John Roy

probablyscience:

You’ve seen the hilarious John Roy on Conan, Ferguson, and IFC’s Maron in Space, and he joins Matt, Andy, and Jesse this week to talk about the new cocaine vaccine, Juggalo science, and why there are 480,000,000 needles orbiting Earth.

http://probablyscience.libsyn.com/episode-069-john-roy

This was fun. Listen?

Welcome to Week Ten.

Hey.

Welcome back from Open Mic Land. How did doing crowd work feel? Maybe you loved it and can’t wait to incorporate more of it. Maybe you hated every minute of it, but if even if you don’t intend to do crowd work in your act, I am glad you felt what being out their without a net feels like. The more fears in comedy you can conquer quickly, the better for your overall comfort level on stage.

Half of the progress you make as a comedian is attributable to simply accumulating enough experiences on stage that you develop a deep, robust internal confidence. That confidence will subconsciously influence your voice, posture, face, and every movement of your body. The audience is that much more likely to laugh with someone they feel comfortable with. They will not feel comfortable surrendering control to a fearful person. Whatever aspects of comedy frighten you the most, whether it is working without swearing, working without a mic, working without leaning on the mic stand, these are the things to do as soon as possible.

One of the most frightening aspects of comedy is being heckled. I will not assign you to attempt to get heckled, but I do want to give you some things to think about for when it happens.

First of all, you are unlikely to get a straight “You suck!” heckle. I can count on two hands the times that has happened in my entire career. What you are more likely to get are people yelling stuff out while you are trying to do your act. This is just as bad. It doesn’t matter what they say. What matters is that they are talking when you did not wish them to. You need to control this. The same goes for people talking loudly to the people at their table. And anything above a whisper counts as loud.

Whatever unwanted talking is going on, unless the show is almost over, or the show is already such a disaster that it is pointless, you have to deal with it. “Powering over them with your jokes” rarely works unless the talker is being drowned out by a big and very supportive crowd. And if someone says something TWICE, the approach has already failed, and now you must restore the authority that you need to perform a successful act. When dealing with an unwanted talker, remember three things:

A. The audience is your ally. You are supposed to be talking and the other person is not. You are defending the social order and you also hold the key to whether they enjoy their night in your hands. They WANT you to win. Unless you have been bombing unmercifully or have been rude to them, they want this disruptor punished for interfering with the show. Getting them to applaud when the person finally shuts up, or getting them to shout at the heckler to shut up are very effective anti heckler weapons. You have to sense that they are on your side enough to attempt this, and you should probably wait until you’ve tried to shut the person up yourself at least once, but you have a crowd of people on your side and you should not hesitate to pit them against the heckler.

B. Do not show genuine distress. Even if you are boiling on the inside against this dipshit, remain calm and filter your thoughts through the perspective of your stage persona. Maintain the composure you would maintain when doing crowd work, even though your “scene partner” is hostile and was not asked to participate. The audience does not want to see the comedian show any signs of losing control. They do not want to see you get rattled. Once your anger breaks out from behind your stage persona, you lose authority in their eyes, and the audience begins to lose faith in the show. A heckler can seldom turn them around to their way of thinking, but they can destroy the trust that allows the show to proceed. Don’t help them do that by flashing uncontrolled emotion.

C. Remember to keep your responses proportionate. There is nothing wrong with having some stock heckler comebacks written and ready to go. But whether scripted or improvised, you need to make sure your response fits the offense.

Think of having heckler comebacks on a scale of one to three. A one is a light slap like, “Don’t worry, sir, when it is time to talk, the lights and microphone will be brought to your table.” This is good for your first response. It is only once the heckler has been given an opportunity to stop being disruptive and clearly NOT TAKEN IT, that you can ramp up to a genuine insult about their intelligence or manners, though not their appearance. This is what I would call a number two. Commiserating with others at their table about what a pain they must be to endure or criticizing their manners or alcohol use are good number two responses. Then you should give them another opportunity to retreat on their own. If they persist, it is fair game, and you can ramp up to an infinite universe of Number Three responses, which can be as mean as you want them to be.

