In a city with a growing offer of comedy, finding stages to start is not always easy. Facing this reality, the comedian Miquel Comas decided to create his own space: thus Clot Comedy was born, a project rooted in the neighborhood that has functioned for months as an open mic for emerging comedians.
Now, however, the initiative is in a moment of transformation. After a stage focused on giving opportunities to novice comedians, Comas wants to take a step forward and turn Clot Comedy into a platform for more professionalized shows, without losing the essence of proximity.
How does the proposal arise? What was the moment to say "this must be done"?
Clot Comedy comes from a pure and hard necessity. I started with comedy in 2023 and did the course in January 2024. At the beginning of that year I did the first performance and clearly, I realized that we didn't have many spaces to perform. Furthermore, if you've just started, nobody knows you and you have to be patient. Since I've never had patience, I thought the quickest way to do a performance was to find it yourself. I thought about setting up an open microphone (open mic). I did it under a label to be able to give it continuity, so Clot Comedy is a bit to dress my ambition.
But it has ended up being a project that gathers more people, not just you...
Yes, it started with an open microphone, but an open doesn't just give me the opportunity to perform, but to many other comedians. What happens is that carrying an open is a very burdensome job. It has been a very grateful year, but I believe I can no longer get more learning performance out of it. I want to focus on other things because if I am managing the open I cannot write for myself. The management is a part that nobody sees: these are those "invisible times" that you don't calculate when you plan to get into it.
Then, the open microphone as we knew it, do you set it aside?
If I find a team to carry it out between me and more people, delighted to push it forward, but if not, it's an idea that will remain set aside. Now I want Clot Comedy to be a platform for shows. Recently, I have tried my first 20 minutes of material and I want to give continuity to this branch. The intention is to look for spaces to do performances of two, three or four comedians, of an hour or an hour and a half, where each comedian has at least 15 minutes. And that this be something that happens every month or twice a month.
What is more difficult for the label, to find the comedians or to find the audience?
Finding the audience is very difficult. In the end, comedians are people who want to perform and, if you make it done for them, much better. But you have to get the audience to the venue, it has to interest them (especially if it's paid) and they have to mobilize to be one or two hours in a basement or in the back room of a bar that who knows what it's like.
You were saying that your idea is also to flee a little from the center.
Exactly. Clot Comedy wanted to focus on neighborhood comedy, especially in Clot. If I started competing with all the comedy in Eixample, I would have to do it with people who have been around for a long time and who are known to the 100 people who want to see comedy.
Always there is the doubt of whether the comedians get paid or not in these entry formats.
Sadly, at an open mic, no. The idea of the open is that I, as a comedian, come to try out a text. Since I don't guarantee success, I can't claim remuneration. What is attempted is a "reverse box office", but if you don't reach 100 euros, the numbers are raw. The ideal would be for the organizing entity to receive a part to pay organizers and material, but if you put 6 comedians every night, it's unfeasible. That's why I change format: a show or a "show" is a finished product. You have worked on the text, you know it works and you give yourself to the audience.
Do you think that the humor as a cultural discipline is well valued in Barcelona?
If you talk to a comedian who has just started and has many pretensions, they will tell you that we are artists, but comedians are not artists: we are artisans of the word. It is a craft activity but more artistic than making ceramics, for example, because you have to make an industrializable (repeatable) unit but one that doesn't seem like an imitation. When you explain to someone that you do this, you receive admiration, but it doesn't affect your social position.
And how is comedy written?
For me, it's a bit Frankenstein. I have pieces or blocks of topics. Maybe one day something silly happened to me and I kept building on it until I had a block. Or one day I get fired from work and 5 or 7 jokes come out; I try them out and see that they can be linked to another topic I've had for a long time. The ideal is to sit down every day and write everything you have without thinking that you are drafting as such. Then you start polishing. It's a very long and invisibilized process.
Nowadays much is spoken about the "crystal generation". Do you feel that you have to be careful with what you say for cancellation?
I believe that this cancellation thing is something increasingly graphic, but in the end a joke can be as offensive as you want as long as it is funnier than offensive. The idea is not to go and hurt a person, but that this person can laugh at their own situation with you. "We will laugh together at what is happening to us". That's why people who have more taboo subjects usually have the most golden material.
What is next for Clot Comedy?
Right now I am shaping a new show, generating a dossier to move it through social entities, neighborhood centers and athenaeums. The idea is to ensure one performance a month in a reference bar and another "extra" each month. I want it to have a format that carries weight, with a motive and a dynamic that goes beyond just monologues, that has a plus.
Do you have any upcoming performance?
Yes, on the 17th at 8:00 PM we have an Opens performance. It's a bit of a remnant that we had left over from previous shows that couldn't be done because a person dropped out. We will take the opportunity to give Clot Comedy a bit of air before closing ourselves for two or three months to plan the new concepts.
