 The
Stand has succeeded in becoming national leader in a growing
market. It has built a strong loyalty from a core audience of
regulars by ensuring quality and variety in our programming, and
from our early beginnings it made a priority out of developing
and communicating with our audience.
Underpinning the club’s success is
a clear vision of the type of comedy it wants to produce and the
environment in which it should be staged. There is a constant
search for fresh contemporary humour. Above all, there is an
insistence on original material: acts that plagiarise the
routines of others or who rely of tired old traditional gags are
not booked. In many ways the quality of the club’s programme is
ensured as much by who it doesn’t book, as by who it does.
Our bills are carefully
constructed and our quality threshold is high. We also have
explicit policies of retaining a strong Scottish flavour and a
resolutely non-metropolitan (i.e. non-London) bias. Open spots
are very important to our object of encouraging new performers
and we promote people on the basis of their ability.
Original material about real
life in Scotland fits better with the club than well-mined seams
such as dope-smoking and reality television, etc. In short, we
wish to discourage comedy-by-numbers and encourage originality.
We do expect original material. Whereas we appreciate people new
to comedy can take some time to find and refine their own
particular voice, we try to discourage reliance on industry
standards and common property jokes heard in pubs. Good comics
know they have a better chance of making it in this business if
they stand out from the crowd, if they have a unique range of
material and way of delivering it. Audiences like variety and so
do we.
A broadly progressive club, we
do not provide a platform for material which is sexist, racist
or homophobic. We do, however, encourage performers to tackle
topical and controversial subjects and we will create the space
for them to say things which many may find uncomfortable. We
always aim to have at least one woman on every bill.
We have always found comedy
competitions a big bore. We believe co-operation is better than
competition in developing new talent. The competitions have
nothing to do with supporting new talent and everything to do with
marketing a brand. They encourage sameness, unoriginality and
are divisive in setting comics against one another. We now
actively discourage entry to any competitions. Instead, we offer
year round help, support and practice. We encourage
collaboration and experimentation between performers on one-offs
or regular projects.
The Stand's programme....... |
