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Comedy Outliers: The Push/Pull of Partnerships

Comedy >

272716-250Today we feature another guest post from Brandon Collins and Mike Brown of Comedy Outliers. Brandon and Mike offer great advice to comedians, or performers in general, on how to survive and thrive in today’s competitive artistic climate.

The Comedy Outliers have a show coming up this Saturday, September 21 at Lily O’Brien‘s in New York City. Their shows are free but we highly recommend you pick up tickets so you don’t show up to a full house.

If you’re in New York or headed that way, be sure to check out their show. It’s rare to see comedy of this calibre without a cover charge or drink minimum. That said, if you want them to continue bringing these great shows to the Big Apple, we highly encourage you to support their efforts by hitting the “Donate” button on their website.

So, without further ado, I give you Brandon and Mike of The Comedy Outliers:

“Sometimes I’m tired of seeing your face, but we work so well together!” –Confucius

Sometimes in partnerships, especially creative ones, you have conflicts. As in any pairing there are times of joy and success (which we have often talked about in past blogs) but sometimes there are disagreements and creative tensions. When you are a creative person you sometimes focus on your own specific ideas and needs. This can be tough when you are in a group or partnership that relies on compromise and equal focus.

We have spoken in past entries about the ideas we have developed together and executed but we’ve never spoken about how there are times when you’re going to have different thoughts about things. It would be false for us to claim that we’ve never had miscommunication, been forgetful about a task one of us said we’d complete, or simply took a break from one another because we just see each other too damn much sometimes. When you’re producing a monthly show and a weekly podcast, that can be exhausting and with more exposure to your brand, the more pressure you put on one another to elevate each other’s talents and shortfalls.

Comedy Outliers is the first time we have worked with each other extensively. It has taken patience, hard work and a lot of attentive listening for us to get to this point where we are fighting against fatigue and maintaining our creative edge. Every successful partnership has had its conflicts and bumps in the road (Walter White and Jesse Pinkman, Yogi and Booboo, etc). As comedians we are already naturally sensitive and always on edge but as producers we have to be business-minded and willing to adapt to last minute changes. Sometimes those elements make it very difficult to function but we deal with it the best way we can and always work to make sure that we are producing everything to the “Outliers” standard.