If you want to perform a piece of comedy, music, or art, do a demo, discuss a puzzle, or do anything else at a future Clopen Mic Night, then we’d love to hear from you. You can suggest a segment using the form at the bottom of this page. We will aim to curate a selection of different types of acts to give a rounded line-up for each show, so we can’t guarantee that everyone who applies to perform will be put on in a particular show, but will do our best to work with people’s availability and preferences.
Performing & feedback
Each show will be an hour long with a compère and four acts (8 minute sets)—but secretly, the event is also a chance for maths communicators (and maths-adjacent performers) to have a scratch night—to try out new material, throw things at an (online) audience and see what sticks. Anything mathematical or maths-adjacent goes—comedy, music, art, demos or puzzles, as long as it fits into 8 minutes.
The show will be followed by a discussion (not broadcast) with the four acts and a specially invited feedback expert who’s watched the show (a performance trainer or experienced performer) who can give people notes, if desired. Performers who do not want this feedback are welcome to opt out of it. We’ll also have a feedback survey for the audience, and the acts can add in specific questions to that before the show if you’d find that useful.
Technical details
The show is produced via Zoom, which means you’ll need to join a Zoom call which will be broadcast live to YouTube. The system we use means that if your video is switched on in the call, you’ll be seen on screen, but if you mute and turn off video you can hide and watch the call. There’s a dedicated tech person behind the scenes troubleshooting, and if you need to communicate with us while you’re muted, the Zoom chat can be used to send messages to us.
We’re able to help you with some tech requests—sharing a website as a second feed in the call, playing audio clips on cue, and we can provide our compère as a foil, volunteer or co-presenter if you’d find that useful. You can share your screen for slides, or play them through your own video feed, and join the call using a separate device if you need a second camera on something. If you want to do something daft not covered by this, feel free drop us an email at hello@clopenmicnight.com.
Fees
We are unable to guarantee a fee for our performers, but we will pay the backstage team and compère for each show a guaranteed fee. Some members of our audience choose to support the show by sending tips on Ko-Fi: we will give the performers a share of these tips once we have covered the costs of running the show. For past shows, this has been in the region of £20-40 each.
Code of conduct
We’d like this event to be fun for everyone, so we have a code of conduct for people participating:
- Don’t engage in exclusionary behaviour or language against anyone based on their race/ethnicity, gender (binary, assigned or otherwise), disability, physical or mental health, sexual orientation, religion or belief, parental, pregnancy or relationship status, level of education or age. Don’t make exclusionary jokes—not even ironically. Use gender-neutral language where appropriate, and respect people’s pronouns.
- Harassment, bullying, aggression, elitism and inappropriate behaviour are all unwelcome. While the event is advertised as for adults (so you’re free to swear if you want!), don’t include any violent, gory or pornographic imagery or hate speech, in your set, on screen or in the background of your video.
We’ll also ask people in the YouTube chat to keep things civil, and will have a moderator keeping an eye on the live chat to block anyone causing trouble and/or delete anything inappropriate.