Virtual and hybrid comedy shows

Virtual comedy earned a bad reputation between 2020 and 2022, and mostly deserved it, because what nearly everybody booked was a live set pointed at a webcam. That is not a format, it is a live show with everything that makes it work removed. Done properly, an online show for a distributed team is genuinely good, and for teams spread across four cities it is the only version of this evening that includes everybody.

Why online is harder, mechanically

Not because people are less funny on a screen. Because three things a comedian depends on are missing.

• —Contagion. In a room, laughter spreads: one table starts, the next joins, and the wave gives the comedian a beat to breathe and the audience permission to enjoy themselves. On a call, everyone is muted, so each person laughs alone, quietly, and the whole social permission structure of comedy is switched off.
• —Feedback. A comedian reads a room continuously and adjusts sentence by sentence. On a call they see thumbnails, some of them initials on a coloured circle. They are performing into a wall and calibrating on nothing.
• —Captivity. In a ballroom, leaving is conspicuous. On a call, leaving is a click nobody sees, and the second browser tab is one keystroke away and always winning.

Everything below is a way of putting some of those three back.

The run sheet that works

Forty-five minutes total, and only twenty-two of them are the set.

1. 1

   Pre-show, eight minutes

   Doors open early with a host on camera. Ask everyone to turn cameras on and rename themselves with city and team. Put one warm-up question in chat that everybody can answer in four words. The room is now a room.

2. 2

   Introduction, ninety seconds

   A named internal person, on camera, who the audience already likes. Twenty seconds on why the comedian is here, then spotlight the comedian and get out of the frame.

3. 3

   The set, twenty-two minutes

   Written for the medium: shorter runs, faster turnover, more named references to the company, fewer long constructions that need an audience to carry them.

4. 4

   Crowd work, ten minutes

   By name, from the participant list, with your brief in hand. Unmute two or three people who were flagged in advance as willing. This is the segment people remember, because it proves it is live.

5. 5

   Close and hand back, five minutes

   Back to the internal host on camera, who closes the session properly. Ending on a comedian saying thank you into silence is the worst forty seconds available.

The five technical requirements

These are non-negotiable and cheap. A virtual show fails on audio far more often than on material.

One more, on your side: appoint a producer. Somebody whose only job during the session is to spotlight the comedian, manage the participant list, unmute the people being spoken to, and watch chat. The comedian cannot do that and perform at the same time, and if nobody does it the show has no floor manager.

Cameras on, and how to ask

Cameras on is the single highest-leverage decision in a virtual show. It restores a version of contagion, gives the comedian real faces to read, and makes leaving conspicuous again. It is also the thing most companies are shy about asking for.

Ask for it in the invite, ask for it again in the pre-show, and have the most senior person present turn theirs on first and keep it on. Frame it honestly: a comedian performing into black squares is doing the hardest version of their job for no reason, and forty minutes of everyone's time is at stake. People understand that. The compliance rate when a leader goes first is much higher than when HR asks in a calendar note.

Hybrid is two audiences

The hardest format in this guide, and the one most often booked without anyone acknowledging the problem. Two hundred people in a hotel ballroom in Mumbai and eighty on a call from Pune, Coimbatore and Kraków. The room laughs. The grid watches the room laugh, on a two-second delay, with the audio mix optimised for the ballroom.

The remote audience is not participating; they are watching a video of somebody else's party. If you do nothing about it, they will leave in the first ten minutes and the post-event survey will tell you the entertainment was fine.

• —Give the remote audience their own thing. A dedicated segment where the comedian addresses the camera directly and does named crowd work with the remote list, while the room watches on the big screen. Five minutes changes the whole experience.
• —Fix the audio for the stream, separately. A feed off the desk, not a camera microphone at the back of a ballroom picking up the air conditioning.
• —Put a camera on the audience, not only on the stage. Remote viewers need to see the laughter they cannot hear properly.
• —Give them a host of their own in the chat, so there is somebody to talk to.
• —Or pick a side. Two shorter sessions, one live and one virtual on another day, is very often better than one hybrid compromise, and costs about the same.

What it should cost

Expect 50 to 70% of the equivalent live fee, not the 20% that event teams often assume. What disappears is travel and an evening of the comedian's diary. What does not disappear is the writing, the briefing, the rehearsal and the performance, and virtual material is harder to write, not easier, because it has to work without any of the support a live room provides.

A short virtual set for a distributed team is one of the better value bookings available in this whole market, particularly for a company that would otherwise fly eighty people to one city. Compare it against the alternative rather than against a live show, and it looks very different. The general fee bands are in the cost guide.

When not to do it

• —When the news is bad. A restructure, a layoff round, a difficult quarter. Comedy on a call, with no room to hold the mood, is thin cover and reads as tone-deaf.
• —When it is the fourth all-hands this month. The calendar is the competition, and it is winning.
• —When nobody will turn a camera on. If the culture genuinely will not, do a recorded piece or a quiz instead. Do not book a live performer to talk to a wall.
• —When more than 200 are attending and you have not appointed a producer. At that size it is a broadcast and needs producing like one.

The version that consistently works

Under forty people, cameras on, a 20-minute customised set, fifteen minutes of named crowd work, and a host to open and close. It is closer to a very good team meeting with a professional in it than to a comedy show, and that is precisely why it works: at that size the comedian can see everyone, respond to everyone, and make material out of what is actually happening in the call.

Distributed teams in India, with people in Bengaluru, Pune, Gurgaon and a support centre nobody at head office has visited, are the strongest case for this format. It is the only version of the annual party that treats all four locations as equally present. See the language guide before you pick a register for that room, because a distributed audience is almost always a Hinglish one.

We brief and rehearse virtual sessions the same way as live ones, including the tech run three days out. Tell us the platform and the headcount →