A MARTÍNEZ, BYLINE: One of the hottest trends in stand-up comedy is crowd work. That's when the comedian makes the audience part of the act, asking questions and having conversations with members of the crowd. Jeff Arcuri built an entire Netflix comedy special around crowd work. It's called "Nice To Meet You."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "NICE TO MEET YOU")
JEFF ARCURI: Like, how old are you guys? How old are you, man? You seem about my age.
UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER #1: Forty-two.
ARCURI: Forty-two. Do you feel your age?
UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER #1: I do.
ARCURI: You do? How so? When?
UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER #1: My knees.
ARCURI: Your knees? Aww. Oh no. Let me see them.
(LAUGHTER)
ARCURI: I like to consider myself a comedian first, or a stand-up comedian first. And then I incorporate crowd work to just kind of add a little flair to my shows. There was a epidemic of it for a while, where it was just a lot of people were posting and trying 'cause they were seeing success with it. The way I do it is different than that. I don't just point at an audience member and ask them to work for me. Like, I don't just walk up and say, what's your story? - to fill time. I kind of use them as a pivot point or a catalyst to talk about what I want to talk about and kind of bring the audience on the same level as me, where we're going to make this funny together. I want them to take half the credit for how the show goes.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "NICE TO MEET YOU")
ARCURI: Dude, I don't - I feel like we had the - you're 42. I'm 38. We had the same childhood for the most part, right? You had, like, a Furby?
(LAUGHTER)
UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER #1: I wanted one.
ARCURI: You wanted one.
UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER #1: I did. Yeah.
ARCURI: Aww.
UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER #1: Yeah.
ARCURI: Well, guess what? Look under your seat, buddy.
(LAUGHTER)
ARCURI: Dude, that'll be the cutest thing in the world. He's like, oh my God.
(LAUGHTER)
MARTÍNEZ: How did you get interested in making that part of what you do?
ARCURI: Yeah. At no point was I, like - would I even think I'd be somebody who'd want to talk to the crowd. I was just nervous reciting the words I economized into, you know, this sentence. It really started when I started doing cruise ships. And I would do so many shows on the cruise ships, and they would allow me to repeat shows because I can't have, like, 6 hours' worth of material. But the problem is, people would come and see me again.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.
ARCURI: I would basically cut my sets in half and then supplement it with crowd work and just kind of ask the audience about a premise before I'd get into it. And I was finding that there was a lot of fun to be found in premises from the audience's perspective.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "NICE TO MEET YOU")
ARCURI: Ryan. Nice to meet you, Ryan. You guys are married or just together or what?
UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER #2: Engaged.
ARCURI: Engaged. Oh. Amazing. Hell yeah, dude.
(CHEERING)
ARCURI: How old are you, buddy?
RYAN: Twenty-seven.
ARCURI: Cool. Were you nervous to propose, man?
RYAN: No.
ARCURI: No?
(LAUGHTER)
ARCURI: I don't even think you got on one knee.
(LAUGHTER)
ARCURI: You were probably like, catch. Was I nervous? No. She knows what she's got.
(LAUGHTER)
MARTÍNEZ: What are the risky parts of interacting with a crowd of people that you don't know?
ARCURI: Yeah. For a few months, when I was on the road, I would start the show by saying, this is kind of how it works. Like, I'm going to engage with you guys. I don't want you randomly yelling out. I was giving this little speech before shows. It just felt very condescending to tell them how to listen to me.
MARTÍNEZ: (Laughter).
ARCURI: So I just figured - I just stopped doing that, and I started kind of adjusting on the fly. So if somebody was yelling out, I just kind of take them - I separate them from the rest of the crowd. And I say, this is kind of what not to do. That - you can kind of see that in my special in the beginning, that first, like...
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. Right at the start. Yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "NICE TO MEET YOU")
ARCURI: OK. I'm going to stop the show just for a second. Did you hear what he said earlier about yelling out during the show?
UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER #3: Yeah. I did.
