Becoming a Stand-Up Comedian: Adjusting to Your Audience

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.