A first open mic: a comic at the microphone under one light, a small room listening
Going out · Open mics

Open mics near you, night by night

Where comics try tonight's new jokes and new comics get their first five. The mics on each room's own listing, the next two weeks, and every room's weekly mic night with how to get on. A night out for a few dollars, often none.

329 open mics on the rooms' own listings in the next 60 days, at 69 rooms in 64 towns, and the weekly mic nights of 253 rooms.

Open mics, night by night

The next two weeks, from each room's own listing. Your town first, where you have set one.

Friday 13 November 2026 5 mics

Saturday 14 November 2026 2 mics

Sunday 15 November 2026 6 mics

Monday 16 November 2026 9 mics

Tuesday 17 November 2026 13 mics

Wednesday 18 November 2026 22 mics

Thursday 19 November 2026 13 mics

Friday 20 November 2026 4 mics

Saturday 21 November 2026 2 mics

Sunday 22 November 2026 6 mics

Monday 23 November 2026 6 mics

Tuesday 24 November 2026 11 mics

Wednesday 25 November 2026 12 mics

Thursday 26 November 2026 3 mics

Every week, room by room

The rooms' regular mic nights and how to get on, state by state.

Alabama 3

Arizona 5

Arkansas 1

California 28

Colorado 3

Connecticut 1

Delaware 1

Florida 12

Georgia 3

Idaho 2

Illinois 5

Indiana 5

Kansas 3

Kentucky 3

Louisiana 2

Maine 1

Maryland 4

Massachusetts 3

Michigan 4

Minnesota 2

Mississippi 1

Missouri 5

Montana 1

Nebraska 2

Nevada 1

New Mexico 2

New York 12

North Carolina 2

North Dakota 1

Ohio 9

Oklahoma 7

Oregon 1

Pennsylvania 6

South Carolina 2

South Dakota 2

Tennessee 3

Texas 62

Utah 1

Vermont 1

Washington 5

Washington, D.C. 2

West Virginia 1

Wisconsin 3

Open-Mic Etiquette, Thick Skin and Staying Power

Every comic starts at an open mic, and the good ones keep coming back to one. Here is how the night works, why you bring a set rather than wing it, how to be the comic a room wants back, how to take the ribbing that comes with being new, what one minute on Kill Tony teaches, and why a bad night is part of the plan. The book's rule for the room itself: “Protect the room that gives you stage time”.

What the night is for

A mic is practice in front of people. “An open mic is a laboratory, gym, classroom, and community entry point”, and “Open mics are where unfinished material belongs”. The laugh you are listening for is information, not a grade.

  • Test, don't impress. Bring the new joke, not only the safe one. The book's warning: “you may leave with praise and no new information”.
  • Judge the joke, not the room. “Some mics are packed; some have six comics staring at one another”. “Do not assume a dead mic proves the joke is dead”.

Bring a set, not a hope

An open mic is open to anyone, and it still isn't the place to make it up as you go. Walk up with jokes you have written, said out loud and timed, and with your act if you have one. Talking to the room is a skill worth building; it lands best with a written set to come back to.

  • Write it down first. The five minutes on paper: the jokes, their order, the line you open on and the line you close on.
  • Say it out loud before you go. Run it in the car or the kitchen with a timer, until the words come without hunting for them and the set fits inside the light.
  • Know the first line cold. The first ten seconds are the ones nerves eat. Know them well enough to say them half asleep.
  • Record every set. The set you remember and the set you did are two different sets. Put the phone on a stool or in a friend's hand, watch it the next day, and mark where the laughs really came, where you rushed and what your hands were doing.
  • Keep score. Steve Martin, as a teenager doing shows for the Kiwanis and the Cub Scouts, kept a notebook grading each one, with notes to himself to relax and not shake.

How the night works

  • The sign-up. “Some mics are first-come, some draw names, some use online forms, some prioritize regulars, and some charge a small fee or require a purchase”. “Read the posted rules before messaging the host to ask questions already answered publicly”.
  • Get there when the room says. “A 7:00 show may have a 6:15 signup cutoff”. Early is on time.
  • Be ready when called. “Know your stage name, set length, and whether the host needs credits”, and stay in the room when your name is close.
  • The light. “The time light is the room telling you to finish”. “Some rooms light you when one minute remains; others signal at the exact end. Ask before the set if the convention is unclear”.
  • Never run it. “If ten comics each take one extra minute, the show runs ten minutes late”. “Your time limit is part of the material”.

Be the comic rooms want back

“Comedy scenes are small. How you behave while waiting for five minutes can matter as much as what happens during those five minutes”.

  • Stay and be the audience. “Stay for several comics after your set when possible”. The last comic up is somebody's first set too.
  • Keep the talk outside. “Keep side conversations outside the performance area”.
  • Notes are asked for. “Ask before giving notes”.
  • The room is a business. “Buy something when appropriate, tip staff, follow parking and smoking rules”, and “Treat staff like people you may work with again”.

Thick skin: the ribbing is the welcome

Being new at a mic comes with a little ribbing, and it is one of the oldest parts of the scene. The host may roast your name, your shirt or your nerves in the intro; the comics at the back may give you a hard time about your first joke, your notebook or your day job; somebody may pull a harmless prank on the new face. It is how a scene says it has noticed you.

