Fitzkee's taxonomy of eleven audience types provides a systematic approach to adapting your performance to any crowd. From children to intellectuals to drinking audiences, each type demands a different strategy -- and understanding the differences is the foundation of audience management.
Read MoreA single spectator is the hardest audience because there is no crowd psychology, no social permission to react, and no one to hide behind. Every reaction must be genuine -- and that changes everything about how you perform.
Read MoreFitzkee's 1943 advice about women-only audiences is partially dated but partially timeless. Separating the obsolete from the universal teaches important lessons about audience assumptions -- our own included.
Read MoreFitzkee's advice for drunk audiences is brutally practical: work harder, work faster, talk louder. The subtlety of your best material is wasted when the audience's cognitive capacity is impaired. Here is what I learned from performing at Austrian corporate events where the wine had been flowing for hours.
Read MoreFitzkee classifies audiences by intelligence level -- immature, mature, cultured -- and prescribes different approaches for each. The framework sounds elitist but is remarkably practical. It changed how I prepare for every corporate event in Austria.
Read MoreWhen an audience doesn't respond, the problem is never the audience. Fitzkee is unsparing: if your material doesn't land, it's your material that needs to change, not your audience. A lesson I learned the hard way at a corporate event in Salzburg.
Read MoreFitzkee's distinction between amusement (passive, forgettable) and entertainment (active, meaningful) is the difference between a performer who fills time and one who creates experience. It changed how I think about every minute I spend on stage.
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