How-to do crowd work?

[Phil]

Ten times up on stage, I've yet to really try and work the crowd.

I see way too many comics lacking good material who try to work the crowd in search of an easy laugh. They just keeping asking people "What's your name? Where are you from? What do you do?" until finally someone is too shy to respond...and the comic digs in to that person. Zzzzz....

When should you try crowd work? When shouldn't you try crowd work? What kinds of audience members should you interact with? What kinds of responses are you looking for from the audience? What kinds of tactics to you use when engaging the audience..?

[theodoric]

As a former club owner, I am really against crowd work, unless the club and/or crowd is tiny. Crowd work tends to alienate the audience outside the first three rows, and can be immensely boring for anyone not directly involved.

There are exceptions: Jimmy Pardo only does crowd work. Paul F. Tompkins doesn't necessarily intentionally do crowd work, but he can devastate a heckler and then work the bit into his act.

My advice would be to hone your act first before being tempted to dive into the crowd.

[Rob Delaney]

A good thing to do is find someone who has something "wrong" with them and then call attention to it for a while and call them things that aren't their name, but that are mean and hurtful. Imagine that their body or heart is a like a dog or bird that you have to kill but with words, not touching. BUT! This isn't as easy as it sounds. You MUST practice first at home with people you care about whose pain you can really feel, because you know them, and you know what really hurts them (or what they think is "fun", if that's what you're trying to do.) Then you move on to people in your neighborhood or church or a place where Jews gather (like a bank or Florida) and start "giving them the business!" Pretty soon you'll be ready to do it at an open mic.

[Phil]

I'm hosting an open mic tomorrow night. My third hosting gig, but first doing an open mic. It's a small club, stage is tiny and an arms length from the first row. I've performed there before and I know I need to connect with the audience cause it's so small, I can't just broadcast my jokes, and was wondering if crowd work would be a good way to get people involved.

[Phil]

Jimmy Pardo only does crowd work.

Ahhhhh....that explains things! (like why I don't like him. and why I listened to his CD for an hour and didn't hear one joke)

[Phil]

A good thing to do is find someone who has something "wrong" with them and then call attention to it for a while and call them things that aren't their name, but that are mean and hurtful.

Yeah I can't stand it when comics dig into random people for no reason. If they heckled, go for it. But just ripping into the poor sap in the second row is so lame.

[Alex Mac]

I feel that one of the main things to keep in mind is momentum. Unless you are willing to devote a fair portion of your set to actual crowd work (and all the potential risks attached), it is best to choose when and if to do so very carefully. If you are going to do it, it is best to make your comment quick and to the point as well as not overly malicious. I guess "playful" would be a good word. You don't want to shift the tone abruptly and dig a hole you can't climb out of. If you want to work the crowd, you really need to be sure that you can bounce back if the attempt fails.

[pg13]

Ten times up on stage, I've yet to really try and work the crowd.

Well, what the hell is wrong with you, Phil? Ten times on stage and never tried to work the crowd? You've failed! Obviously!

You already know what will be said to you about this...that ten times on stage is NOTHING. There's a million things you haven't done yet. Half of them, you don't really want to do...but you'll know them when you do them, or when they get done to you.

I see way too many comics lacking good material who try to work the crowd in search of an easy laugh. They just keeping asking people "What's your name? Where are you from? What do you do?" until finally someone is too shy to respond...and the comic digs in to that person. Zzzzz....

Doesn't sound like you WANT to do crowd work, Phil. You DO know that you don't HAVE to do crowd work at all, if you don't want to... Lots of great comedians don't do any crowd work at all, really. (Whether or not they simply chose never to do it, or if they CAN do it but have chosen not to use those skills, I can't say.)

I generally agree with you, though. A lot of comics treat their efforts at crowd work like their chance to take out their frustrations with comedy audiences on a particular comedy audience and then calling it macaroni...and I'm not a fan of that approach.

On the other hand, I've seen crowd work done well...and the effect is magical. It feels like you've witnessed something special that couldn't possibly be repeated, because those stars couldn't possibly align in the same way ever again...and the MAGIC of a master of crowd work makes it seem like every show they do is a unique gem that you feel lucky to have witnessed/participated in...

The ability to do that, while it comes from your natural ability to think fast and react in the moment, is a trained skill. Effective crowd work is a trained skill. Like any trained skill, you're going to have to try to do it and fail repeatedly until the pieces fall into place and you both understand what you're trying to do and you have a database of effective responses that you can call upon for a greater chance of success.

You've already dissed it in this thread, but I think you should go back and really listen to Jimmy Pardo's "Pompous Clown" cd. Don't listen to it to be entertained by it, but audit it like you're learning a new language. Peel away the process of what Jimmy's doing and why it's working for the audience. (Your preference towards material-centric comedy is noted--but you should still be able to listen to comedy that you don't personally enjoy to understand why those who DO like it like it.)

(I should also say that Jimmy Pardo DOES have material...strong, well-written material that he delivers very effectively. "Pompous Clown" was specifically culled to show off his crowd work.)

You should also take a listen to Howie Mandel's "Fits Like a Glove". It's a classic example of the database-style of crowd work...where you're fishing in the audience for an answer that you already have a previously crafted response to present as if it were a pure ad lib. (WHAT? You mean it's NOT magic?)

When should you try crowd work? When shouldn't you try crowd work? What kinds of audience members should you interact with? What kinds of responses are you looking for from the audience? What kinds of tactics to you use when engaging the audience..?

Some have defined comedy as tension/release...that comedy is like a balloon, and you get the biggest laughs when you fill that balloon with as much tension as you can...and then, the punchline is the pin that pops the balloon, creating the release of laughter.

Crowd work is a way of inherently dialing up the tension level. The anxiety of not knowing how the audience will respond or how you'll react is shared by everyone watching. It gets your balloon filled faster.

Think about this: A magician will often call up a "volunteer" from the audience. Why? Wouldn't a trained assistant work better? The reason a magician uses a "volunteer" is because that ratchets up the tension immediately. This volunteer is in danger, this volunteer might not do what the magician expects him/her to do, this volunteer stands in for everyone in the audience who would feel some anxiety being put in the same position. It makes everything heightened for everyone. It makes it more entertaining.



Material-based comedy is "CONSTRUCTIVE"--where the comedian is responsible for presenting everything necessary for the joke to work to the audience. You set up the premise and then you twist the premise with the punchline.

Crowd work-based comedy is "REACTIVE"--where the audience, prompted and directed by an effective comedian, presents elements for the comedian to react to...and the comedian then twists those elements with what they hope is a punchline.

Think about this: There are plenty of people who are funny amongst friends. You know, in a conversation with friends, they always have something funny to say...some witty comeback, some personal tweak, some memorable quote from a movie that everyone there had seen, some callback to an anecdote of previous good times... Those people are often told that they're so funny they should do comedy. And they try...and they get on stage, where suddenly, they're not reacting to what others are saying in a conversation, where they don't know any stories about people in the audience to call back to...where they're not used to having to bring everything with them to present to the audience in order to construct humor...and where they're suddenly without anything to react to.

Crowd work is a way of effectively utilizing your reactive skills. If you're fast on your feet and good at being in the moment, you can bridge the gap between the stage and the audience to draw them in and react to what they give you.


And yes, it can draw the audience in...which can be a problem for material-based comedians who don't make an effort to make the audience care about what the comedian wants to talk about. Everybody, at some level, wants to talk about themselves.

Recognizing the right "some level" is a trained skill...and night after night in comedy clubs around the world, there are comedians failing to recognize the right "some level".

There are times where an audience just can't be corralled into giving a damn about what you want to talk about...what material you've prepared for them. You could just grit your teeth, lower your head and plow forward with your material...or you could try to make a connection with that audience utilizing crowd work skills. You don't have to completely ditch what you'd planned on doing (although sometimes, that's the right response)--but some crowd work help you get all your cattle moving forward on the drive.

There are times when there are interruptions to what you're trying to do on stage. A drunk, a heckler, a birthday, a bachelorette party...whatever. Effective crowd work skills can defuse problems and control those who would interrupt what you want to do. Those same skills could, instead, purposefully inflame problems and use those who would interrupt you into becoming the focus for a more mean-spirited but potentially explosively style of comedy for the rest of the audience.

You should definitely start to collect a database of reactions to common comedy show incidents. How comfortable you will be pulling from that database might be dependent upon how effectively you've trained your crowd work skills...


Crowd work can be individual. "Hey you! Yes, you in the shirt. What's your name? What do you do for a living? Is this your wife?" When you do this, you're looking for a specific answer that you can specifically react against.

Crowd work can be general. "How are you doing tonight? How about this weather, huh? Who hear saw that new blockbuster movie? Anybody here ever try doing this? Who here is married?" When you do this, you're just looking for a vibe...a sense of the temperature of the room as a whole on given topic--and it usually suggests that you've got material to present on that topic.

A lot of comedians include needless rhetorical questions that audiences THINK are actually attempts to work with them. For ANY question that a comedian asks, the comedian should have an answer to ANY response that the audience gives him/her...not just the most expected response.


All attempts at crowd work come with a huge downside risk. You're giving up an element (and the expectation) of control. That sense...that loss of control...that is what gives crowd work its inherent tension...anything could happen and no one knows where this is all going to end up.

That's where crowd work once again is reminiscent of a magic trick--because the magician knows how the trick goes. Bring an audience member on stage as a volunteer and the audience now isn't certain if everything is going to go the way that the magician expects. What the audience doesn't know is that the magician has done this often enough that they know most of the ways that the audience volunteer will react and is prepared to react to the situation. The magic is in making it seem like it's all going off the rails but knowing that you're still in control.

So, the comedian has to know that they're risking losing control going into their efforts at crowd work and they have to work hard to maintain enough control over the room to move forward with what they want to do. (And realize that one of the prime motivations of modern comedy hecklers is to derail the planned show. They think that their input will "help" make the show "better" by giving the comedian something to react to...something that takes them out of their pre-planned act.)

The biggest tool you have to maintain control is your microphone. You're the one that everyone can hear. You choose what the room shares.

PRO TIP: Any time you want to react to something that has happened in the crowd or something that someone in the crowd has said, you should always describe what happened or repeat what someone has said before you present your reaction. That keeps you in control and it helps the rest of the audience understand that you're reacting to a specific thing, not just randomly spouting a non-sequitur.


Some comedians are so afraid of ceding any control to the audience that they avoid crowd work and they ignore all crowd interruptions rather than risk dealing with those interruptions and losing control of the progress of the show...they bull their way forward with their material and they'll simply suffer through a bad show than to try to salvage what they could by connecting with the audience.

But training in the skill of crowd work and feeling comfortable utilizing those skills on stage will give you more options...and you can handle more situations where you can't simply rely on your material to entertain an audience.

On the other hand, comedy is nothing if not a selfish pursuit. Who is going to tell you that you have to do crowd work if you don't want to? And certainly no one is going to tell you that you have to do crowd work in the way that you don't happen to enjoy...

Figure out your own path, Phil.

pg--As ever...as with everything.--seattle

[Shane]

Im with pg

[KevinLee]

Crowd work comes in handy with an audience that isnt paying attention. This is usually the case at open mics where the bar is in the room. If a crowd isnt listening to the performers then they are telling you that the show isnt about you, its about them. So make it about them. Talk to them. Talking to them or about them will get them to pay attention and once you have thier attention you can go back into your act.

[st.raw]

on the other hand, by turning to crowd work at an open mic, you're making it harder for the next performers to turn the attention of the crowd back to the stage and their prepared act.

once you turn it into a crowd work show, it's hard to turn back.

[KevinLee]

ARGH!! St. Raw can I ask you a couple of questions? What do you do for a living? Are you married? Do you have kids?

[pg13]

That's another never-ending debate...how concerned you, as a performer, have to be with how your performance impacts others.

I'm definitely one of those "I want the whole show to be as good as it can possibly be" types. Because of that, I put a lot of value in the following piece of advice:

When you're part of a traditional comedy club show...where there's a host, a feature and a headliner...crowd work should be limited to the host and the headliner. The host is expected to handle crowd work where it relates to finding out who the audience is, whether there are birthdays or bachelorette parties. The host does this to make a strong connection as the audience's guide to the rest of the show and also to give the other performers a better bead on reading the room. The feature should be a solid material-based performer, who has enough solid material to fill their time. The feature shouldn't have to pad out their set with crowd work, nor should they risk poisoning the room before the headliner gets on stage. The headliner, then, can do whatever they might want to do with their time on stage.

However, I've been told by a booker that such advice is needlessly restrictive--that any comedian on the show should try to kill as hard as they can, using whatever tools they have...and that if what a feature does makes it tougher on the headliner, then maybe the headliner shouldn't BE the headliner.

I'm just not into being competitive with the other performers on the bill. In MY opinion, in order for me to "win", the other comedians don't have to lose... In MY opinion, if the audience leaves thinking "Wow! That was a great show! I had a great time! I can't wait to see comedy again!"--then I feel like I've done my job.

As far as open mics go...so many of them seem like they're ALWAYS on the verge of going off the rails (although the open mic at ACME in Minneapolis is a noted exception, as that's very well run)...I'm not certain if I've ever been too concerned with how much crowd work someone does at an open mic. At some level, I think all open mics are a selfish endeavor for the comedians participating in it. A good open mic host can be the key to the night being tolerable (if not actually entertaining) to the audience.

As crowd work is a trained skill, and open mics are filled with comedians at all stages of skill development...it can certainly make it more difficult when it comes to commanding the stage if control has been lost. On the other hand, how are you going to learn how to swim if you don't go into deep water?

pg--I've had bookers criticize me for not having enough of a killer instinct when it comes to my crowd work...and they think I should spend more time picking on audience members and making fun of them, because they think that's why people come to comedy shows. I disagree, obviously...and it means that my advancement with those bookers are definitely limited by that disagreement. This is a strange industry.--seattle

[klorjne]

I've seen a lot of assholes use crowd work as an excuse to just go after people and not really have any real jokes. While I think that is a bad idea, I cannot help but laugh at Patton Oswalt's bit "The Two Dumbest Cunts in the World" (on his 7' split with the Melvins) in which he spends two minutes yelling at some women who came to his show and started talking on the phone. I think the key thing is finding audience members who deserve to have the performer give them shit.

[MJEH]

For my money, no one works a crowd like Robin Williams.

[Kentock]

My advice to Phil is to seriously not worry about it.

Are you doing comedy to make funny off-the-cuff comments for the guy in the front row, or are you there to tell your crafted jokes to an appreciative crowd?

There are ALWAYS going to be assholes who yell out, and nice folks who yell out, and guys who wear weird hats. You will get more experience doing crowd work than you ever wanted. I just try to do my act as well as possible and put out fires as they come.

[Phil]

Doesn't sound like you WANT to do crowd work, Phil. You DO know that you don't HAVE to do crowd work at all, if you don't want to... Lots of great comedians don't do any crowd work at all, really.

Good to know I shouldn't feel obliged to eventually do crowd work.

I generally agree with you, though. A lot of comics treat their efforts at crowd work like their chance to take out their frustrations with comedy audiences on a particular comedy audience and then calling it macaroni...and I'm not a fan of that approach.

Yeah, I refuse to get hostile with the crowd. Comics were picked on in High School, so now they're going to have their revenge on their audience. lame.

You've already dissed it in this thread, but I think you should go back and really listen to Jimmy Pardo's "Pompous Clown" cd. Don't listen to it to be entertained by it, but audit it like you're learning a new language. Peel away the process of what Jimmy's doing and why it's working for the audience.

Good point, I'll do that. I didn't realize that was the point of the album.

Crowd work can be general. "How are you doing tonight? How about this weather, huh? Who hear saw that new blockbuster movie? Anybody here ever try doing this? Who here is married?" When you do this, you're just looking for a vibe...a sense of the temperature of the room as a whole on given topic--and it usually suggests that you've got material to present on that topic.

Yeah I have done some of this with success. It helps me connect with the audience, let's them know I'm not just reciting my jokes.

PRO TIP: Any time you want to react to something that has happened in the crowd or something that someone in the crowd has said, you should always describe what happened or repeat what someone has said before you present your reaction. That keeps you in control and it helps the rest of the audience understand that you're reacting to a specific thing, not just randomly spouting a non-sequitur.

Yeah I fucked this up once. The people in the back couldn't hear the heckler, just could hear me in the noisy bar. Now I know, gotta repeat what they said into the mic...

Figure out your own path, Phil.

pg--As ever...as with everything.--seattle

Another great post, man! Thanks again for your time! (you should write a book!)

[crlygrl]

(you should write a book!)

From your post above it looks like you beat him to it.

(How's that for crowd work, CROWD?)

[pg13]

I didn't realize that was the point of the album.

Well...the point of the album was to entertain those who listen to it. I happen to think that "Pompous Clown" is hilarious, as do most of the other people that I know who have heard it...

You didn't like it. That's fair. Weird, but fair.

However, if you're looking for examples of how to do crowd work well...regardless of whether or not it entertains you...there are few examples better than Jimmy Pardo-"Pompous Clown"...and you should be able to separate your personal opinion based on your tastes from your ability to learn something from something by simply appreciating the craft.

pg--Beware the needless chip on your shoulder, Phil. If you've been doing comedy ten times and you're already bitter about how some comedians do what they do, you've got nowhere to go when the REAL bitterness seeps in.--seattle

[Phil]

pg--Beware the needless chip on your shoulder, Phil. If you've been doing comedy ten times and you're already bitter about how some comedians do what they do, you've got nowhere to go when the REAL bitterness seeps in.--seattle

Nah, I just know that I don't like it when comedians rip into an audience member for no reason, and I know I obviously never want to do that.