An opening act, also known as a warm-up act, support act, supporting act or opener, is an entertainment act (musical, comedic, or otherwise), that performs at a concert before the featured act, or "headliner". Rarely, an opening act may perform again at the end of the event, or perform with the featured act after both have had a set to themselves.
The opening act's performance serves to "warm up" the audience, making it appropriately excited and enthusiastic for the headliner.
In rock music, the opening act will usually be an up-and-coming group with a smaller following than the headliner. On long concert tours, different opening acts may be used for different legs of the tour.
In comedy, a warm-up comedian or crowd warmer is a stand-up comedian who performs at a comedy club or before the filming of a television comedy in front of a studio audience. [1] More rarely, a comedian will open for a music concert. [2] Their role is to make the audience feel integral to the show and encourage reactions during the show. [3] They usually work alone and perform a comedy routine while also possibly explaining aspects of the show. In a television recording, they will also perform during commercial breaks. [1] Some warm-up routines before talk shows involve giving prizes to audience members. [3] The use of warm-ups in comedy dates back before television to radio shows. [4]
In sports, an undercard is a preliminary bout or race between lesser known competitors, at a boxing, [5] professional wrestling, [6] horse racing, [7] auto racing, or other sports event.
The following outline provides an overview of and topical guide to entertainment and the entertainment industry:
Summerfest is an annual music festival held in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin. First held in 1968, Summerfest is located at Henry Maier Festival Park, adjacent to Lake Michigan and Milwaukee's central business district. Summerfest attracts approximately 800,000 people each year, promoting itself as "The World's Largest Music Festival", a title certified by Guinness World Records in 1999, but has been surpassed in attendance by Donauinselfest with over three million in 2015. While Summerfest has one of the highest aggregate attendances in the world, the daily attendance of Summerfest is lower than other major American music festivals. In 2022, the daily attendance of Summerfest was 49,500.
Andrew Geoffrey Kaufman was an American entertainer and performance artist. While often called a "comedian", Kaufman preferred to describe himself instead as a "song and dance man". He has sometimes been called an "anti-comedian". He disdained telling jokes and engaging in comedy as it was traditionally understood, once saying in an interview, "I am not a comic, I have never told a joke. The comedian's promise is that he will go out there and make you laugh with him. My only promise is that I will try to entertain you as best I can."
Stand-up comedy is a form of comedy performance directed to a live audience, where the performer stands on a stage and delivers humorous and satirical monologues sometimes incorporating physical acts. These performances are typically composed of rehearsed scripts but often include varying degrees of live crowd interaction. Stand-up comedy consists of one-liners, stories, observations, or shticks that can employ props, music, impressions, magic tricks, or ventriloquism.
Leo Anthony Gallagher Jr., known simply as Gallagher, was an American comedian who became one of the most recognizable comedic performers of the 1980s for his prop and observational routine that included the signature act of smashing a watermelon on stage with a wooden sledgehammer. For more than 30 years, he played between 100 and 200 shows a year, destroying tens of thousands of melons with the sledgehammer he called the "Sledge-O-Matic". This last sketch was meant to poke fun at infomercials who peddled similarly inane products and whose popularity apexed in the late 1970s and early 1980s before waning during the 1990s.
Raymond Neil Combs Jr. was an American stand-up comedian, actor and game show host. He began his professional career in the late 1970s. His popularity on the stand-up circuit led to him being signed as the second host of the game show Family Feud in its second run and first revival. The show aired on CBS from 1988–1993 and was in syndication from 1988–1994. From 1995 to 1996, Combs hosted another game show, Family Challenge.
Wembley Arena is an indoor arena next to Wembley Stadium in Wembley, London, England. The 12,500-seat facility is London's second-largest indoor arena after The O2 Arena, and the ninth-largest in the United Kingdom.
Cincinnati Gardens was an indoor arena located in Cincinnati, Ohio, that opened in 1949. The 25,000 square foot brick and limestone building at 2250 Seymour Avenue in Bond Hill had an entrance that was decorated with six three-dimensional carved athletic figures. When it opened, its seating capacity of 11,000+ made it the seventh largest indoor arena in the United States.
The UW–Milwaukee Panther Arena is an indoor arena located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The arena, which seats as many as 12,700 people and offers 41,700 square feet (3,874 m2) of floor space, is part of a larger downtown campus, that includes the Milwaukee Theatre and Wisconsin Center.
An open mic or open mike is a live show at a venue such as a coffeehouse, nightclub, comedy club, strip club, or pub, usually taking place at night, in which audience members may perform on stage whether they are amateurs or professionals, often for the first time or to promote an upcoming performance. As the name suggests, performers are usually provided with a microphone plugged into a PA system so that they can be heard by the audience.
Jackie Vernon was an American stand-up comedian and actor, who was best known for his role as the voice of Frosty the Snowman in the Rankin/Bass Productions Christmas special Frosty the Snowman and its sequel Frosty's Winter Wonderland.
Thea R. Vidale is an American stand-up comedian and actress. Vidale is perhaps best known for her role as Thea Armstrong-Turrell in the ABC sitcom Thea, which originally aired from 1993 until 1994. Vidale is noted as the first African American female comedian to have a television series named after her.
The Point Theatre (sometimes referred to as the Point Depot or simply as the Point) was a concert and events venue in Dublin, Ireland, that operated from 1988 to 2007, visited by in excess of 2 million people. It was located on the North Wall Quay of the River Liffey, amongst the Dublin Docklands. The Point was closed in the middle of 2007 for a major redevelopment and underwent a rebranding as The O2 in July 2008.
Festival Hall is a heritage listed entertainment venue located at 300 Dudley Street, West Melbourne, Victoria. Festival Hall first opened its doors in 1913 as a roller-skating rink and later became a boxing arena.In October 2020, Hillsong purchased the Festival Hall venue.
In sports, a card lists the matches taking place in a title match combat-sport event. Cards include a main event match and the undercard listing the rest of the matches. The undercard may be divided into a midcard and a lower card, according to the perceived importance of the matches. Promoters schedule matches to occur in ascending order of importance.
Joke Thieves is a conceptual stand-up comedy show format created and hosted by the British comedian Will Mars. It was first staged at the London comedy club Downstairs at the King's Head in June 2013. The show later debuted at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe that year, drawing capacity crowds nightly, and again at the 2014 and 2015 festivals. Joke Thieves has since toured internationally, featuring a changing line-up of established stand-up comics, character comedians and occasional sketch groups. After a couple of years of one off performances, the Sketch group version of the show enjoyed its first full run at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2015.
Flappers Comedy Club and Restaurant is a live comedy club with two California locations: one in Burbank, and one in Claremont. Notable celebrity comedians who have performed at Flappers have included Jerry Seinfeld, Maria Bamford, Kevin Hart, Gabriel Iglesias, Bill Burr, Dana Carvey, Adam Sandler, Christopher Titus, Jimmy Dore, Rob Schneider, and Craig Shoemaker.
Modern stand-up comedy began around the turn of the century, evolving from a variety of sources including minstrel shows and vaudeville. Early stand-up comedians spoke directly to the audience as themselves without props or costumes, which distinguished these acts from vaudeville performances. These comics stood in front of the curtain during their shows, like early 20th century "front cloth" stand-up comics in Britain and Ireland whose numbers allowed the stage behind them to be re-set for another act.