The Crowd Work Edition

Gabe Brosbe (GSB) works in sales for Figma. In his off hours, he is culturally omnivorous and writes about the intersection of food and travel at Snackventures. We used to work together and he was always guaranteed to make me laugh. - Noah

Gabe here. A cultural experience I’ve grown to love has been the one-person comedy shows produced by Mike and Carlee Productions. Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Mike Birbiglia, Jacqueline Novak, and Alex Edelman—mostly at the charming Lucille Lortel Theatre in the West Village—so it was without hesitation that I recently attended Gary Gulman’s new show, Grandiloquent.

Gary’s show charted his earliest childhood memories as a loquacious would-be performer for teachers, parents, friends, and the ongoing pain and early stages of depression from not feeling seen by his family. What I love about these one person shows is that the production is entirely carried by the pure unbridled wit and storytelling of the performers. All other production value is stripped away, and the show rests solely on the strength of the journey that the narrator is taking you on.

But as Gary’s show carefully built tension and drew the audience in via a narrative of increasing complexity and vulnerability, he was interrupted loudly and abruptly by an audience member making a call back to something Gary had said earlier in the show.

Tail between his legs, the audience member then sheepishly tried to explain his interruption: He was “just playing along.” But Gary was anguished and exasperated, working through in real-time what had just happened to a hushed room. I was squirming in my seat. There was more tension now, but a very different kind. He eventually made his way back to his performance and ultimately picked up the pieces from his lost momentum. It was a lovely play, but it was clear that something had been taken from him. We had witnessed a robbery.

Why is this interesting?

As we shuffled into the frigid night, I couldn’t stop thinking about what had empowered this person to do something like this, to interrupt a one man play with his own interjection.

Stand-up comedy has changed. This form of entertainment used to be largely consumed live, but that has flipped as comedians have brought their work to TikTok & Instagram in the form of clips. And a lot of these online clips showcase crowd interactions. A quick search of crowd work on Instagram yields an endless stream of results:

I reached out to my friend and comedian Django Gold, who I knew would have a thoughtful, from-the-stage perspective on the current state of things:

Crowds have definitely become more disruptive in recent years, due to all sorts of overlapping factors. The main way stand-up comedy is consumed these days is through short, snappy clips of it on TikTok and Instagram, and many people now expect the same type of experience in a live show. A lot of these online clips showcase crowd work interactions, so you get audience members who think that interrupting the show is part of the experience. They believe they’re doing you a kindness.

The growing demand for instant gratification and the normalization of main-character energy have combined forces. From Django:

In a crowd of 150 people, it doesn’t take much for one of them to want to be the center of attention. Especially if they’re bored by the show, which may not be as instantly gratifying as the clips they’re used to.

There’s something uniquely raw about standup comedy that I’ve always admired. It’s just the comedian and their audience. But the social contract between the two has gotten increasingly more delicate. If we as audiences take the time to appreciate what’s happening and resist the temptation to center ourselves in the experience, we might be better off for it. As someone wiser than me once said, no one ever learned anything with their mouth open. (GSB)