How can I warm up a crowd?

There is a book called “Games Trainers Play” that has a bunch of great warm ups in it. If you will be doing this often you might want to invest in it.

Jokes are a good way, though probably best to stay away from ones that are offensive (yeah, I know those are the best ones) and it may help if it’s somewhat relevant to the event or even something that “happened” on your way to the event or something the event “reminds” you of.

If all else fails, flamethrower (sorry, I just had to say it).

Conan O’Brien used to come out and sing Elvis Presley’s Burning Love before his show. It was pretty awesome. Not at all related to the show he was about to do, but put everyone in exactly the right mood.

You can get a bag of inexpensive silly prizes (like a can of Campbell’s soup, or a roll of scotch tape, or a spatula, new, unused items that are useful, but kind of ridiculous and unexpected as prizes) then ask the audience random Questions, that are either good old fashioned grade school questions, or questions that might have a silly answer.

They do this at one of the local community theaters that I go to and it’s a hoot. Do little monologues in between that lead up the question. Make up stuff, like, “My Uncle Randall was the worst fisherman in the world, he was from Maine and we used to spend a week every summer up at Aunt Jane’s and Uncle Randall’s house. Inevitably, we would go down to the pond on their property, supposedly to fish for something to eat for our supper. Inevitably we would go home with a old tire, or a rusty paint can, and even one time he fished out what appeared to be an extremely large woman’s, well I’m guessing it was a woman’s, girdle. Still trying to imagine under what set of circumstances that ended up in there! Anyway, we always drug something home, but never any fish. Thankfully Aunt Jane was a really good cook and a pretty good sport, well not really the one time Uncle Randall brought home the girdle, but you know what I mean. And speaking of Maine, does anyone know what the official state (food, bird, flower, etc.) of Maine is?

So you just present some funny rambling anecdotes while you’re leading up to your Questions, then you hand out the silly prizes.

You could say stupid shit like, “It’s my job to warm you up, and I didn’t know how to do it, so I thought I’d try a few different techniques to see what works best. In between, I’ll have the experts cool you down. So, without further ado…” you must always avoid ado “Here’s my first warmup technique… [set off explosions that start fires] ... and here are my boys. Come on in boys!”

Enter the fire department.

If that’s too much, you could always try space heaters.

Start by telling everyone to shake hands with the person sitting behind them. They all turn around, see everyone else’s backs and immediately feel stupid but think its just hilarious. You’ve broken their egos AND made them laugh. 2 for 1 in the first 5 seconds.

Definitely look at talk shows like Ellen or late night shows, share a bit of yourself with the crowd.