The comedy laws in Portugal are changing - a bit

Dear IGAC, I wrote you but you still ain’t callin. I left my insta, cell, and website at the bottom. Okay, so I e-mailed the IGAC twice back in June to explain to them that the rules which govern standup comedy here in Portugal are nearly broken. I even CC’d someone I met there to make sure it didn’t end up in a recycle bin or lost in an endless inbox. Did anyone read it? Probably not.

Imagine you’re a national organization in one of the oldest countries in Europe receiving an e-mail from a random American telling you you’re doing everything wrong. I mean, they are, but still. It’s a bit arrogant. And I’ve had time to think about the letter, and I really wish I could go back and change some of the suggestions I made. Someone needed to say something, though. Everyone I talked to hates the rules, and nobody wanted to do anything about them. Fuck that. So, I wrote the letters and sent them. Never heard back. Life goes on, and we’re in the middle of a pandemic, so I didn’t wanna beat down these people’s doors during the worst situation most of us have ever lived through.

But guess what!?! SOME OF THE RULES ARE INDEED NOW CHANGING? Was it a result of my letter? Probably not. But that doesn’t fucking matter, my dudes because I’ll take the outcome no matter what did it. Now the change is small, but it addresses two key points I oulined in. the letter. The cost of communicating shows is ridiculous, and they are now removing the fee to communicate shows!

I received this letter in my inbox the other day.

According to this document, they are removing the fee for communicating shows. Which could cost between 12-16 euros per communication. And to pay for it, you need to send a bank transfer to an IBAN, which could sometimes take 24 hours. Then you download the receipt and include it in the communication. This isn’t that bad if you have a single venue with many shows where you know the dates ahead of time, as you can submit multiple show dates per venue in a single communication. But for someone like me who was scheduling one-off shows and numerous venues, it became tedius and costly.

This is a small, simple adjustment that changes a lot. Now I can quickly submit communications for as many shows for as many venues with far less friction. Amazing. There is another change, but I’m not entirely clear of the impact. It seems they will let local municipalities handle the intake of the show communications, which they then pass on to the IGAC. I’m not sure the purpose of this change, but they made it clear that people can still submit show communications through the IGAC website starting January 1st, 2021.

It’s a start. I’ll take it. This signficantly reduced cost and overhead for running comedy shows in Lisbon now! Should out to the cool peoples at the IGAC! Thank you!!!