Important coronavirus update for fans of standup comedy
The world needs four things right now.
First, medical doctors and scientists to bring us the vaccine against COVID-19.
Second, we all need to stay home and keep eating all those rolls of toilet paper.
Third, we need doctors, paramedics and nurses to keep doing their heroic jobs, saving lives even if many of the rest of us are irresponsible, careless, stupid or even malicious.
Last and, well, least, we need to laugh well. Laughter was invented by Mother Nature to keep us sane in situations like we’ve found ourselves in. Stand-up comedians for one have helped us laugh our way through the toughest of times (pandemics or even election results), and they’ve inspired us to see things in a new light in better times.
We all can and should change our comedy habits right now
With comedy clubs closed and tours cancelled, binge-watching Netflix and a lot of YouTube only solves part of the problem. For sure, there are plenty of funny stand-up recordings there, but if you watch the same names you’ve always watched, you’ll lose out on the excitement of going to a live comedy club night and seeing someone you’ve never seen before. Perhaps even seeing a kind of comedy you’ve never seen before.
You’re also not helping the economy to get better. Most people with shows on Netflix and large followings on YouTube are not materially impacted if a few more or a few fewer people watch their shows. And that’s not the case with many brilliant comics who mostly do live work (and whose gigs have all been cancelled).
Luckily there’s a solution or even several of them. Here’s how you can get entertained, keep getting some of the aspects of seeing live comedy and playing a small but important role in having the comedybiz pie distributed more justly and sustainably.
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