‘We’re all in the same trench’: The experience of learning in the stand-up open-mic community

The stand-up comedy open-mic is a multi-faceted and unique learning environment that serves as an initial learning space for comics, holding possibilities for comics to create their own learning path. This research aimed to understand how comics involved in a stand-up comedy open-mic scene experience learning by exploring the liminoid space of the open-mic as a learning environment. The findings have shown that the qualities of communitas and embodied learning, both on-stage and off, are essential in sustaining the community and motivating the comics to continue challenging themselves creatively.