comedy Guild Incorporated has developed a code that we fully endorse. It can be found here (pdf).
We expect everyone involved with our shows, including ourselves, to abide by this code.
Contact
One Mic Stand-up
Facebook messenger: https://fb.me/OneMicStandup/
Facebook page: https://m.me/OneMicStandup/
Performer Power!
Facebook messenger: https://m.me/performerpower
Facebook page: https://fb.me/performerpower
People
Julia: https://fb.me/inglebyclement
Tessa: https://fb.me/tessa.clement