As a professional comedian, you can imagine I do a LOT of shows in a LOT of different places. While we can all agree that the main ingredient needed for a great comedy show is lotsa laughs, there are other, more nuanced, differences that is required of the comedian depending on what venue they are performing at.
THE SENIOR CITIZEN EVENT
When someone says ‘Senior Citizen’ event, I imagine many minds turns to images of old people all sitting around and not laughing at anything cause they have no sense of humor left and any sense of humor they have left is totally puritanical and any sort of off color joke will offend them.
How WRONG could you be? Senior citizens were once you! So how different can they be from you?
If there was just one thing that I could tell any comic about senior shows it would be this: Seniors still have the same racy, bawdy, yes even dirty sense of humor that most of us enjoy except they don’t like very dirty language and crude explicit material regarding sex.
I remember my own Mother’s 75th birthday and my older sister had got her a card that had a curse word (a bad one) right on the front of the card (it was key to the joke of the card). I told my sister that she couldn’t give a card with a curse on it to our mother, it would offend her ‘prudish’ sensibility that I always thought she had.
Well my sister gave her the card and she LAUGHED and LAUGHED and LAUGHED. That was a real eye opener.
So with that idea out of the way, let’s move onto the elements involved:
DIFFERENT TYPES OF SENIOR EVENTS
Almost all senior events are going to be at some form or another of a senior center. Below are some examples of what you may walk into:
1) OVER 55 COMMUNITY – While it says ’55′ in the title, the reality is most of these communities members start around 60 – 65. These are also sometimes referred to as ‘Adult Community’ or ‘Active Adult Community’. For me, these have always been great shows. I find these audiences are generally people who live in a nice retirement community with either their own home or condo. They are in that place in their life where it’s about enjoyment and aren’t thinking about all the things that ‘younger’ people like us are thinking of (mortgage payment, kids, taxes, etc). They have a lifetime of experience with being entertained and they love being entertained by someone who loves entertaining. These venues often have regular entertainment all year long with shows featuring singers, comedians, magicians, dancers and live music (I’m sure there’s more but I can’t think of it at the moment – uh, hula dancer?).
2) SENIOR CENTER - This is an area’s local place where local seniors gather regularly. In addition to entertainment for the seniors,these centers provides places where local seniors can find social interaction, mental and social stimulation and help with living issues. These seniors may not be as affluent as the seniors who have homes in a gated community but they still share the same enjoyment of entertainment.
3) ASSISTED LIVING - This is for older senior citizens who require some sort of regular aid so it wouldn’t be unusual at this venue to perform to a group of seniors who would be in wheelchairs and/or have aides accompanying them for the show. In this group a performer, in particular a comedian, may find the occasional audience member who may not remember they are at a show (momentarily) and make a loud remark or answer some rhetorical question you posed. You may find an audience member who has to leave (or be helped to leave) for one reason or another, most likely it wasn’t you.
The thing about this show is you just have to sort of grin and carry on with your show and trust they are enjoying themselves and odds are, they are.
PERFORMANCE
I’m certain that someone reading this will think I’m nuts but whenever I do a show for seniors, I alter my actual performance subtly.
I’m no kid, at this writing I’m 53 and the reality is I have a LOT of experience with older people in my life. I have an 85 year old mother who I’m help in the care of so I’m very familiar with aging.
Old people have a hard time hearing clearly. That’s a fact and since your job’s success rests on the ability of your audience to hear and understand you then I would say we have our work cut out for us if one of our audience’s deficits is their hearing. I personally speak slower and more clearly when addressing these crowds. I really resist the urge to speed up. (which I have to do normally as a comic with non senior crowds). I’ve done dozens of shows for seniors and I’ve never had one audience member ever ask me to speak faster.
ATTIRE
You will have to dress somewhat nice for this. I would strongly suggest no sneakers, wear shoes. I would say you could wear jeans but I wouldn’t suggest wearing dirty or torn jeans and not jeans that look like they’re hanging around your knees, even if that’s your ‘look’.
A tee shirt with your favorite bands name on it? I don’t think so. Do you want to wear something that’s going to distract them from your material? Do you want them to be thinking, ‘What the hell is a Weezer?’ when they should be thinking about your joke?.
In one respect, they are kinda like your grandparents (or if you’re older like me, your parents) and you wouldn’t go to your grandparents dressed like a ‘bum’ (that’s a grandparent term for being what they consider ill dressed)
MATERIAL
You never know what audience you’re gonna walk into anytime but you can take some educated guesses. Older people tend to be more conservative and more cautious. That’s learned from a lifetime of seeing more things than younger people could dream of.
Their physical situations tend to make them slower physically (NOT necessarily mentally) and their response time may not be as sharp as an audience of 30 somethings.
As I mentioned earlier, seniors still have the same sense of humor they had when they were younger but not with the same language that they may have used when they were younger. It’s always good to have strong clean material cause you will always get good work.
Over the years as a comedian (great thing about getting old) I have amassed a variety of material that ranges from clean, family friendly, say it a church gig with the pope present to sick, twisted, x rated material that would make Larry Flynt get up and run away.
I see my material the way a craftsman views his tool belt. The tools are all there, it’s just a matter of figuring out which tool this particular job requires.
ALWAYS confer with your client and get a good idea of what they want and expect from you and if they say squeaky clean, you get the windex ready.
SOUND
Never assume that the venue has a sound system. This is something you want to double and triple check with the client and/or the booker. I tell any comedian that listens, buy a PA system (Public Address). There’s not that expensive. You don’t need a big two speaker system. There are plenty of single speaker, self contained units that work really well. Of course now I’m referring to comedians that have the car to move their PA around. Most comedians that work on a regular basis own or have access to a car. Not all, but most.
BLOCKING
What do I mean by blocking. I mean where you stand. Don’t always assume you will be placed in an ideal location. Be prepared in case circumstances give you a raw deal. Some venues will have you on a dance floor while the audience is ten to twenty feet away at their tables where the tables were designed to be. I’m a big fan of being CLOSE to the audience, so these situations can be very taxing. Sometimes this a moment where you want to see if you can bring in your own sound system and set it up to get you close to the audience.
HERE’S THE DEAL
I think that a comedian has to do everything he or she can to make sure that when they perform, everything is just how they want it.
I mean that’s what you’re hiring me for right? You want my best performance right? You don’t hire a therapist and make them listen to your problems standing for an hour. They wouldn’t be 100% effective at what you are spending money to have them come and do for your event or party or corporate function. And it doesn’t matter if you if New York City, Kalamazoo or Auburn, the principle is the same. Let your sub contractor do their job the way they’re supposed to.
For example, I tell ALL my clients: I cannot perform while people are eating. I must perform after they eat. I tell the client that when people eat and laugh, it gets messy.
I know another comedian who absolutely will no perform in front of small children and even has it in their contract.
We just wanna do the best job we can for your event and be the life of the party and we know you want us to be do.