But it is important to remember to always publicly ask the heckler to cease and get an answer before ramping up to the next level of insults. This allows the audience to see that you have “played by the rules.” You tried to be nice. They have truly brought this on themselves. If you don’t, you can be perceived as mean, regardless of the other person’s behavior. This is especially true if the set is not going well. Which it often isn’t, just before someone starts talking.

“Fuck that,” you might be thinking, “I’ll say what I want, when I want, and the fucking heckling piece of shit can suck it.” Many comedians I know would agree with you. You are totally free to use that approach if you wish. The advice above is for when you want the best chance of the rest of the show being saved. If you are comfortable with a scorched earth situation, by all means, go ballistic, but know from experience that that method has a high chance of making a return to normal joke telling impossible.

This week I want to talk about holding and keeping the audience’s attention, both from the writing side of your act and from the performing side. Chris Rock said something very astute on this topic in HBO’s Talking Funny special. In fact, that whole special is full of good advice, so why not watch the whole thing right now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKY6BGcx37k

To paraphrase Rock, your first goal is not to get them to laugh, your first is just to get them to pay attention. So true. And even more so in the world of Open Mic comedy, where almost everything about the space is working against you. Fortunately there are things that a comedian can do in the moment to accomplish this. There are also things they can do in the writing process to make this job easier before they even walk on stage. First, here are some things to keep in mind from the performance end.

1. I have said this before, and I cannot over emphasize it enough, don’t just walk up there and start blabbing your material. They make their decision about you in the first few seconds of your performance. They judge you based on some things you can’t control, like your looks, but you should try to make sure what you can control is nailed down. Help them like you.

One way to do that is to allow them that time to process you. Don’t confuse them by asking them also to also digest a joke set up. That annoys them. Just walk up, as confidently as you can, greet them and stand there owning your enthusiasm and performance energy. In the first fifteen seconds, don’t ask them to digest any more information than what you look like, what your voice sounds like coming out of your head, and the fact that you are excited to be performing for them. That is plenty to digest already. They don#8217;t need the fact that you “recently saw your ex at Chipotle” to add to their mental workload. Nothing more than “Hello’s” and “Good to be Here’s” in the first ten seconds.

If the thought of opening with generic stage patter makes you gag; If you REALLY want the first thing out of your mouth to be a carefully crafted startling joke for maximum effect, make sure you have first given them eight seconds or so of silence so they can get accustomed to. Then give them your opener. The “let them process you” rule still applies even if you don’t feel like telling them how happy you are to be in Santa Monica.

Comedy is subjective and I can’t tell you what each person wants to see in those first seconds, but I can tell you that it isn’t fear, distraction, or confusion. That is why I ask you to get in the proper mind state before going on stage, whether with affirmations or some other technique. The moment before your first joke can win them over for the rest of the set. If you are internally focused and confident, they can perceive it and will be more likely to start with a good impression of you.

2. If you feel the audience slipping away from you, not paying attention, whispering to their friends, slow down. This will be counter intuitive. Your body will want you to speed up in order to “stop boring them” or “get to the big punchline” or just increase the energy you are putting out by talking faster. This is the wrong move. The less you put out, the more they have to listen. By slowing down and allowing some silence, any people whispering become more conspicuous. Often people are not aware of how loud they are, and if you are also talking loudly, they won’t realize that they need to shut up. Slowing down allows this to happen. It also pauses the flow of your ideas long enough for everyone to tune back in and re-focus on your joke.

The comedian Fred Klett once said, if it’s not going well, and you think you are going too slow, slow down even more. I have seen this work wonders in getting a crowd that is unraveling back on board for more jokes.

3. Don’t waste their time. I have already discussed polling the audience (“Any drinkers here tonight?”) as unnecessary. In fact, any words that don’t directly aid in understanding a punch line are hurting your act. Get rid of them. This includes saying “What else is going on?” when you are switching topics, “this is true,” before a premise, or the always annoying “I uh……” either before or after bits. All serve no purpose except to waste more of their time when they would rather be laughing.

