A fellow performer (and friend) approached me after a recent show.
“Mark, you can't say that kind of stuff. That’s not okay.”
He’s known for joking around so I thought he was just being ridiculous. But he wasn’t. He was trying to pick apart my act and had taken issue with something I’d said onstage. I was taken aback, especially since I hadn’t done anything wrong.
See, when I perform at a comedy club I do a lot of “crowd work”. Crowd work is unscripted dialogue with the audience, hopefully resulting in a funny or memorable moment. During my comedy club sets I go in search of those moments, hoping something will happen that will create a one-of-kind evening.
Crowd work is a lot like playing with fire. In today’s “woke” culture you have to be careful what you say and who you say it to. If your punchline is directed at someone who can’t take a joke then it can be a disaster. But, that’s part of the fun. Just as in life, you have to take chances to get any where interesting.
I have a few loose "rules" I try to stick to when doing crowd work, including:
Observe before the show.
Plan ahead.
Be fearless.
Don’t apologize.
Double down.
Stay in the joke.
Compare or contrast.
Ask questions.
Always be learning.
Let me break those down for you…
You can’t plan crowd work before you get to the show but as soon as the audience arrives you can start observing. What kind of group is it? What kind of people are they? Are there any standout people with outrageous hair or outfits or other characteristics? What stands out?
I stand to the side to watch the audience and pay attention to anything interesting I see or hear. Then the joke writing begins. By the time I take the stage I already have five jokes ready to go, so you’ll never know which ones are made up on the spot and which ones I came up with earlier. That’s part of the fun.
Crowd work can be really enjoyable since you never know where it goes. But it’s work. You don’t get to relax for a moment. While everyone else is laughing you have to plan ahead. Laughs are extra time for thinking of your next joke.
Usually my next joke is whatever pops in my head first. I try to make the jokes I’d make with a group of friends at a party but that means you have to be fearless. You’re going into uncharted territory but you have to act like this is exactly where you want to go. Otherwise, the audience will sense your nerves and won’t come along for the ride.
Sometimes jokes get a laugh or applause. Other times they’ll get a gasp or an uncomfortable shift in the room. But you can’t apologize. If you apologize once then it’s all over, so you have to double down and expand on the joke. Most of the time you just need an additional line or two to clarify what you were trying to say. Doubling down demonstrates your confidence and the audience will respond accordingly.
Jerry Seinfeld talks about staying in the joke. That means that when the audience is laughing or reacting you have to keep the same energy going. If I’m roasting an audience member and people start laughing I don’t get to break character and start laughing myself. I have to stay in the joke and keep roasting the guy. That’s how you get bigger laughs and create special moments.
Most of my favorite jokes follow the compare or contrast formula. If something funny happens I try to compare or contrast it to something relatable. Recently a guy blew his nose really loudly during a moment of silence in the show. I roasted him for it, asking him if he thought it was going to be that loud. I said, “No, you thought you got away with it. That’s like…” comparing it to something hilarious. Looking for those comparisons takes crowd work to a whole new level. (You can see what I said when the video goes live on Monday.)
If you run out of things to say, just ask questions. Ask the person where they’re from or what they do for work. They’re likely to contribute something hilarious. You’re taking advantage of the fact that people get nervous speaking in front of other people and hoping they will say something you can use for your next joke. Plus, asking questions gives you even more time to plan ahead.
The last component to crowd work is to always be learning new information. You need a large reservoir of knowledge to pull from when you start improvising with the audience. You never know what random trivia you’ll be able to use for a joke. In the past two weeks I’ve made jokes about elevators, crossword puzzles, investors, divorce attorneys, hockey, Mensa, Party City, clowns, and trombones. I try to read as much as possible, pay attention to the news, and study trivia to fill my head with knowledge. I also make notes when I think of jokes and consult the list before each show. You never know what info will come in handy!
As you can tell I put a lot of thought and energy into something that is largely impossible to rehearse or plan. But, I care about my shows being unique to every audience so I think it’s important to analyze every single part of my act.