  • Laugh, take the mic, do your five. The intro is the host's set, not yours. A smile and a clean first line say more than any comeback.
  • Give it back on your turn, lightly. A quick tag on the host's line, said with a grin, is part of the game. A real argument from the stage is not.
  • Keep the jokes for the stage. Take the ribbing the way it's meant: as a hello. The comics doing it are the ones you'll be trading spots with in a year.
  • The set is the answer. Nothing ends the ribbing faster than coming back next week, and the week after, with a better five.
  • Hard on each other, there for each other. At the Comedy Cellar's comics' table in New York, the regulars give each other a hard time over a bad set and a bad shirt alike, and say they look out for one another just as hard.
  • The welcome side. Jimmy Pardo, at 21, crammed fifteen minutes of material into about five at his first set. The paid comic on the bill told him it went well and gave him club owners' numbers, and the two are still friends.

Watch Kill Tony: the free masterclass

The best free lesson in walking on is Kill Tony, the live show Tony Hinchcliffe began at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles in June 2013 and now records at the Comedy Mothership in Austin, Texas. Comics put their names in a bucket. Each one drawn gets one minute of stand-up in front of a live crowd, then an interview with Tony and the night's panel, and the best can win a golden ticket: a spot on a later show without waiting on the draw. Watch a few episodes on the show's YouTube channel and you can see, a minute at a time, the difference between a comic who is ready and one who is not.

  • Spot the nerves. Fidgeting with the stand, the cord or a sleeve (unless it is part of the act), stammering, an uh between every line, a stiff body, eyes on the floor. You will see them in someone else within seconds; a room sees them in you just as fast.
  • Spot the ready. Straight to the microphone, the first line said at once, a beat left for the laugh, a clean last line on time.
  • The interview is half the spot. After the minute comes the talk: where you're from, what you do for work, how long you've been at it, what that joke was about. The comics who do well answer with a story, laugh along when the panel takes a shot at them, and keep it light.
  • Play the scenes before the night. Have a friend ask you the usual questions and take a shot at your shirt, and answer out loud. Rehearse the moment a joke dies and the line you say next. A moment you have already lived through at home doesn't throw you on the night.
  • One good minute can start a career. Kam Patterson became a Kill Tony regular in 2023 and joined the cast of Saturday Night Live for its 51st season. Hans Kim first went up on the show in 2021 and has made nearly thirty appearances. William Montgomery, David Lucas and Ari Matti Mustonen are regulars too.
  • It can be learned. The tight minute and the easy interview are patterns, and patterns can be practised. Hans Kim's advice is to keep doing open mics and shows until being up there feels like an ordinary day of practice.

A bad night is part of the plan

Nobody's first nights go in a straight line. Some comics kill the first time and bomb the second; some freeze the first time and come back better. The book's rule for the rough rooms: “Separate production failure from performance failure”.

  • Roseanne Barr killed on her first night. She took the other comics' notes on how to sell her lines harder, did it their way the second night and was booed, and says she spent years chasing that first night.
  • Robert Mac was too self-conscious to go up at his first open mic in Tucson, so a friend told his jokes for him. The next week he took the microphone himself.
  • Jim Carrey says the tanks were good for him. Away from the stage for two years, he wrote, and watched the other comics and the audience to learn what a room was looking for.
  • Mark Normand was bombing at a showcase when the one joke that worked landed just as Amy Schumer walked through the room. She told him it was funny and asked if he wanted to open for her.
  • Steve Coogan had a chair thrown at him in a rough London club, won the room over, and turned down the encore.
  • Norm Macdonald was sure he had bombed at his first amateur night at Yuk Yuk's in Ottawa, though the room had laughed all set. The club's manager phoned every Macdonald in the book until he reached Norm's mother, and talked him into coming back; after two more nights he was offered a place on the club's regular roster.
  • Patton Oswalt got four minutes of silence and one laugh at his first open mic in Washington, D.C. He loved the night world anyway, took every set he could find at college, and was soon paying his rent from weekend gigs.
  • Bill Burr forgot every word of his first set the moment he was on stage. He kept going up.
  • Kumail Nanjiani had a great first open mic at college, then spent about six years on open mics and shows in the backs of Chicago restaurants while he worked in tech support.
  • Jim Gaffigan worked in advertising by day and bombed by night while he built his act, went full-time, and had seven or eight years of slow going before his break.
  • Andy Kindler's first solo set was so rough he cried on the drive home. He kept at it, and he is still on stage.
  • Garry Shandling had never performed before he started, and his first jokes sounded read off the page. His style came years later, once he began talking honestly on stage.
  • Rodney Dangerfield left comedy and sold aluminum siding in New Jersey for about ten years, came back around forty and made his hard luck the act.

Knowing when to move on

“Moving forward does not mean never doing another open mic. It means open mics stop being the center of your comedy life”. The book's road rule: “Graduate from needing open mics, not from using them”.

  • Jerry Seinfeld was made the Comic Strip's emcee about four months after he started, at $25 a night, three nights a week, and turned in his waiter's apron.
  • Wanda Sykes left her government job once she was a middle act and could see she could travel and make enough to live on.

Going up yourself?

Stage Time has each room's sign-up rules, the set log you keep on your own device, and how to start a mic where there isn't one. The Starter Course takes you from no jokes to your first five.

Stage Time →The Starter CourseRun a mic? List it

Run an open mic? Add it

Your night goes on this page and on your room's own D.O.C. page. Kit, D.O.C.'s newsletter service, emails you once from hello@disciplesofcomedy.com to confirm the address; from an address at your room's own website it goes on by itself that night. Your email is never published or signed up to anything. More nights and the details comics ask about: the full form on List your room.

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