I was watching a performer close his show at a corporate event in Vienna — a good show, actually, funny and well-paced, strong effects throughout — and then he said it. The thing every performer says. The thing that instantly turns a living, breathing moment into a greeting card.
“You’ve been a great crowd. Thank you so much. Give yourselves a round of applause.”
The audience obliged. They clapped. They smiled. They started gathering their things. And the moment was over. Not with a bang, not with a lasting impression, but with the verbal equivalent of an automated email sign-off. “Best regards.” “Kind regards.” “Warm regards.” Pick your favorite meaningless warm word and attach it to “regards.” That is what “you’ve been a great crowd” has become.
The show was good. The ending was nothing.
I noticed it because I had been saying almost exactly the same thing. For months. At every performance. I would finish my final piece, bask in the reaction for a second or two, and then default to the script that every performer seems to have installed at the factory: “Thank you so much, you’ve been wonderful, good night.” As if there were a universal firmware update that loads those words into your mouth the moment you take your final bow.
The Hollow Closing Inventory
Ken Weber, in Maximum Entertainment, calls “you’ve been a great crowd” a vastly overused cliche, and he is being generous. It is not just overused. It is meaningless. The phrase contains no specific information, no genuine emotion, and no connection to anything that actually happened during the performance. It could be said to any audience, anywhere, after any show. And that is exactly the problem. If a closing line applies equally to every audience you will ever face, it means nothing to any of them.
But it is not the only offender. There is an entire catalog of hollow closings that performers reach for, and they are all doing the same damage.
“Thank you, you’ve been wonderful.” Have they? In what way? What specifically was wonderful about them? You do not know, because you are not actually commenting on them. You are just filling the gap between your last effect and walking off stage.
“Give yourselves a round of applause.” This one has always puzzled me. The audience just watched your show. They clapped at the end because that is what audiences do. And now you are asking them to clap for themselves? For what? For sitting in chairs and watching? It is a strange request when you think about it, and most audiences comply out of politeness rather than enthusiasm. The energy in the room drops, not rises, because the audience can feel the artificiality of it.
“I hope you enjoyed the show.” Hope? You hope? You just performed for thirty or forty-five minutes. You read the room. You heard the laughter, felt the silence during the builds, saw the reactions to the reveals. Either they enjoyed it or they did not. “I hope you enjoyed” is a hedge, a verbal shrug, a way of avoiding the vulnerability of a genuine closing moment.
“You’ve been a great audience.” Marginally better than “great crowd,” because at least you upgraded from “crowd” to “audience.” But it is still generic. Still interchangeable. Still the kind of thing a performer says when they have not thought about what they actually want to say.
Scott Alexander writes about the importance of ending on what he calls a “warm fuzzy note” — something genuine that sends the audience out of the room feeling good, not just about the show but about the moment they just shared. The key word there is genuine. Not generic. Genuine.
Why We Default to Generic
I have thought about this more than is probably healthy, and I think the reason performers default to hollow closings is the same reason people default to “fine” when asked how they are doing. It is safe. It is expected. It requires no vulnerability and no risk.
The end of a show is actually one of the most emotionally exposed moments for a performer. The adrenaline is still running. The last effect just landed — or maybe it did not land as well as you wanted. The audience is looking at you, waiting for you to release them, and you have about five seconds to say something before the moment passes. In that window of exposure, the easiest thing in the world is to reach for a prefabricated phrase that you have heard a thousand other performers use. It is comfortable. It sounds professional. And it costs you nothing.
Except it costs you the ending. Which, as anyone in storytelling will tell you, is the thing people remember most. The primacy effect means they remember your opening. The recency effect means they remember your close. And if your close is “you’ve been a great crowd,” the last thing they remember is a cliche that a hundred other performers have said to a hundred other audiences on a hundred other nights.
