How To Promote Stage Comedy In a Geeky Way? 123
shaitand writes "I recently went to a renaissance festival where a man (Arthur Greenleaf Holmes) performed some of the most obscene NSFW and hilarious comedy I've seen in a long while. The show was free and he had CDs and DVDs in his bag and accepted donations. I certainly gave one. But why is this guy doing niche fairs and not HBO specials? I contacted him and he said that he would love to break out and because of his costume he has trouble and the nature of his act he has trouble getting on to traditional stages. How would you promote such an act? On further conversation he said he is an avid supporter of free flow of information and strongly encourages pirating his work far and wide. Since he is primarily interested in making money with live performance and not media sales I thought if he took this to the next level and released a DVD under a creative commons license the exposure and interest generated might help him break into new forums with his act?"
Re:WTF?!?!? (Score:4, Informative)
The modern geek way is to clean up the act, keep it really funny, and promote it on Youtube. It worked for Jeff Dunham. Who hasn't heard of the dead terroist routine?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uwOL4rB-go [youtube.com]
Would I go see this guy, you bet.
Re:Obscene comedy (Score:4, Informative)
I'd say what the submitter considers to be obscene is ... well, it's not obscene. Based on the description and the video on his website, the commedy is largely based on the juxtaposition of the blueness of the material and the persona of being a 1500's poet. I found the video rather amusing - I imagine it'd be fun to see live.
Re:Answer (Score:2, Informative)
HBO executives don't want families with young children cancelling their subscriptions when they casually click on your friend's show.
What? I'm an Aussie and even I know HBO has had some great uncensored comedy acts (the late, great, George Carlin comes to mind as a prime example), if I'm not mistaken HBO is "The place" to been seen for an aspiring American stand up?