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Cole prioritizes written material and personal storytelling over crowd work, believing audiences should get to know comedians as individuals rather than hearing disconnected jokes.<\/p>\n
(C\u00e9cile Boko)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n
How has your preparation changed over the years of you doing stand up compared with <\/b>when you started?<\/b><\/p>\n
I\u2019m more confident. You know, back in the day, it might be a 30-60 chance that the joke will work: 30 meaning it will work, 60 that it won\u2019t. And now I\u2019m at a point where I can think of something, and there\u2019s an 85% chance that it will work, there\u2019s a 15% chance that it won\u2019t. So my preparation, as far as thinking of something and then going to execute it, being able to execute it, is another difference. Back in the day I would have to ask for stage time. Now I can think of something and just go to a club and go right up.<\/p>\n
What does improving your craft look like at this point in your career?<\/b><\/p>\n
Just being more confident in my choice of what is funny and what\u2019s not. I can hear something now and go, that\u2019s funny, and then go, do it, and it becomes funny. So it\u2019s just having confidence to do that and not question myself as much. That\u2019s basically the difference, to be honest with you. Other than that, my drive, my thought pattern, everything is still the same. It\u2019s heightened to the point where I\u2019m paying attention more because I have a lot more free time to to pay attention. It gets to a point where you can pay a lot of people to do a lot of stuff for you, and the more time you got free, the more time you got to think about other things. So I try to pay everybody to do everything so I can go create. And so it\u2019s been good to be in that space, to not worry about a lot of stuff and stay creative. When a lot of people that\u2019s been doing it this long can\u2019t and to still be relevant after all this time, and still be funny and still pack out shows\u2026 that means a lot to me.<\/p>\n
How do you incorporate crowd work into your shows then? <\/b><\/p>\n
If something happens while I\u2019m doing my stuff, then fine but I\u2019m not going to create a crowd work environment. If it happens, it happens, but I\u2019m not going to purposely create it. And I mean to each his own that do it. And there\u2019s some people who are very funny at it, and there\u2019s some people that\u2019s like, what are you doing? And for a lot of audience members, I feel like they\u2019re being tricked a lot of times, because a lot of comedians, and I ain\u2019t going to say a lot of comedians, but a few. Not every comic that does crowd work does this. There\u2019s some great crowd work comedians that I really love and admire and respect. But there are some comedians that get up there and they\u2019re doing a meet and greet. It\u2019s downstage, \u201cHey, what\u2019s your name?,\u201d \u201cWhat do you do for a living?,\u201d \u201cHey, so how many kids do you got?,\u201d \u201cSo, hey, where do you where you work at?,\u201d \u201cOh, who are you?\u201d Do that at the meet and greet. What are you standing up here for 45 minutes, getting to know everybody for? Where\u2019s your jokes at? If people like it, you know, what can you do about it? But I\u2019m old school with the craft. I like written comedy. I like storytelling. I like hearing something I never heard before. I like that. That\u2019s just my preference. I don\u2019t like sitting in the audience laughing at somebody\u2019s name or what they do for a living, or who they with. My brain ain\u2019t learning that way.<\/p>\n
Do you think that sense of audience participation is coming from people watching social media clips?<\/b><\/p>\n
I mean people love it, and it\u2019s a younger audience that I think they really love it. Even though older people love it, don\u2019t get me wrong. But the majority, I think, it\u2019s a younger audience. And granted, there\u2019s an audience for that. It really is and have at it. I think everybody should go out there, get their money, do what they do. My personal preference, which I am entitled to have, I think that it\u2019s all about balance, like it is with everything in life. I don\u2019t think you should eat candy all day. I think you should eat some vegetables. I don\u2019t think you should eat vegetables all day. I think you should eat some protein. It\u2019s all about balance. You can give me crowd work, but let\u2019s hear about you. Who are you? What happened to you today? That\u2019s what\u2019s funny. How do you feel about this and that? Can I get that? And then you can go back to your crowd work. But if people keep going up to these shows and they like all the crowd work, and that\u2019s it, me personally, I think you\u2019re not getting your money\u2019s worth when you leave there and you don\u2019t even know if the comic was married, [have] kids, if they\u2019re happy, sad. You just leave there going, \u201cdid you hear what he said about the girl in the fourth row?\u201d \u201cOh, that was hilarious.\u201d \u201cDid you see the guy in the back with the toupe on?\u201d \u201cThat was funny.\u201d And it\u2019s like, OK, well, who said that? Who\u2019s the guy that said it? What about him? Do we know anything about him? Is he a racist? Is he a revolutionary? Who said this? Let me know who said this. I\u2019m not just going to laugh at that.<\/p>\n
Why do you think it\u2019s important for a comic to reveal parts of themselves on stage?<\/b><\/p>\n
That\u2019s what the greats have done. Greats are that way. They have been that way. You get caught up into who these people are. It\u2019s good to hear that. A lot of great comics got sitcoms. Why? Because you can listen to their jokes and see the show, and then they go create the show off of what they were talking about. You can see this. So when you have a comic, it\u2019s a lot of comics that go on stage and they tell jokes, and then they leave, and then you go, who was that person? You can\u2019t even remember the comic\u2019s name. You know what I mean? I just think that you should let people know who you are, because that\u2019s what makes you unique. Can\u2019t just go up and tell joke after joke after joke. Anybody could tell jokes, [but it\u2019s] who\u2019s telling the joke that makes it great.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Deon Cole will tell anyone plainly: Not every comic wants to talk about their audience members. The longtime stand-up comedian will do some crowd work if he must. But he would much rather tell you the jokes he wrote. It\u2019s the nature of a changing audience that is now more likely to stumble upon comedians […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2395877,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2395876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/After-years-in-comedy-Deon-Cole-still-likes-who-he.com2F6a2F232F1d474626484686a287a29949.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2395876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2395876"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2395876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2395878,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2395876\/revisions\/2395878"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2395877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2395876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2395876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2395876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}