Audience Participation

I was at TCC last night. The first comic up was this super sweet, super weird guy named Skippy. His sets are manic and high energy and scatterbrained at the best of times. They almost always involve him yelling "ram it in skippy" with no context while slapping his own ass. Yesterday was apparently his one year anniversary in comedy, so he put on a gladiators costume, giant gloves, an afro wig, had somebody blow bubbles, and made a giant penis pinata full of candy that he had somebody break open with a handled penis dildo. He played music in the background, and he had a blow up doll that he left in the front row. A large part of comedy is preparation. There was a couple in the back, and the woman was yelling at him to get off the stage for a decent part of his performance. She kept loudly saying "this isnt new york city". It was odd that she was saying that, because the only place in the world that i can think of where its acceptable to yell a comedian off stage is the apollo theater in new york city. I came over and talked to her a bit and she calmed down, and was (mostly) quiet for the rest of the show. The vast majority of audience members at these shows are quiet (ish), and sometimes attentive, and on rare occasion they even laugh. However, some people try to be a part of the show. I did this when i was going to my first open mics. I felt engaged, so i figured that i got to be a part of it, especially if i had something funny to yell. Thats just not how it works. As an audience member, youre like an extra in a movie scene. Your job is to be quiet in the background. The comic has a (rough) script of how their set is going to go, and if you decide to give yourself a speaking part, you are deviating from and derailing that script. Its great that you want to be funny, but ultimately its the comedian who is responsible for how entertained the audience is while he is on stage, so even if what you say cracks everyone up, youve quite possibly fucked up the rest of the time that he is on stage. We have a term for people yelling things from the audience. The term is heckling. That doesnt just apply to yelling negative things at the comedian, its anything at all. Dont do it.