As you want them to listen to your every word, make sure you keep up your end of the bargain by making sure you are saying things that are worth listening to. If you’re constantly saying things like, “Man, things are crazy.” they will start to realize that in fact, they DON’T need to listen to everything you say, because some of it is actually pointless babble. Avoid this.

4. Don’t confuse them. Be clear when doing a character within your act that it is distinguishable as such. When doing a dialog between two people in a joke, make sure the audience knows who is talking. Look in different directions when switching speakers. If you are not going to say who the speaker is before each sentence, make sure your voice is as differentiated from your regular persona as possible, like Maria Bamford does in the clip you watched earlier. Not knowing what is going on is another common reason an audience will drift away from you.

5. If you have not chosen a deliberately monotone delivery style as an artistic choice, use as much of your vocal range as you can. Just as a song goes from soft parts to loud parts to hold your interest…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTWKbfoikeg

So can a standup vary his vocal inflection to the same effect. If Sam Kinnison screamed through out the entire act, it would get old quick. Without the long moments of near silence and chuckles leading up to it, the screaming would have no impact. Think about all the ways you speak in everyday life. Passionate, worried, whispering, yelling, empathetic, cold, angry, sad… all of these can and should go into your act. The more different ways you can present your words, the more sides of the compelling character that is you they encounter, the more engrossing your show will be.

Several times I have compared your show to a conversation. A conversation where one person said every sentence in the exact same way would start to get both weird and uninteresting. Think of the audience as the other person in that conversation, and make sure to show them so many facets of yourself and your personality that they are constantly seeing a new side of you. If they feel they are listening to the thoughts of a one track mind, they will get bored and tune out. Comedy must be surprising after all. And try to mix a positive emotion in their too. By its nature comedy uses negative emotions for fuel, but a conversation partner who does nothing but complain is unpleasant and tedious.

In week three, I had you write out your emotional beats for each joke in your act. Please do this again, including any bits written since then. Then see how varied you can make the emotional palette of your act. Where is there an opportunity to act how you do when you are in a fight? Where is there an opportunity to talk like you do to your boyfriend or girlfriend when cuddling? Always look for opportunities to vary your vocal dynamic and surprise them with a different side of yourself. The more places on the emotional spectrum presented, the more fulfilling the theatrical performance./p>

I KNOW some acts use the same emotional stance on each joke throughout their set by choice. I will address this in the writing section.

If you find you need to work on any of the above things in your act, please make sure you tackle each area as a performance goal as you progress in comedy. And, just as instructed in previous classes, work on one at a time. Allow a performance goal time to sink in and become automatic before working on the next one.

And now to ways you can help keep their attention with your writing:

1. What if you have decided, like Dan Mintz, that you want a specific vocal style on every joke? Or what if, like Lewis Black, you come at each joke from a place of frustration, or like Rodney Dangerfield, you come at each joke from a place of defeatism? If one element of your act is going to remain constant, the other elements have to be AS VARIED AS POSSIBLE to make up for this.

Lewis Black makes sure that his grumpiness is applied to as wide a variety of topics as he can, from the weather to food labels to war propaganda. Dan Mintz’ jokes have an insane variety of subject matter, from samurai armor to the Holocaust, and it changes drastically from joke to joke. If you are going to keep one element of your act constant, you must surprise them with other elements or you become a boring conversation partner.

2. Make sure they always know why they are listening to each bit. This is especially true of stories. Say a clear sentence at the top of the bit that tells them why this is compelling. “My uncle caught me shoplifting and it made me cry.” or “This is the worst time I got fired.” Jon Mulaney’s classic bit about putting Tom Jones on the juke box takes many turns, but he gets the audience to listen through them all by saying it at the start that this was the best meal he’s ever had. The audience sticks through the story to find out why.

3. If you suggest something in your setup, make sure you deliver what you teased. If you say your mom leaves annoying messages on your voice mail, you now HAVE TO GIVE EXAMPLES AND THEY HAVE TO BE FUNNY. Even if this is a side issue to your joke. Your audience expects that all the information you give them will be paid off in humor, or why are they listening? If you are not able to make your mom’s voice mails funny, why mention them at all?

Even a general statement like “I was the worst employee ever “ should ideally tbe backed up by at least one example.

Even if you didn’t intend it, you have put a question in audience’s mind. They are now thinking “why was he the worst employee ever?” If you don’t explain it, It creates a vague frustration in the audience’s minds. They may not be able to put their finger on why, but it will begin to make them annoyed with your act. A friend and fellow comic had a funny story about a childhood friend faking amnesia for a month. There were some funny details but it didn’t hit like he wanted it to. It’s because he never told them how the friend got caught. They were still restless and full of questions. If you say it lasted a month, they immediately want to know how it ended. If they don’t get to hear it, they won’t be listening to your later jokes because they are still wondering how he got caught. They are also annoyed at you for teasing a topic that you didn’t fully deliver on.

Look through your act and make sure that any questions you bring up in the audience’s mind are put to bed and put to bed in a funny way before moving on to another topic.

4. Lastly, if at all possible, eliminate segue-ways from your writing. These are lines like “speaking of football, my high school coach was a dick.” Unless you have written actual jokes that take the form of a segue-way, these are your enemy. Just more useless words that aren’t making anyone laugh. Try and arrange your material so that they don’t have to be there.

The best way to do this is to arrange your bits so there is at least some thematic glue that holds the bits together. In the above example, if the comedian just did an NFL bit and then wants to go into his coach bit, just end the NFL bit, and say, “I played football in high school. My coach was a dick.” New topic, clean start, no useless words. The audience knows you were “speaking of football,” without a reminder, and the common thread of football is enough to link the jokes without extra words.

You have a lot of leeway here. You can follow the high school bit with, “I’d hate to be a teacher,” without “speaking of high school,” too. Just make sure there’s a bit of a connection between the two. And you know what? If you run out of topics that have common elements, an extra long pause and a little bit of inflection can signal that this is a new topic. Segue-ways are unnecessary.

Your assignment this week is to continue the Comedy Refinement Process towards building your five minute showcase set. In addition to the steps you have been taking each week, apply the lessons from today’s writing section towards your set.

If you have completed your latest performance goal, think about working on one of the points from the performance section. Then, watch the following video clips in order and make a list.

Write down every technique Mr. Galafinakis uses to grab and keep the audience’s attention. Pay special attention to the way he varies his approach throughout the act and keeps them on their toes. Enjoy. Kill ‘em and I’ll see you next week.

http://youtu.be/liqknQkZwwg

http://youtu.be/k38sWjd869I
http://youtu.be/6xU4Mzmqc88

http://youtu.be/ohthkOzewdQ

http://youtu.be/Jy4SD3DhFnQ

kylekinane:

thecomedybureau:

The Why Would You Eat That? by Ron Babcock and Michael Truly is one of the funnest and funniest web series as of late. Look no further for proof than this latest episode where a Chicago rite of passage, supposedly, in the spirit known as ‘Malort’ is drank after grabbing fake cash from a wind machine/fan in a challenge between very funny comedians Kyle Kinane and Brendan McGowan from Chicago.

This was fucking gross.

This week, I am turning the reins over to special guest teacher and excellent comedian Jared Logan. You can watch Jared’s Half Hour special on Comedy Central this Spring. Here he is, on a subject he is much more qualified to teach than I, crowd work. Your only assignment this week is to do crowd work in your act each time you perform. Aside from that, just continue to work on getting that first showcase set perfected. Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for the very funny Mr. Jared Logan:

CROWD WORK

by Jared Logan

My friend John asked me to write a little bit about crowd work, so here goes…

CREDENTIALS & DISCLAIMER

Before we begin, I should let you know where I’m coming from. I’ve been doing stand-up comedy for ten years. I work as a warm-up comic for television, doing 15-40 minutes of crowd work at least twice a week, and sometimes more. I also do a lot of audience interaction in my own act.

You may read the following and decide there is a better, more effective or more artistic way to do crowd work. Good! I hope you’re right! I want to hear about it! My act, like yours, is a work in progress.

WHAT IS CROWD WORK?

