How do you work a room?
Working a room – the dynamics of it is something that the comedy school, when I was one of the tutors there, we really took to working the room quite seriously because it's one of the first things that we felt that comedians needed to understand - was that you're not just getting up in front of your mates now and making them laugh – because you knew Tommy from when he was seven years old and now you two are twenty-two, so you know Tommy and all the mates inside out. With the Comedy Room, it was trying to work out who was actually in the room before you've actually even opened your mouth. You know, where are they coming from, what are they about? If you were to segment them, would they be a (?), would they be a football club, would they be, a choir, a team of some sort? Once you start – once you can begin to identify all or at least have an idea of who's in the room, then, that's when you start pitching - you can start to pitch your comedy, you can start to change the words of your delivery to, suit them, because you've worked out, i.e. that they might be all professionals. You know, you might work out that they were all cleaners. If they were all cleaners, then there's no point in using high-faluting language because they are not going to be with you. But then, at the same time, if they were professors, well, here's now a time for you to do some linguistic gymnasium. So, you work the room by looking at age, sex, job, race, culture and place.
