Standup: Good audience suddenly became heckler - completely different view between one and comic

I’m a Japanese comic Kohei in Montreal. Let me talk about a comedy night.

I went to the bar to watch my senior comedian on stage. It’s a comedy event. So then the show started. And it’s his turn.

He made lots of jokes and almost before the end of his stage, a man of the couple, near the stage, told the comedian.

“You talked too much about porn”

and everyone laughed so hard, including me.

We thought it was a joke, it was a crowd work. But then the comedian started to set up the new jokes. He started talking about the Titanic. The audience man of the couple told him again.

Your comedy is sinking like Titanic.

This time people didn’t laugh so much, a bit tense in the room, after finishing his comedy, the couple went out of the bar during the show. More comedians were coming next.

That’s the night. And let me add more information.

The man and the couple were really nice at the beginning.

A host starts to ask questions to audiences to build more connections between the shows and the comedians. So the host asked what the couple’s relationship was. The man seemed to want to say something, more than friend. But the woman answered friends.

During the senior comedian's stage, I also watched the faces of audience. I wanted to know how people react, how people react to comedians’ jokes. Before it happened, I found something strange. This means the woman of the couple looked bad, looked pale.

At the beginning, at the time of the host and other comedians' comedy, she looked fun. But suddenly she looked pale. So this means she didn’t like the comedian’s topic. This means porn. From this information, I believe with high probability that the man wanted to protect her.

This is one view. Some people would have seen the view in the room.

I am a comedian. So I could see other views. Let me talk about how I felt.

I felt sorry for the comedian No one would criticize because it’s not a super big night like more than 500 audiences, we don’t have to find fault, but if someone say something about the situation, the comedian would be blamed.

But as a comedian, I feel very sad because the comedian community is very very hard. I think every community in the world. The English Montreal comedy community, it’s additionally hard.

Montreal in Canada, Quebec, there are two main languages spoken, English and French, but more French speakers.

This means, that most of the case French community is stronger than the English community. It can be applied to everywhere. This means any market, any industry, and of course, the comedian community, French community, French comedy communities are much stronger, and richer, the English community. This means lots of situations, when we do English stand-ups, we are not paid. I never get paid for comedy.

Not a few comedians show up on stage after their daylight jobs.

He lost his job months ago and he worked hard on not-too-stable jobs and studied hard for a qualification. Not a few comedians come to nights with being very exhausted. And the comedian has been doing comedy for more than five years.

If he has a relationship with someone, he doesn’t have to talk about the porn.

I’m not trying to defend the topic. But as for comedy we need specific materials. Mostly we get the experiences from our own life. Comedy needs the body to exist to be conveyed to audiences. So we need a body. Like, even if we talk about vegetables, animals, or anything, we put fun into the topics because the fun needs body. So yeah, for him it’s porn.

I’m not into any other topics. Anyway, I try to find something funny at first.

Of course. Like, I also have the comedy that that the topics I really don’t like. If the comedian is a stranger, I don’t know how I think the jokes anyway.

There is the most thing I feel so sorry for the comedian.

I strongly believe the senior comedian was used for a man of the couple. Let me explain. If the guy just wanted to protect her, they could just go out of the bar or even if he wanted to say something about jokes. he could stop the point where he said the comedian talked about lots of porn. That’s it. That’s a line. he didn’t have to say “Your comedy is sinking”

In my opinion, He wanted to be a hero of the woman. He wanted to dramatize himself. He wanted her feeling. He wanted her Love. The comedian became a villain to be a device of the drama.

How hard being a comedian is. Hard night. These nights would repeat probably, day by day.

I shared this story, not because I want you to defend comedians. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to like it. We always have our preferences. We don’t have to laugh forcibly. But like, I just want to share this story. Made me think a lot.