How to Host a Comedy Show

Last updated January 13, 2025

This is a brief write-up on how to host a comedy show.

Get them to behave as a group

Your primary objective is to get a room full of individuals to behave as a single group. To do that, get them clapping/wooing together three times. If you get the audience making noise right from the start it will make them feel less self conscious about laughing later.

“How’s everybody going tonight?”
”Wooooo!” [1]
”We can do better than that. How’s everybody doing tonight?!?”
”WOOOOOO!” [2]

You might think this is hacky, but no one cares. The audience wants to have a fun time. The comics want a hot room. Management wants everyone to buy more food and beverages. No one is going to think your welcome is hack.

Talk to Some of them

This may seem counterintuitive given the “behave as a group” note above, but getting to know a few specific audience will help draw people out of their shells. It’ll also create organic openings for you to make a few jokes early in your hosting set, which gets everyone used to hearing the rhythm of jokes. And…it’ll get people clapping together a few more times. Here’s how I do it:

Initiate a conversation. I start with general topics like geography.

“Make some noise if you’re from out of town!”
”WOOOOO!”

Once you see a person who clapped/wooed, talk to them.

”Where are you from, sir?”
”Mississippi.”
[to audience] “Give it up for Mississippi…” [3] “Who are you here with, just you or your local Klan? Is this your first visit north of the Mason-Dixon Line?”

And you’re off to the races.

You could stay on geography—”Anyone else from out of town?” “Anyone from another country?” “Anyone here from a Union state?”—or you could move on. You can steer the conversation toward a topic for which you already have material. I have material on being married, so that’s where I go next.

“Make some noise if you’re married!”
”WOOOO!”
”How long have you been married, miss?”
”22 years.”
[to audience] ”Give it up for 22 years!” [4] “To the same person?” or “What’s the key to making it 22 years?”
”Open communication.”
”That’s a good one. For us it’s having a nice even division of labor. At home, I make all the jokes, she makes all the money.”

Next you could talk to someone else, you could pivot to other material, or you could

Cover House Rules

Depending on the club, you may need to cover some house rules. I frequently host at Bananas Comedy Club, and they don’t have any house rules. Once I hosted at a club that gave me an entire single-spaced page of do’s and don’ts to cover. “Don’t ask if anyone is celebrating a birthday. Do talk about our drink promotions.”

In general, you can remind people to keep their phones in their pockets, on silent, or better yet, off. You a remind them that heckling is passé. When I host at Gotham Comedy Club, I’ll tell them that we’re taping these sets.

“We’re taping the show tonight. The comics will review the tapes so we can get funnier. Some comics use the tapes to send in to late night shows. I’m sending mine to my mom as proof of life. ‘How can we make these tapes great?’ you ask? Laugh. That’s it. If you like a joke, laugh; if you don’t like a joke, laugh harder.”

When covering house rules, I find it helpful to insert a joke, hence the proof of life line.

I will update this page as I think of other topics. I’m already thinking I need to add a troubleshooting section… How to handle hecklers, what do to after a comic bombs, etc.

If you have any questions, feel free to drop them in the comments below.