When guests have seen it all before, that’s your cue to bring in talent that goes beyond the conventional performance.
When planning private events, corporate events and conferences, particularly when programs are annual occurrences, providing your attendees with a different experience year to year can be a big challenge. Your guests or attendees will have expectations, and the choice of talent and entertainment offers you a chance to surpass them. With the right entertainment, you can take any event — from an informational conference to an intimate wedding — to the next level, giving attendees moments that will be etched in their memory for a long time to come.
One powerful way to surprise and delight your audiences is by bringing in celebrity talent. So much more than a matter of name recognition, these performers and musical artists have become known in their arena because they are incredible at what they do.
However, sourcing celebrity talent for an event is not just about going as big as possible. It’s about understanding the ideal combination of performance and appreciation, which could include pairing a celebrity performer with a complementary but equally electrifying type of entertainment. It’s also about facilitating synergy between the performers and the audience. And to do that, it’s vital to comprehend the goals of the event, the demographic of the audience, and the occasion for the event itself.
If your event will welcome a cosmopolitan guest list, the entertainment must be comparable.
Storytelling has gotten so much respect in recent years for its ability to connect people and help them remember information, including small details. You won’t find better storytellers than comedians, so this type of talent offers an excellent option for large-scale events. Comedians also bring interest and levity to programming.
When choosing a comedian, your goal is to engage talent who is well-liked, really funny while being appropriate in content, and will appeal to your audience — even when that audience includes a diverse group of people.
For example, comedian Sebastian Maniscalco is at the pinnacle of his career and currently on tour. He has several Netflix specials, dating back to 2007. His style, which blends physical comedy with hilarious storytelling, offers a type of humor that can match well with most audiences. This is an important concern when booking a comedian for an event, and it can be very challenging to get the right fit.
If you watch stand-up comedy, you know performers have a wide variety of types of humor. Some comedians are squeaky clean and focus on making wonderful observations of people and everyday life situations with an uncanny ability to frame things in an incredibly funny and relatable way. By contrast, others can be overly political, vulgar, and even highly offensive to some audiences. An event host must be extremely careful when selecting a comedian, which requires a good grasp of their act and material, as well as an awareness of the tastes of the audience.
What can happen if you make the wrong choice? Imagine this scenario: a conservative group hired a comedian, who was known to be a bit vulgar. The group directed the stage manager to ask the comedian to tone it down, and they asked this just before the comedian was about to go on stage. Telling an artist what to do with their art is never a good idea, but instructing a performer in that way as they are about to take the stage is even worse. The act went from an 8 to a 10 on the obscenity chart. No one was happy.
You risk disaster when you do not pair the right comedian with your audience. This is why partnering with a reputable talent agency that understands the bigger picture and the risk involved will make all the difference. It’s much worse to get a bad comedian than a bad band. If the band does not meet expectations, perhaps not as many people will dance. But if the comedian is not aligned with the audience, guests can be downright offended, or worse, stand up and walk out.
When we book someone like Sebastian Maniscalco, who is known for capturing the idiosyncrasies of the general population and daily life, we trust his material to have wide appeal.
We’d never want to upstage a famous comedian, but musical entertainment is usually an important and expected event feature. When selecting music for an event, there are so many options available, from ensembles to DJs to live bands. To complement a celebrity comedian, you don’t need to bring in another celebrity. In fact, doing so may end up competing with the comedian.
Instead, why not go big, but in a different way? For example, a live orchestra will provide a full and dynamic sound and stage while bringing an elegant touch and the ability to include a wide range of musical styles and eras.
You can consider dance/variety or tribute bands, big bands, string orchestras, symphonies, and more. With top-tier talent like Sebastian Maniscalco, we might take the music to the max and include both strings and brass, such as The Fabulous Equinox Orchestra with horns, strings, singers, and a core rhythm section.
This type of musical performance will allow the score to move from jazz standards and classic dance variety music to current high-energy Top 40 and beyond. Versatility can also be key to the overall flow of the event, which is another important factor in selecting event entertainment.
A big takeaway here is that whatever type of talent you would like to book, it’s vital to think hard about:
This is a time to combine intuition and judgment and when an experienced talent professional will provide important insight.
For any event, everything should be seamless and centered on audience enjoyment and event goals. This includes finer details too, such as letting the talent know what the guest attire will be so they can complement it, the nature of the event and the demographic make-up of the group, and if there are special guests who will be in attendance. Based on these details, you will learn whether the talent is agreeable to what is required to make the performance and the event a success.
Referring back to the conservative group and the “edgy” comedian, a conversation about the nature of the event and the conservative views of the audience would have been ideally timed when first considering the comedian. That would have been the right time to ask if the comedian would agree to a “clean” show. A talent agent who is on YOUR side will let you know right up front that the choice of a comedian is not the right pairing and that a clean, corporate comedian would be the better choice.
Additional important considerations get raised when incorporating entertainment into a dinner event. Combining entertainment and dining requires scheduling the flow of the evening to accommodate service. This is even more important when one of the performers is a comedian because comedians require a complete stop of any service activity. No comedian wants to be distracted or worse, have their audience distracted, due to clinking glasses and silverware, servers moving about the audience, or the sound of plates being cleared, so they must be scheduled after dinner and once service can be suspended, which brings us to our final aspect – timing.
When it comes to event management, there is a lot to orchestrate, and when entertainment is added to the mix, it requires a tight schedule. You need to consider aspects like how cocktail and dinner service will be paired with performances, as well as guest stamina and possibly stage set changes.
For example with Sebastian Maniscalco and the 18-piece orchestra, we could schedule the orchestra to perform on stage during dinner service, creating a wonderful atmosphere. Nevertheless, with our comedian performing immediately after dinner, and the need to reserve time for the band to come back to perform for dancing following the comedian’s performance, we would be challenged by a very tight timeframe. It’s vital to allow time for guests to be served and enjoy their dinner, service to be suspended, the comedian to perform his set, and to get the band back on stage so there isn’t a loss of momentum and energy with the audience. You can imagine the stress this puts on even the most seasoned planner.
As you can see, when featuring entertainment at your event, there is a lot to strategize beyond picking a performer you happen to like. Working with a professional and experienced talent agency like All Stage Productions will not only maximize your options but will also ensure everything aligns perfectly with your event and audience, meets your event goals and runs smoothly on-site.
Contact us today and let us help you make your occasion exceptional with the right talent, production and event design!]
