How do stand-up comedians approach testing material, and what can artists learn from this?

Stand-up comedians book a big special—say on a streaming service—with a show title and idea, then spend an entire year or two before that special touring small comedy clubs all over the country. Night in and night out, they’re in small venues in front of small groups of people, testing the material that’s going to make it into the big show. After forty towns or fifty shows, there’s a whole lot of material that doesn’t make it—jokes that got crickets. The ones that really killed make it into the final show. Their job over two years is to get as many jokes that absolutely kill into the special. It’s no different for artists and photographers—you’re going to create work that bombs and doesn’t resonate. That’s okay. You don’t need to internalize it. It’s part of the creative journey to find work that’s going to perform better than what you currently have.

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Asked by general teaching · Answered by Patrick Shanahan · art-marketing-podcast · 2021-01-15