That said, many comedians debate whether to tailor your set to your audience. Some comics claim that you should do "your act", unchanged, for everyone. They believe that you are who you are, and you cannot go down the slippery slope of altering your act and even your personality for the audience every time you perform. Other comedians will change their act, by adding or removing jokes, or inserting simple asides in between jokes that may be geared toward that night's audience. As a young comic, this may be a moot issue -- if you have eight minutes of material and are doing an eight minute set, there is little change to be made. But the argument over whether to alter your act for a changing audience is an interesting one, and a decision you will be faced with as you climb the comedy ladder.
The Argument Against Changing
The argument against changing your act for an audience is usually based on two reasons. First, you are an artist. You created an act, which is funny, imaginative, and unique. You should not add a joke for a comedy audience any more than a painter should add some color based on his prospective audience. Secondly, and more pragmatically, there is the "slippery slope" argument. "What are you going to do, change your act 300 times a year, and spend 45 minutes before every show re-doing your set list?" asked one headliner with whom I discussed this topic. "It's crazy."
The Danger of Stereotyping
Part of the danger in attempting to tailor your act to that night's audience comes from making judgments based on the audience's appearance. For instance, you may face an audience that skews older, with a number of people over sixty years of age, and think that you should work cleaner -- this is not necessarily the case. In my experience older audience members are much looser than their middle-age counterparts, to the point where the funniest, and filthiest, thing I ever heard an audience member say from my act came from the mouth of a woman pushing seventy.
