Online comedy clubs are a joy – just make sure you mute the dog

On a cold Tuesday evening, I log into my first ever Zoom comedy show. The technology has taken over our lives and no amount of Zoom quizzes could ever replace an hours face to face interaction, but I try to keep an open mind as I join Always Be Comedy host James Gill’s show with comedians Rachel Parris and Marcus Brigstocke.

“There’s an adage in television,” Gill later tells me, that rings in his ears throughout every comedy night. It goes: “the viewer must never feel like they’re watching a party that they haven’t been invited to.” Well, he’s certainly achieved his goal, I couldn’t feel more involved. Gill jokes with the audience about their home décor, there’s a chat box for running commentary and polls, and my room is filled with the laughter of fellow guests. But Gill says the evenings haven’t always been this interactive.

As pubs and clubs shut during the first lockdown, Gill presented his first online comedy show to an audience of muted Zoom attendees – a strategy, on reflection, with a fatal flaw. “I was performing to silence and I forgot how much I must have bombed… I watched it back last night and I was mortified,” he says. The turning point came when Gill introduced a “front row” group of about 20 attendees who are audible, and sometimes visible, during the show.

The beauty of this format is that the showrunner can curate the audience’s experience – placing Zoom on “gallery mode” for crowd work and pinning the comedian’s screen for their set material. It also means the comedian can choose their setting. “I know some comedians quite like having that gallery view up at all times so that they can see who is and who is not laughing,” says Gill, “whereas some would prefer to just perform it down the barrel of the laptop camera.”

One online comedy club taking the immersive experience to another level is California’s InCrowd Comedy. Audience members can pay $15 for a standard ticket, or $30 for VIP, where a life-sized image of their face is streamed on to a wall of screens in front of the comedian. To the uninitiated, the wall seems intimidating. But comedian Tone Bell says the experience is similar to performing for a crowd. “I usually tell new comics ‘it’s going to take about 30, 60, 90 seconds – but as soon as you figure that out, you’re off to the races.’”

“What makes InCrowd so great is the real-time feedback,” says creator Ryan “Bubba” Ginnetty. “In a way, you’ve never been able to see your audience visually as a comedian… in a real club you’ve got a light in your face and you’re seeing the front five or six people standing right in front of you.” But on InCrowd, comedians have a clear view of both the audience’s body language and their home setup. “It’s always dope when you see a couple with dinner or popcorn in front of them….and they’re just sitting back with a throw blanket on a recliner,” says Bell, “you know they’re doing it right.”

The drawback of this hyper-interaction is, of course, the unpredictability. “Somebody’s going to drop a glass or a fork or trip over something. Somebody’s phone is going to go off, and you don’t know when somebody’s baby is going to cry,” says Bell, “but they always do a good job of muting themselves.” The same is true of Always Be Comedy. “We had a girl on recently who was fantastic. She was laughing at everything. But I don’t know what her microphone setting was on – it could have picked up a dog from a neighbouring county, it was that sensitive,” says Gill.

Despite the potential for audio interruption, there’s clearly an appetite for these spirited comedy nights; almost a year into the pandemic, audiences from around the world are still flocking in their virtual droves. “We got an email from an elderly gentleman who said that these past few months were the best his social life had been for years because he felt part of this community,” says Gill.

And for those who haven’t had time to experience the delights of these online shows, there is still time. “We always like to welcome newcomers,” says Gill. “In fact, we got an email from someone last night who was utterly distraught that they had only just discovered us on gig number 100. But we’ll be doing these for a lot longer than we first envisaged, so it’s never too late to get on board.” And don’t worry about a barrage of pandemic punchlines – they’re few and far between. As Ginnetty says: “If you’re gonna tell a Covid joke in January 2021 – it better be funny.”