What I Tried
My first attempt at a genuine closing was terrible. I tried to reference something specific that had happened during the show, but I was so focused on remembering the details that I stumbled over the words and the moment felt forced rather than natural. The audience clapped politely, but I knew — and they knew — that I was reaching for something I had not yet earned.
So I went back to the drawing board. Not with the goal of improvising a perfect close, but with the goal of building a closing framework that I could fill with genuine content on the night.
The framework I settled on has three parts. First, I reference something specific that happened during the show. Not a trick or an effect — a moment. A laugh that caught me off guard. A volunteer who said something unexpected. A reaction from the room that changed the energy. Something human, something real, something that only happened because these specific people were in this specific room.
Second, I connect that moment to something bigger. Not a grand philosophical statement — something simple and true about what makes these kinds of evenings matter. What it means to share an experience with strangers. What happens when a room full of people agrees, for a while, to be surprised together.
Third, I thank them. Not with “you’ve been a great crowd.” With something that tells them what I actually appreciated about being in the room with them. Their willingness to play along. Their laughter. Their attention during the quiet moments. Something specific that I noticed about them as an audience, not a generic compliment that applies to everyone.
The Night It Clicked
I was performing at a technology company’s year-end celebration in Graz. About a hundred and twenty people. The show had gone well — good energy, good laughs, a couple of strong reactions that you live for as a performer. During one of the pieces, a volunteer had said something genuinely funny — unprompted, spontaneous, better than anything I could have scripted — and the room had erupted.
When I got to the end, instead of “you’ve been a great crowd,” I said something close to this: “When Thomas came up here and said that thing about his manager — you know the line, I am not going to repeat it because HR is in the room — that was the moment I stopped performing and started having the best evening of my month. Thank you for being the kind of room where someone feels comfortable enough to say something that funny. That does not happen everywhere. It happened here. Thank you.”
The response was different from anything I had experienced before. People did not just clap. They laughed. Some of them pointed at Thomas. Thomas took a little bow at his table. The room felt warm in a way that “you’ve been a great crowd” has never once achieved in the history of performance.
It was specific. It was real. It could only have been said in that room, on that night. And it cost me nothing except the willingness to pay attention during my own show instead of retreating into autopilot for the final thirty seconds.
The Preparation Behind the Spontaneity
Here is the thing about genuine closings that most performers miss: they require preparation. Not scripting in the traditional sense — you cannot script something specific that has not happened yet. But you can prepare the framework. You can rehearse the structure of a genuine close so that when the moment comes, you are ready to fill it.
I now go into every performance with my antennae up for what I think of as “closing material.” I am watching for the moment — the human moment, the unscripted moment, the moment that belongs to the audience rather than to me — that I can reference at the end. I am listening for the laugh line that was not in my script. I am noting the volunteer’s name and the funny thing they said. I am paying attention to the room’s character — whether they are rowdy or reserved, corporate or casual, quiet listeners or loud reactors.
This requires a kind of dual awareness that I did not have when I started performing. You have to be in the show and above the show simultaneously. Performing the material while also observing the experience. It is hard. But it gets easier with practice, the way everything gets easier with practice.
And the payoff is a closing that does something a cliche never can. It tells the audience: I was here. I was present. I noticed you. This evening was not something I did to you. It was something we did together. And I remember it.
The Rule I Follow Now
My rule is simple. If the closing line I am about to say could be said by any performer to any audience after any show, I do not say it. I wait. I think. I find something specific. Even if it means an extra beat of silence. Even if it means the closing is slightly less smooth than a rehearsed cliche.
A slightly awkward genuine moment is worth more than a perfectly smooth generic one. Every time.
“You’ve been a great crowd” is a lie. Not because the crowd was not great. Maybe they were. But because the sentence does not actually say anything. It is verbal wallpaper. It fills space without adding substance. And the audience, whether they can articulate it or not, can feel the difference between a performer who is saying goodbye and a performer who is sharing a real moment.
Say something real. Say something that could only be said tonight, to these people, in this room. It will not be perfect. It will be better.