Marcus Tabb is an Atlanta comedian who, no matter where he goes, knows how to get the crowd going. Perfecting his craft is Tabb’s main focus, and that’s helped him make people laugh in spaces where they didn’t expect to hear jokes that night.
Tabb spoke with rolling out about being a comedian and shared things he has learned.
What have you learned as a comedian?
Comedy is in everybody; it doesn’t matter who you are. When I was in New York, I was doing my jokes for nothing but Jamaicans because we were in Queens, and they have the same type of home humor that we have, whether it’s White people, Black people, or wherever we were. Even when I was in Sacramento and there were a lot of Mexicans in the crowd, we all share the same humor. We all share the same fun about family, about struggles that we go through as people, and about anything that happens. The more personal my jokes are, the more relatable they are. The more vulnerable I am on stage, the more people love it.
How is it being a comedian in Atlanta?
Atlanta is the best place because, for one, Atlanta is one of the only cities like New York and LA where there is a place to go every night, where a comedian has opportunities and access to do their craft every single night. There’s somewhere you could do comedy every night in Atlanta; they even have a calendar for you to check out to see if there’s some way you could do your comedy, which is great because, as a comedian, the only way you can get better is by performing on stage and perfecting your craft every day. That’s one big blessing about doing comedy in Atlanta.
Another blessing is [at] a lot of places… like bars and small restaurants, nobody wants to hear comedy… so you have to flip it and make those people laugh. You have to make people laugh who didn’t come to laugh. That challenge makes me such a stronger performer. Having that challenge out here in Atlanta, where people just look at you crazy while you got a microphone in your hand if you can make those folks laugh, you can make anyone in America laugh. Once you have that experience of making people who don’t want to laugh laugh, it’s easy money.
