Becoming a Stand-Up Comedian: Adjusting to Your Audience

Most comedians, myself included, like to sit in the back of the room before a show and watch the audience file in. We like to see the people will be working for that night, and to get an idea of the crowd as a whole: is it young? Old? Are there single women coming through - or is it couples only tonight? It simply feels more comfortable to go on stage when you have had a chance to survey your audience.

That said, many comedians debate whether to tailor your set to your audience. Some comics claim that you should "do your act", unchanged, for every audience. They believe that you are who you are, as a person and a comic, and you cannot go down the slippery slope of altering your act and even your personality for the crowd every time you perform standup.

Other comedians will change their act, by adding or removing jokes, or inserting simple asides between jokes that may be geared toward that night's audience. As a young comic, this may be a moot issue - if you have eight minutes of material and are doing an eight-minute set, there is little option to change anyhow. But to argument over whether to adjust to your audience is an interesting one, and a decision you will face as you climb the comedy ladder.

The Argument Against Changing

The argument against changing your act is usually based on two reasons. First, as a comedian, you are an artist. You created an act, which is funny, imaginative and original. (Hopefully.) You should not add or change a joke for a comedy crowd any more than a painter should change the color of his painting based on the prospective buyer.

Secondly, and more pragmatically, there is the "slippery slope" argument. "What are you going to do, change your act 300 times a year, and spend 45 minutes before every show changing your set list?" asked one headliner with whom I discussed this topic. "It's crazy."

The Danger of Stereotyping

Part of the danger in attempting to tailor your act to that night's audience comes from making judgments based on the audience's appearance. For instance, you may have a crowd that skews older, with a number of people over sixty years of age, and think that you should work cleaner - this is not necessarily the case. In my experience, older comedy club patrons are often looser than their middle-aged counterparts, to the point where the funniest, filthiest thing I ever heard an audience member say during my act came from the mouth of a woman pushing seventy.

Comics often characterize or stereotype regional audiences as well; for example, Southern audiences are supposedly a bit more talkative, a bit less sophisticated, and more amenable to dirty jokes. Whether or not this is true, changing your act just because you're in South Carolina instead of Wisconsin is not necessarily a good idea - because you haven't gotten an idea of the particular comedy audience you're facing.

Changing Your Act

If you are going to try and get a feel for the audience, the best way is through your jokes, rather than trying to guess based solely on the demographics of the crowd. Audiences can be tricky to read, and group dynamics often play different ways, so your best bet is to read the reaction to your opening jokes. Did they moan at them? Do crowds usually moan at those jokes? If they were sensitive to an early joke, which wasn't THAT offensive, you might reconsider the string of more controversial jokes you were planning on doing later. (Some comedians take the opposite tack; a moan from the crowd is for them like a red flag to a bull. If you're wired that way, go for it.) On the flip side, if they hooted and hollered at your first mildly dirty joke, perhaps you can bring out some dirty jokes you don't always do and push the envelope.

I do feel that adjusting your act mid-stream is a worthy endeavor; it's a tactic that I use regularly on stage. I will cut short bits if I don't feel the opening joke of the topic got a good reaction; I have backup jokes for many of my bits that I only use if the crowd has really gotten behind that series of jokes.

I will warn, however, that this tactic can be VERY difficult. It requires a complete command of your jokes, because as you adjust, you may leave your set list. This can put you in the position of being at the twenty-minute mark in a thirty-minute set, trying desperately - and unsuccessfully - to remember which jokes you haven't done yet -- jokes you need to fill the last ten minutes. Once you have that command, you can jump from topic to topic, improvise segues, and avoid getting lost.

While I sympathize with the idea of comedian as artist, I also believe that we are paid to entertain the crowd, not solely to express our own beliefs and what WE think is funny. Anything that you can do to enhance the crowd's reaction will make you a more successful comedian, and, more importantly, a better, more polished comedian.

Be Yourself

In the end, however, I cannot stress enough the most important thing is to be yourself. If you're what I call an "input-driven" comic - meaning that you enjoy simply releasing your thoughts into the microphone, and damn the crowd and the torpedoes - by all means, stay that way. Do what feels natural. If you're more like me, an "output-driven" comic, one who enjoys the audience reaction and will make accommodations to get that positive reaction, then adjusting your set list from time to time is a skill worth learning.

But, again, you have to be yourself. You can change your act between Chicago and Atlanta; you cannot add a fake accent, pretend you grew up in a trailer park, or claim to have grown up in Chicago when you actually were born in Dallas. Adjusting to your audience is an advanced technique that can make your act more effective and make you more comfortable on the road. But, again, it is an advanced technique, and one you should not attempt until you are comfortable with and in command of your base act.

This article was originally published on Suite101.com. Subsequent changes have been made.