Ep 368 - One Week Closer

Sitting Under A Tree with Aidan Jones

Huge shock in the Australian Comedy world this week with one of the biggest management companies declaring bankruptcy, leaving dozens of artists without representation heading into the 2025 festival season. Also a bunch of comedians have lost tens, or in some cases HUNDREDS, of thousands of dollars.

In reflecting on what is catastrophic news for so many of my friends, I'm reminded of my own experiences with management. I think it's tempting as an artist to see management as someone who will take care of the business side of everything and allow us to do the work we want. That's the idea we are sold, and that's what we all hope for, because we aren't the kind of people who are confident in the world of business. But no one really has any more of a clue than we do about how to market our work, and if any of us actually wants to make a career out of doing this, the only way to make that happen is to figure out for ourselves what it is that we do and why people might pay money to see it. That's not to say that managers are useless, just that whatever it is that they can do, we can do it as well, and we probably don't need to be giving anyone 30% of our income to do it for us.

Moreover, it is so important that we think about these questions ourselves, because if we want to keep pursuing our art and growing as artists, we need to eventually take the leap and become professional. On Sunday I went to watch a wonderful amateur choir and orchestra perform Beethoven, closing with the 9th Symphony, 'Ode To Joy'. I was reminded that Beethoven's incredibly difficult orchestral parts were one of the things that led to the development of professional orchestras, because people needed to be paid to practice so they could have the time to actually play his insane music! I feel like that's where I am as a comedian - I have reached a ceiling of how good I can get with the resources that I have, and I need to find an audience and start making money from this if I want to reach that next level.