2019–2020 · Live entertainment
The Hail Zel Show: Live-Live!
hail_zel Illustrative post with the original artwork
Thursday Nights
Every Thursday at 8:30 p.m., Hail Zel went live on Instagram.
There wasn’t much more to it than that. He’d get on and talk about whatever was happening in pop culture, Black Twitter, or whatever else was on his mind. The comments were just as funny as he was. People came back every week, started recognizing each other’s usernames, and eventually started following each other outside of the live.
What began with around 55 people grew into hundreds tuning in every Thursday. Without really planning to, he’d created a little community around something people looked forward to every week.
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February 2017 -
May 2017 -
February 2018
At the same table where CultureTags would be created years later, Azel and I started talking about what it would look like to take that Thursday-night experience off Instagram and put it in front of a live audience.
It would be our first production together. I knew I wanted to make shows, and he had a natural ability to bring people together and make them laugh.
Taking the show off Instagram meant we needed a name. The Hail Zel Show: Live-Live! felt like the obvious choice. He was already live every Thursday.
But this was Live-Live!
…I was particularly pleased with that little bit of wordplay.
Building the Show
Azel and I met throughout the week, writing segments, scouting venues, and figuring out what the show could be. He handled the budget and marketing. I developed the format, assembled the production team, created the on-screen graphics, and managed the production.
We built around what was already happening on Thursday nights. The conversations about Black Twitter and pop culture became audience games, live debates, and recurring segments. People who knew each other only by their Instagram handles were suddenly sitting next to each other.
And Hail Zel was just as funny in person.
Host cue cards
Tap a card to flip it
Calling the show
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Show one One week The first show sold out in one week. -
Show two One day The second show sold out in one day. -
Show three A few hours The third show sold out in just a few hours.
Live-Live III
And somehow, we kept finding ways to make the show bigger.
For the third production, we had more room to play. More developed segments, new graphics, and custom cue cards I’d designed and written for Azel to use onstage. We were building on two successful shows, but this one felt like something else entirely.
I remember the first sixty seconds.
Azel walked out wearing his grandmother’s fur coat. The room went up. Phones were out, flashlights were on, and the audience gave him an entrance worthy of somebody who’d been doing this his whole life.
I knew right then we’d done it again.
And by the time the show ended, we had one more thing planned.
The clock struck midnight. It was officially Azel’s birthday. We surprised him with a cake, and the whole room stayed to celebrate. The venue that had held our show became the party.
It was a pretty good way to end the night.
A Zel of a Weekend
The third Live-Live wasn’t just a show. It was part of A Zel of a Weekend, a birthday celebration we’d built around the community that had been showing up for Hail Zel since Thursday nights on Instagram.
There was a community giveback, a live show, a party, and brunch. Different reasons to gather, all in the same weekend.
What I loved about it was how naturally it all fit together. People who had once been names in a comment section were now spending an entire weekend together. The show had given them a reason to meet. Somewhere along the way, they’d found reasons to keep showing up.
Three sold-out shows later, we’d made something that could exist well beyond the screen.