Hire Local Comedians For Private Events in or near Washington,DC/MD/VA

Looking to hire a stand-up comic/comedian for your private event/party/function in the Washington DC, Maryland or Virginia area?  Live standup comedy is a fun alternative to the traditional “safe” party entertainment route: to hire a magician, live band, or DJ for your event. But not everyone likes to dance.  And magic ain’t that magical once you’re past the age of 12.

Standup comedy has a much broader appeal-everyone likes to laugh. We can provide a clean or dirty show, so nobody gets offended or bored.

Completely portable, we are the best area professionals bringing live stand-up comedy shows to your bar, hotel, school or business event, charity fundraiser/benefit or your home for any private celebration or party. We bring everything: Comics and Fully Insured, Non-Invasive Equipment, Signage, Media & Advertising, Sound System and Stage & Lighting. We can accommodate one-time events as well as recurring weekly/monthly/annual shows. Our shows can range from G, PG, PG-13 to R Rating. We bring some of the best local comics to your door in an entirely “quick-set-up and quick-break-down show”.

We will help you select the best local talent by emailing you video clips from our stable of approximately 100 local comics. If time allows, you can also see them perform live at our Bethesda,MD Rock Bottom Saturday public show to help you decide.

We use only local DC-MD-VA area comedians. Some are semi-famous, some are not, but all are funny. The Headliners(the final comic who does the longer 40mins set) we use for our Rock Bottom Saturday Bethesda shows are the same comics we use for our private events.

If you need a venue for your private event and it’s NOT going to be held on a Saturday, the place where we do our weekly “public” Saturday show is available for rental and has food/beverage catering packages available to go along with your comedy show. Contact Rock Bottom Bethesda directly to arrange for rental of their space. Ask for the “The Phillips Room” on 1^st floor as that’s the room best suited for live comedy show. The other rooms upstairs are only semi-private with Main Dining Room noise bleeding in=not good for live comedy.  If you end up choosing Rock Bottom Bethesda’s Phillips Room as your venue for your event we can give you $100 discount on the cost of the comedy portion as there won’t be the usual logistical headaches (figuring out the layout of room, where to put stage, sound, spotlight, etc) as all that stuff is already ironed out from holding our weekly public Saturday show there, so we’ll already know the drill, making our life much easier.

What makes StandUpComedyToGo.com different from other comedy bookers?

When you hire a comedian for a private event or party in the DC-MD-VA area, most online comedy bookers (Gigmasters,Gigsalad,Thumbtack,etc.) simply dispatch a comic to your address, expecting you to provide the stage, sound system & spotlight and run the show. At StandupComedyToGo.com “It’s all in the delivery”, meaning we provide the comedian & all that equipment, including signage, Headshot pics of the comics performing at your event, and a faux brick wall backdrop to make it look & feel like a real comedy club show. We also include an on-site Producer to babysit the comic, make the pre-show announcements(e.g. cell phones off, no talking,etc) , introduce the comic and make sure the show runs smoothly from start to finish.

Most comedians secretly dread private gigs because they lack one or all the crucial elements needed to have a good, live, comedy show: stage, sound, spotlight, strategic seating/placement of the audience, and the complete elimination of visual & auditory distractions so the focal point is the comic (this is a biggie and is ALWAYS overlooked).  All the normal production values you would have at a real comedy club. But private gigs are infamous for lacking most of these.  There is usually a sound system provided-that’s a no-brainer, but a stage, mic stand, stool, a real theater-style spotlight, backdrop curtain to eliminate visual clutter behind the comic, strategic seating/placement of audience, and creating a distraction-free zone are not obviously crucial to the non-com general public, so they are often overlooked or dismissed as not truly necessary, making the comic’s job much harder than performing at a real comedy club. Thus the dread.

Every veteran comic has a bag of horror stories from previous private gigs. Put a bunch of veteran comics in a room and the conversation eventually veers towards “man you won’t believe the private gig-from-hell I had to do last week…”. The complaints generally revolve around “the room just wasn’t set up right for comedy”, which is comic-speak for the room did not resemble a real comedy club. Over the years, comedians have come to fatalistically accept this as “just the way these private gigs go…nothin’ you can do about it”, but that’s just silly. There’s plenty you can do about it. With a little planning & preparation, all these issues can be designed-out .

We solve this dilemma by providing all this equipment along with the comedians (hence our slogan “It’s all in the delivery”), and an on-site Producer to make sure we correctly duplicate the comedy club look, sound & feel.  This puts the comedian back in his “natural habitat” where he is most comfortable. This will ensure the comic has fun on stage. If the comic is having fun onstage, your audience will too. We are out to fix how live standup comedy is done at private events. No more horror stories!

We use only local DC-MD-VA area comedians. Some are semi-famous, some are not, but all are funny. The Headliners(the final comic who does the longer 45mins set) we use for our Saturday Bethesda shows are the same comics we use for our private events.

The online bookers of “Big Comedy” that use paid ads at the top of your Google search draw their comedians from a nationwide talent pool ,which is fine, but you are paying extra bucks for their travel & lodging for the night—extra $$ that does not increase the quality of the actual show.

Our local guys are not as famous-not by a long shot, but we bet they are solid enough to make your event a success. Using out-of-towner comics also adds another layer of logistical risk : your comedian having travel issues(flight delays, stuck on the Jersey Turnpike,etc).

Local DC-MD-VA guys won’t have this issue-there’s no travel and no lodging as they are already here. It’s safer, cheaper, and just as funny to use a locally-grown comedian that lives in your own DMV backyard.

For Comedians Only: If you’re a comedian that has landed a private gig thru someone other than us and the venue/customer doesn’t have a stage, spotlight, sound, backdrop, black-out curtains, stool, etc. , we can help! We can provide all that for a $500 cash fee. You will have much better show with the proper equipment & room setup we provide. We can transform a potentially disastrous room into a room that will work with live standup comedy. The look & feel of the showroom is a big part of making a private gig a success. The better the overall show experience for your customer, the more chance they will hire you again for another private gig.

Short-Notice Shows: We can handle last-minute comedy emergencies!  While we prefer to have at least 2 weeks advance notice of your event, we can usually throw together a show with as little as 1 day notice, so keep us in mind if your originally scheduled entertainment flakes out on you.

For more info email: CurtShackelford@verizon.net with “Comedian Needed For Private Event” in the subject line of your email.

Everyone likes to laugh! Suggested events where we can accommodate personal or business, private or public, inside or outside, upstairs or downstairs, big or small, Corporate Clean, R, PG, or G rated comedy entertainment for All Humans:  Not limited to: