Opening Crowd Work
This was in response to a question about opening and crowd work.
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This is something you may just have to experiment with to see what works for you. I like to sort of interact with the room a bit, so that they know I’m there and present. If I’m commenting on the bathroom or on the crowd or something they know that’s not something I could prepare any time and it puts them at ease. A couple of things to keep in mind are:
1. If you have an accent or are of a different nationality or race than everyone else, finding some way to diffuse the unspoken tension will help people feel comfortable.
2. If the room is empty, finding some way to diffuse that unspoken tension is helpful.
3. Really if there’s any kind of unspoken tension putting in a little joke about it can help.
For all of these: Don’t do it in a mean way. If the audience is small don’t complain about it (LOTS of comedians do this. Very annoying), they’re the ones who came out, encourage that. I did a show last night and there was just one full table in the whole room. Aside from them and the comics there were just some guys in the back of the room. So when I got up there and set up my easel I was like “By the way, if you can’t see any of these, literally stop me because I can re-angle it just for you. I mean yeah, those guys in the back are great, but if any of them are nearsighted this whole set is fucked.” And they enjoyed that because it made it feel intimate without me putting pressure on them to laugh. Later I was making a joke about camouflage and I remembered that one of the guys had been in the military so I was like “well of course you’re not gonna like that joke, you wear camo every day, this is like a business meeting for you.” And when I got to my picture with the jet lifting a car in it he laughed particularly hard so I was like “did you fly one of these?” and he was like “Yeah I did actually.” And then I made some joke about how he was dropping cars on iraqis and that’s why the war was going so poorly and people liked it.
Similarly when it takes a long time for me to set up my guitar or easel I try to make a joke about that (don’t have a set one yet, but if I’m having trouble I’ll sometimes say something like “yeah it may look just like an easel but I’ve got like 50 midgets in the back pulling levers and shit.”) and when it takes a while for me to leave I usually look up after I’ve got it all and say something like “Oh shit, you guys can still see me!” which usually gets a laugh.
My point is just that eventually you want to practice listening on stage and figuring out how your material can relate or be commented on based on who is there in the crowd that night. You might discover some new stuff about your jokes or even new tags to add on, and you’ll definitely make the audience feel like they saw something which they couldn’t see on TV.
Aside from that I’ll say: With my growing up set I always used that intro “Hey I’m Mike Blejer and I just want to tell you a little bit about my life growing up,” but that’s in part because I was just starting. When you’re just starting don’t worry about improvising too much, you need to just focus on saying your stuff fluently in front of a crowd. Start with a strong joke, since that will make them feel like you’re confident and comfortable, it will make them more open to listening to other jokes, since people have trouble laughing if they’re worried/embarrassed you’re going to suck. Also end with a strong joke, since that leaves people with a good taste in their collective mouths. If you’re choosing between starting or ending with your strongest joke, my advice is end with strongest start with 2nd strongest. Eventually you should have enough candidates for the position that the middle also won’t suck.
There’s a Mitch Hedberg joke about this. It goes something like “As a comedian, you have to start the show strong and you have to end the show strong. Those are the two key elements. You can’t be like pancakes. All happy at first, but then by the end, you’re sick of ‘em.”
Bottom line: For now just get comfortable speaking on stage. Long term, work on listening to your audience and ask yourself “What makes this night different from all other nights?” I don’t know if you’re Jewish, but if you know any Jews, one of them should be able to tell you why that question is so important…
Hope this helps.