ARCURI: OK. That made the show worse just now. You feel it.
UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER #3: Sorry.
ARCURI: I know. And you apologized. But I just want you to know, I have jokes to get through. I'm going to get to know you guys. Never you ever again. But, like, for the rest of you guys...
(LAUGHTER)
ARCURI: You could die tomorrow. I wouldn't care. But the rest of you guys...
(CHEERING)
ARCURI: When somebody is being a jerk or whatever, I like to find an avenue for them to become someone that we clap for. Like, I'll have a moment where I'll be like, hey. You know, you're doing so good, buddy. You haven't yelled out in 20 minutes. I'm so proud of you. And then the audience goes, oh wow. Blah, blah, blah. And then now that guy's got attention in a positive light.
MARTÍNEZ: I was thinking, like, if Seinfeld or, like, Eddie Murphy were coming up just now, would they be doing crowd work?
ARCURI: I don't think so. There's a lot of purity in what they do, and I respect the heck out of it. And I think you don't need to post crowd work to succeed. I just think this is perfect for me, and I just love doing it so much.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.
ARCURI: And it was never a forced thing for me.
MARTÍNEZ: So speaking of comics that won't do it, here's Anthony Jeselnik. He was on "The Dan Le Batard Show."
(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "THE DAN LE BATARD SHOW")
ANTHONY JESELNIK: You ask someone what they do for a living, and then you make a joke on that. You know, you ask someone how long they've been in a relationship, and I think that's garbage. So I just don't do it.
ARCURI: I respect that he doesn't want to do it. But at the same time, there are people that do. If we're ever on the same show, whether everyone's there to see him or me, it may be a little bit of a different audience.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.
ARCURI: But...
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.
ARCURI: I'm going to talk to you guys. All right?
MARTÍNEZ: (Laughter) Now, your wife was a contestant on "The Bachelor," then she was the Bachelorette. You got married five days before she started cancer treatment, right? So first off, how is she?
ARCURI: She's doing well, you know? It's a constant give-and-take. Some weeks, it's good news. Some weeks, it's not as good news. So we're doing great. Yeah.
MARTÍNEZ: OK. Good. So now that you - I know that she's doing well, how soon did you try to find humor in it? Because comedians, I think...
ARCURI: Oh.
MARTÍNEZ: ...Try to find humor in things just to kind of cope with them.
ARCURI: Oh, I started pull-starting that engine the second we got the news. For those first few weeks, I just needed her to laugh. And I didn't realize this, but that was more for me than it was for her. And the jokes she makes - like, we - I - this is maybe not as funny to you guys, but we were on a cruise recently with my parents. And my dad called my wife - called Katie an angel. And he - she just goes, don't call me that. I ain't dead yet, Steve.
MARTÍNEZ: (Laughter) Gee.
ARCURI: And the look on both my parents' faces is like, you can't say that. And I'm like, you can, though. That's, like, why I love her, is that she's not going to hide from it. And we make fun of it now. We took the power back from cancer, and now we make fun of it. And that was huge.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.
ARCURI: But for a while, I was trying too hard. And I realized I need to not do that, you know?
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. Yeah. I really think that the special being called "Nice To Meet You" is perfect because it truly feels like when you are dealing with people in these situations - that you really, really are happy to meet them. I mean, is - do you think you'll always be that way, comedy-wise?
ARCURI: I truly hope so. I love doing what I do. I love performing for people. I love changing people's evenings. I love the messages I get from people saying, like, you know, you got me through things, or your comedy - or, like, we look forward to this every year, coming to see you. Like, those things will never go away from me. I don't see it could ever. I've been doing this 15 years, and I've been - lived in basements. I've slept next to rats. And I was happy to do it because I got comedy at the end of the day, you know?
MARTÍNEZ: Jeff Arcuri's Netflix comedy special is called "Nice to Meet You." Jeff - nice to meet you, Jeff.
ARCURI: Yeah. Thank you. It was great talking to you.
(SOUNDBITE OF PALACE SONG, "KID") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