Before a recent show I couldn’t help but notice a row of five men all dressed in similar sweater vests. The first thought in my head was that they looked like investors. They just had that vibe. I filed it away and went backstage.
Two minutes into my show one of those men called out a funny comment.
“Shut up," I said to big laughter from the room. Then I set my sights on their row. I was ready.
“Look at this row of investors…” I said, riffing on their general appearance. The men laughed, too, so I started asking questions.
Turns out the men were in attendance with their wives but they were all seated in one long line. It was the five men in a row, followed by their fives wives. I couldn’t understand the seating arrangement - if given the choice I would always choose to sit by my wife - and started roasting them for it.
I was asking one of the women to participate but I wanted to find out more. It was just too funny. We’d been making jokes for a couple minutes by this point and everyone was on board.
“Who do you belong to?" I asked, pointing back and forth from the investors to their wives. “Do the seats correspond to each other or what? Which investor is yours?” The ladies were wiping tears out of their eyes. One of the men tried to explain the seating arrangements, which were too confusing to understand.
“I didn’t want to do a Mensa puzzle tonight, I was just making conversation!” and invited my volunteer onstage to help with my next piece.
The problem was that my aforementioned performer friend only walked in before I said “Who do you belong to?” then proceeded to accost me in the dressing room calling me “old-fashioned” and “not woke”. But he hadn’t heard the whole bit. He didn’t understand that I wasn’t talking ownership, I was talking about the absurdity of the seating arrangements. It was part of a larger riff and no one in the crowd ever pulled back. Everyone got the joke, everyone was laughing, and it was a great night.
(The following night, my friend pulled me aside to apologize. He said he’d had a few too many drinks the night before and hadn’t meant what he said. I thanked him for that and all was well.)
My problem with this is that there is no nuance any more. Everyone is so quick to get outraged that we forget to look at the big picture. We forget that maybe a thought needs more than 280 characters to be expressed. Things aren’t 100% right or 100% wrong. Thoughts are messy and people are complicated.
My style has always been to gently make fun of people in the audience. It just works for me to point out the comical way that people behave or respond in the moment. And most people can take the joke. Theater audiences get it. Comedy club audiences love it. Corporate audiences might love it the most, because no one talks to CEOs that way. But I do and they go wild.
But I’ve noticed a big shift in college audiences over the past ten years. At my first college shows a decade ago I would give students a hard time and it would go over like gangbusters. But not any more. Now a silly joke about someone doing something ridiculous can be seen as “shaming” or “name-calling”. And the students don’t laugh. They don’t like it. It’s fine if you want to make fun of yourself, just don’t pick on one of the students. As my wife so brilliantly puts it, they have become “too woke to joke”.
People taking offense at jokes has been in the news a lot over the past several years. Of all the hills to die on, getting offended by a joke might be the lamest. If you don't like a joke that’s fine. You probably just don’t have a good sense of humor. But that doesn’t mean you get a refund or should go write a blog about it.
The joy of crowd work is getting to say the things that everyone is thinking. You get to point out the obvious absurdities that exist in everyday life. Everything is fair game and nothing is off limits. As Dave Chappelle says “I don’t think people pay money to see someone speak precisely and carefully. You have a responsibility to speak recklessly.” I may not always say it perfectly but there’s something fun in watching someone work out their thoughts in front of you.
The funny thing about all of this, of course, is that my crowd work is pretty tame. I’m not making fun of people’s religion or ethnicity or sexual identity. I just find it funny if someone does something a little unusual and can’t help but tease them for it.
The way I see it is that we're all a little ridiculous. We do dumb stuff and make dumb decisions. We have weird thoughts and bad opinions. We’re complicated and nuanced and people shouldn’t expect us to get it right all the time. As a result, we all should be made fun of equally. That’s the world I want to live in.
Other Thoughts:
Just saw Noah Baumbach’s beautiful film “Marriage Story” on 35mm at a theater in Chicago. (If you’ve never seen a film on film before you’re missing out!) It goes on Netflix in December and I highly recommend it.
I’ve already added some shows to my schedule in 2020. Hope to see you there.
Check out this week’s video: