Getting a Roomful of People Laughing - Its Social Control

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I'm intrigued by how comedians co-ordinate the responses to their routines from the stage.

It's also difficult to learn to have the confidence to leave a pause for the audience to laugh, and to cope if they don't.

Comedians are very sensitive to the way that laughter can grow and fade in a room, and leaving a space for laughter to happen at all is a real skill.

Kiri Pritchard-Mclean, a stand-up comedian who also teaches comedy, points out:

"It takes a lot of confidence to stand on a stage and do nothing while the audience laugh - and it is hard to learn to come back in at the right point - not to trample on the laughter or wait too long and lose the momentum of the room."

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Dean said he started analyzing audience laughter and found that a good, solid laugh usually comprises an initial burst, then a pause for breath, then a rise to a peak. He teaches his students to come in with the next joke just as the peak has passed, like Berle did. That’s the first principle, which he calls classic timing, or one-liner timing.

The second principle involves what’s called tagging your jokes, adding a quick verbal redirection after the punch line, once or even several times. For instance, Dean said, he might say, “For Father’s Day I took my father out. It only took seven shots.” After the audience laughs at that, he might add something like, “Most people don’t get their priest that drunk.” That’s a tag, adding a new twist that surprises the audience and keeps them laughing.

Normally you don’t want to interrupt laughter, but tag timing is different, Dean said. The key is to deliver the tag when the audience is taking its breath after the initial burst of laughter. A good comedian can ratchet up the laughter with repeated tags and even begin to train the audience to hold its breath, to anticipate the tag like a dancer anticipates a change in a drummer’s beat.

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Perhaps more than other any other art form, comedy cannot exist for its own sake. Comedy requires a bond between performer and audience. And if either ingredient sucks, comedy doesn’t happen. But just as in real cooking, the container you put your ingredients in has some influence on the soup you’re creating.

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"A bad space can be large or small, but the key ingredient is usually layout. An audience needs to feel comfortable to loosen up enough to laugh, and they need as few distractions as possible."

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I realize that calling something "perfect" can seem too bold. But I believe perfect spaces for comedy do exist. A perfect space is small enough to be intimate, with minimal distractions.

In this final clip, I’m telling the same joke I told in the first example, to perhaps forty people. But you can see how conducive this space is to comedy energy.

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For one thing, the seats are almost on top of one another. There is no elbow room. If you’re sitting next to someone, you’re almost on their lap, which does wonders to break the ice between strangers. Another big factor is the space’s low, almost cave-like interior, with its stone walls and low ceiling that seem to magnify even a small crowd’s laughs.

This is the club that Dave Chapelle was in when he said: “You people are lucky. You know you have the best indie club in the country right here.”

Comedy can inhabit any space, from tiny back rooms that seat ten people, to world-class performance spaces such as Red Rocks Amphitheatre. But the layout of a room can tell you what to expect before the first audience member ever steps across the threshold.

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1.3.1 The Venue and the setting

The venue the performance is taking place at has a great deal of factor to contribute with.

The comedian has to work with the given venue and the way the space is set up, the size
and seating of the audience, and the general nature of the space (Quirk, 2011).
According to Lee (2012) comedy venues – such as night clubs – tend to emphasize the
illusion of authentic communication. The venues support the illusion of closeness between
the audience and the comedian since this setting stimulates the feeling of intimacy and one on-one
conversation between the audience and the comedian. Since Stand-Up gigs come in
all shapes and sizes (Quirk, 2011), larger venues – like sports arenas – use jumbotrons or
other screening devices to capture the comedian’s emotions and mimics so even the furthest
seats can engage in the feeling of closeness (Lee, 2012). The size does, however, moderately
alters the dynamic of interaction (Quirk, 2011).

To this Quirk adds: “A successful room will usually show some evidence of an attempt to influence
the responsiveness - and even the behaviour - of the audience. The space is laid out to direct the
audience’s attention toward the performer and enhance excitement about the gig. Occasionally,
perception of commercial success is also managed by the layout of the space. The dead space in the room is minimised and the audience are prevented from becoming comfortable enough to be sedate, so that energy may flow more easily into laughter. (Corboy italics. Note how most satsang set ups are exactly like this.)

These efforts are usually subtle and audiences are
rarely aware of the way that both they and the space have been arranged to encourage responsiveness.
These activities are, nonetheless, common practices orchestrated specifically to influence the behaviour
of the audience” (Quirk, 2011, p. 229)
The room will change the attitude and overall act, the comedian must adjust to its
conditions (Quirk, 2011).

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Group dynamics in Stand-Up Comedy

Tracing these ideas back to Stand-Up Comedy, group dynamics is one of the factors why
people tend to join in and laugh, when the rest of the group laughs. One could argue this
is due to a certain degree of conformity the individuals in an audience are prone to. This is
presumably the reason why producers put laugh tracks into some TV-shows (Lockyer &
Myers, 2011). To be added though: “However, it is often clear for an attentive viewer that
something is amiss - the ‘audience’ laughs too aggressively or the timing is wrong. This clearly
illustrates that audience responses are not just bland, predictable and uniform, but that they are
sequentially sensitive and precisely timed to the witnessable performance in progress” (McIlvenny,
Mettovaara, & Tapio, 1992, p. 230).
Theatre will sell their tickets seating all of the audience members next to each other so
even if the show is not sold out, the audience is seated as a group and the influence of group
dynamics will increase. Theatres might also “paper the house”. They will give away free
tickets to cast members who will distribute them to friends and family (Downs, Wright, &
Ramsey, 2012). Still bearing in mind the simple idea of contagious laughter and that the
more people around the individual are enjoying the show, the more likely the individual
will join in and enjoy themselves (Provine, 2001).
In addition, he says it is crucial for the mere sound of the laugh not to escape the room, if
however the ceilings are high or the crowd half-empty this will happen and it will be to no
benefit. Furthermore, Quirk’s study states, that greater comfort makes the crowd more
passive which is unwanted.