It’s a conversation with the audience. If you think about it, any set you do is really a conversation with the audience. You talk. They laugh. You talk. They laugh. When you do crowd work, the audience gets to talk too. Maybe because you’ve asked them to talk. Or maybe someone in the crowd is yelling out, ruining your carefully planned performance. Good crowd work can turn this interruption into an opportunity.

If you think of crowd work as a conversation and not a performance it will make your crowd work much more effective.

WHY DO CROWD WORK?

Even the best comedian in the world will occasionally encounter an audience that does not want to laugh. The comedian is doing his best “A” material but the crowd just sits there, staring. Why? It could be any number of reasons, most of which are completely out of his control. Maybe the audience is physically uncomfortable, too hot or too cold. Maybe they all came for the headliner. Maybe they didn’t know there was going to be a show. Maybe they’re all more worried about their drink/food order at that moment. Maybe they’ve been waiting in line for six hours and they’re tired. Maybe there’s a cultural divide between the audience and the comic — they’re too young, too old, black, white, asian, geeks, jocks, whatever.

No matter what the context, though, it is the comedian’s job to give the audience a good show and make them laugh. But written pre-planned material demands a lot of an audience. It means that they must actively focus and listen to what the comedian is saying. When one or several of the circumstances I listed above are in effect, the audience isn’t laughing because they’re not even listening. They don’t know how. That’s when you practice crowd work.

Crowd work has advantages and disadvantages. Because it is off-the-cuff, it’s often not going to have the style & nuance of pre-planned material. Crowd work is messy and chaotic, but it’s also very exciting and engaging. It wakes the audience up and says to them THIS IS HAPPENING NOW!

The difference between pre-planned bits and crowd work is the difference between watching a fist fight in a movie and witnessing a fist fight happen one table over in a bar. In the movie, the fight probably has more subtext, more meaning, more emotional impact and artistic flair. By contrast, a fist fight happening next to you in a bar can be a raw, goofy, clumsy affair. But it gets your adrenaline pumping, and it demands your participation. You can’t look away.

These qualities make crowd work the perfect tool for certain situations:

Starting a show - transitioning a crowd from whatever they were doing before the show (talking to their friends, eating, reading, working) into show mode (actively listening to and participating in the show).

Recovering from a bomb - When a joke gets no reaction, or when a set slowly goes downhill and an audience gets quiet, sometimes crowd work can save you by jumpstarting that connection with the audience.

Handling a heckler - This is what most people think of when they think of crowd work. Putting a heckler ‘in his place.’ Crowd work is essential for getting back on track when someone interrupts your show, but for reasons I detail below, you probably don’t want to think of crowd work as making fun of the audience or putting them in their place.

My final and favorite use for crowd work is to develop new material. With a great audience you can have a conversation that may lead to a killer line you can develop into written material. If you find you are on stage and you are tired of the jokes you’ve been performing over and over, throwing in some crowd work can throw new life into the act and maybe take it in a new direction. Some of my best jokes have come out of crowd work.

Now that we’ve discussed why we do crowd work, let’s go over some basic tips to keep in mind…

KEEP IT POSITIVE

There’s some common sense that the worst fear of most people is public speaking. I’d guess their second worst fear is being spoken to in public. For the same reason that crowd work is exciting, it can also be scary. Think about that bar fight and how you’d feel if it were happening right next to you instead of just on the screen.

Audiences are terrified of you. Yes, you. First, they’re afraid you won’t be funny, but then if you are funny they’re afraid you’ll take them apart, reveal all of their flaws, destroy their marriage with a biting insightful remark, make a disgusting joke about their body or their ethnicity, etc. etc.

A little bit of fear can be a good thing. It helps you keep control of the show and it’s exciting. Too much fear, or downright anger, is death to stand-up comedy. People won’t laugh if they’re terrified or angry. So keep it positive. Be nice.

When you do crowd work, you’re not setting out to prove you’re funny. You’re not trying to ‘teach that heckler a lesson.‘ You’re not trying to show them who’s boss. You’re having a conversation. Be polite, the way you’d be if you were meeting this person for the first time outside of the context of the show.

