Comedy Citadel Already Making Big Waves in Beijing’s Comedy Scene
Back in February, Beijing-based comedian Donnie Fan and Chengdu-based comedian Nico Toomuch launched a new comedy club: Comedy Citadel. They wanted to bring English comedy more into the mainstream and create more regular and varied comedy shows.
Well, they’ve now been going for around three months and have already managed to make big waves in the capital, with Comedy Citadel even ranking in the top ten of all comedy events in Beijing on ticketing platform Damai.
I caught up with Donnie before he heads off on his Comedy World Tour, to get an update on the Comedy Citadel and its journey over its first three months.
Comedy Citadel has now been going for around three months. What have you managed to achieve so far?
The Comedy Citadel had a lot rougher of a beginning than we expected as we started out, with a lot of things working against us. We had only 10-15 audience members at our first couple of shows, but as things started rolling and we started being seen more in the public eye we now have daily shows with 35 to 50 people or so. Considering we are doing our shows at 9.30pm and we have changed from shows once a month to every weekend, I feel like we can call this a huge accomplishment.
What have been some of the favorite shows that you’ve put on?
We have had a lot of great shows! I guess the most fun ones are when we have visiting comedians like Dr. Dee (NYC), Dawn Wong (SH), Han Q (SH), Yolen (Xi’an), and of course Nico Toomuch (CD) has been here multiple times each month. That’s always a great thing, but the real fun is seeing audience members get to watch English comedy for the first time and seeing their experience in real-time. We are providing something in the mainstream eye that hasn’t existed before.
Comedy Citadel is now in the top ten in all comedy events in Beijing on Damai. For those who don’t know, what is Damai and why is this a big deal?
So Damai is basically the major ticketing app in China. It’s not really foreigner-friendly, but it’s the main app that most Chinese people use for all forms of entertainment. When we signed up with Damai to sell tickets we were ranked last out of around 44 different comedy clubs or so. Since April, we slowly started to jump ahead. From 44th to 40th to 35th to 20th, when we hit 20 I thought we were finally the real deal! But I woke up one day and we were ranked 12th and I really started celebrating. Then a friend called me last week and said we managed to hit 7th on the Damai platform, which was absolutely surreal. It means that we rank among all of the major comedy clubs in Beijing, but of course, we’re the only English one. It’s exhilarating.
What do you think your biggest success has been so far?
Being able to have our comedians ready to perform every night. It’s such a challenge to try to get used to the grind of performing nightly. For all the fun we’ve had with the audience, I’m really proud of our comics who are rapidly improving with all the stage time they now have.
What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced in these first three months?
We were kind of set up behind the eight ball. We don’t have an ideal time slot and we have struggled with some of the more tedious aspects of running the business. I have my eyes set on a lot of big ideas and a lot of them need time to incubate first before hatching. I guess I’m struggling with being a first-time business owner and figuring out priorities! But with that said, a lot of this is natural progression and I think we’ve been able to organically improve in such a fast way so far that I feel very confident in the path we have going forward.
You’ve found a home for Comedy Citadel at Yonghe Plaza. Can you tell us a bit about this venue?
It’s a great venue because it’s ours! And the room feels packed whether there’s 30 people or 50, and when we get 70 or 80 people in the room it feels like a concert hall. We have partnered with Cheers and now have a liquor license so we can really push the venue as a more Western-style comedy show.
Today (Jun 2) and tomorrow you’re doing a “comusical” that involves comedy and karaoke. Can you tell us a bit more about that?
Since the venue is ours and the hutongs are still recovering for nightlife, we had the idea to offer entertainment after the comedy shows so people don’t need to run home. We have an LED screen where we can put music videos and lyrics for comics and the audience to sing, and the best part is you don’t need a comedy ticket to come to the karaoke! You can simply show up at 11pm, have a couple of drinks, and sing to your heart’s content.
What future events and plans do you have moving forward?
We want to do more game show events like Comedy Jeopardy and Family Feud, as well as hosting visiting comics from around the world. Karaoke will be a regular event as well as regular comedy competitions. We have boot camps for people interested in learning stand-up comedy and becoming part of the Comedy Citadel.
Moving away from the Comedy Citadel, you’re about to go on your world tour. Can you tell us a bit about that?
I start off in Jakarta the first week of July, I go through all of southeast Asia, and then I’ll be hitting Canada and the United States in August. We are working on the short neck in the UK and then I’ll be back to China in September! During that time we’ll have some visiting comics in Beijing taking care of things at the Citadel and we’re excited to start pushing some of our new talent! Details to come soon!
If you want to stay up to date on everything related to the Comedy Citadel you can follow their official WeChat account by scanning the QR code below.
To stay up to date with Donnie Fan, you can follow his official WeChat by scanning the QR code below.
Comedy Citadel will put on A Comusical – stand-up comedy followed by karaoke – this Fri ,Jun 2, and Sat, Jun 3, at Yonghe Plaza Building 3. Tickets are RMB 100-125 and can be purchased by scanning the QR code in the poster above.
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Images: courtesy of Comedy Citadel