It’s easy to tell someone they are stupid, ugly, vain, vapid, boring. Come at it from a different angle. Try to find ways to agree with your audience, make them look cool. The harder it is to agree, the funnier you’ll be. If you try to find ways to justify things that the audience says, you’ll notice that they often say things that are bizarre, inappropriate or ridiculous. This happens so often that agreeing with them is almost always hilarious. The harder you struggle to agree, the more you’re generating a fascinating conflict that people will want to watch.

This is a basic rule of improvising with a scene partner that improvisors know as the “Yes, and…” rule. When you do crowd work, the audience is your scene partner and you are improvising. Agree with what they say and expand on it. If you say no or tell them they’re stupid, they will shut down on you, and instead of warming them up you’ll create a deep freeze.

Keep it light and positive and they’ll not only lose their fear of you, they’ll generate hilarious material for you.

THAT AIN’T NO CROWD WORK I EVER SAW

You may complain “But I saw Doug Stanhope in Cincinnati and he was a jerk when he did crowd work and made fun of people and was mean and it was hilarious and the audience loved it!” Every rule has exceptions, and this rule of positivity has several famous exceptions. You don’t really see Don Rickles “yes and”-ing anybody.

Great, renowned comics have a built-in audience that brings expectations of their act. A Doug Stanhope fan expects and wants to have Stanhope give him shit. Also, veteran comics know better how much negativity they can express in their confrontations with the crowd and still win the crowd back. They’ve been at it a long time and they know themselves well enough to take risks like that. It’s also worth noting that comics like Doug Stanhope have walked entire rooms, and done so proudly. If you’re that type of comic, I guess go for it. But I hope you’re as talented as Stanhope or it’s not really going to work as a career move.

Even though I try to stay positive when I do crowd work, I often find myself expressing views that are at odds with the audience member I’m talking to. That’s because I’m not only trying to keep it positive, I’m also trying to be honest.

BE HONEST

Being honest is what keeps your positivity from turning into pandering. You want to struggle to make your audience look cool, but you don’t want to kiss their ass. So just be honest. Say what you’re really thinking without getting too negative.

This is actually a rule that is easier to follow in crowd work than it is when writing material. When you’re writing material you may consider all kinds of things that you don’t need to consider, like whether the audience will think you’re hip or whether the material will make you look smart. You may not even be aware that you’re considering these things and that they are affecting your writing. In crowd work, you’re so on the spot, there’s no time to be fake. What you’re really feeling is often going to come out, because you’ve intentionally placed yourself in a high pressure (one might even say crisis) situation. Just remember the audience is your friend and play nice.

Audiences are lie detectors. They will always catch you in a lie. You can feel them pull away from you and stop laughing. So, as best as you can, try to be honest.

THE SOCRATIC METHOD

Yeah, but how do I actually do crowd work?

Well, you address a remark to one person in the crowd, let that person respond with a verbal answer, and keep conversing until, hopefully, you get a big laugh because somebody said something funny. Then you go back to your act (or on to the next person…).

The first forty times you try this, however, it is terrifying. So here’s a good plan you can stick to in order to get started. Try the socratic method. The great philosopher Socrates used to ask questions of people and then re-state their answers back to them, often with hilarious results (seriously, most of Plato is like one big long comedy routine). So do that. Ask the person anything, like what’s your name? what do you do for a living? where are you from? — and then repeat their answer back to them, in your own words. Repeating the answer in your own words not only starts to create the tension that will provide laughs, but it also helps the rest of the audience follow along. As you progress, the questions are naturally going to get more complex, because that’s how a conversation works. If you ask a person what they do for a living, they can just say “human resources manager” but your next question is naturally going to be more complicated. You might ask “What does a human resource manager do?” or “Do you enjoy it?” The person has to consider these types of questions more deeply and give a longer, more interesting answer. Then you repeat their answer in your own words. If you are honest, and let a bit of your own point of view start creeping in to your summary of their answer, you will get laughs. If the answers they give don’t make sense to you, don’t worry! That’s a golden opportunity! Re-stating something you don’t understand is funny. Be honest and summarize it in a way that sums up what you think they were trying to say.

This is really all there is to it. But you have to commit! Keep going until someone says something funny. Don’t get nervous and bail early because you’ve asked a couple questions, they’ve answered, you’ve restated, and nobody has laughed. Good crowd work takes patience. If you’re being honest and keeping it positive, something funny will happen.

LESS IS MORE

This brings us to maybe our final foundational tenet of crowd work, which is that less is more.

When I first started doing crowd work, I thought that I had to quickly come up with a hilarious joke about what the person was saying on-the-spot with an entire audience watching me. That’s impossible! It’s hard to write good material when you sit at home and put hours of thought into it. Writing a hilarious bit on the spot is extraordinarily difficult. Flashes of genius do happen, to everyone, but they’re the exception, not the rule.

The conversation is enough. Years ago I asked one of my good friends, who I started comedy with in Chicago how he was able to improvise with the audience so well. I’d watch him talk to the crowd over and over and get huge laughs while I struggled. This comedian was kind enough to reveal his trick to me. He said he just asked them questions and if he didn’t understand the answer or thought the answer was stupid, he’d make a face. He’d mug, so the audience could see. He got a huge laugh doing that every time and he was so subtle with this obvious-sounding technique that I didn’t even catch on that that’s how he was doing it. Sound like a cheap trick? Maybe crowd work isn’t for you. I mentioned earlier that it’s not as elegant as hilarious written material.

Just remember: the conversation is enough. If you’re a funny person you’ve probably been sitting and joking around with your friends and one of you said something like “This could be a show” or “This could be a bit.” Crowd work is your chance to prove it. If you’re funny (and almost everyone is) then your conversation with the audience will be all you need to make your crowd work funny.

TRICKS & STOCK LINES

Just a couple more notes about crowd work. I think it is okay and almost necessary to use a couple of tricks and stock lines in every crowd work set that you do. Most of your crowd work should be improvisation, but there are problems that come up again and again and a stock line can help you trouble shoot the issue.

For example, it’s good to have a stock line ready for when the person you’re questioning refuses to answer or gives answers that are exceedingly vague. I have a line about how the person must think I’m somehow trying to steal their identity. I ask them for their social security number, etc.

Likewise, when a person I’m questioning acts like they are afraid of me, I try to defuse their fear by asking them if they’re afraid I’m about to say [INSERT HORRIBLE DISGUSTING REMARK].

I’ve also found that you can loosen up a group you’re doing crowd work for by spending a lot of time joking with the person in the room who has the most authority. At a birthday party (and god save you if you ever have to play one, but I did once), everyone wants to see you talk to the grumpy old gray-haired dad. At a corporate event, everyone wants to see you tease the highest ranking boss. Before the show, approach that person of authority and get on their good side, thanking them for the gig, making small talk. They’ll be a really good sport during the show because you’ve shown you respect their position.

Improvisation is kind in crowd work, but planning for problems is always smart.

CROWD WORK VS MATERIAL

These are my final thoughts on crowd work: It is a tool in your arsenal, but never your entire act.

You can’t perform crowd work on a Late Night talk show. I mean, you could, but none of those shows will let you. Too much of a risk! They want to know what you’re going to say before you perform…

You can’t develop crowd work into a half hour sitcom. For obvious reasons. What would that even look like?

No executive, agent or manager will ever be impressed that you can do crowd work, even though crowd work is exceedingly hard to master. This is because crowd work doesn’t effectively showcase your point of view. With crowd work, you’re letting the audience lead the conversation. People that work in the entertainment industry love a good improvisor, but they’re more impressed by a unique point of view.

Learn crowd work in order to use it to augment your written material. Let it be a tool in your kit and you’ll make your performance invulnerable.

When you first try crowd work, it’s difficult. Then it becomes easier. Then it becomes extremely fun. Then it can become a crutch. Don’t let a dependence on crowd work stop you from saying the things that you want to say with your act.

Crowd work is medicine to aid your set. Use it sparingly and as directed. If you do too much crowd work, the audience won’t listen to material. They’ll think they are part of the act and the entire performance is about them. If you are the comedian, you are the show. Never feed the audience so much of the crowd work drug that they become addicted. You got into comedy because you had something to say, so once you get the crowd listening, say it.