Giving back and getting back – things I’ve learned doing comedy at a drug rehab center.

One of the most satisfying things about being a comedian is entertaining at charity events and fundraisers to help a good cause. While these are often high-end affairs, and the audiences are very well off, there is another show I do, that in some ways is even more satisfying.

For the last 4-5 years, approximately once or twice a month, I lug my microphone and sound equipment to entertain at a drug rehab center. This is not the Lindsay Lohan - Paris Hilton celebrity type center. This is a bare bones facility for those that have slipped through the cracks. Not a place for the faint of heart.

Just to give an example, I once saw a guy standing across the street in the middle of winter, working up his nerve for over an hour, trying to decide whether it was going to be worse sleeping out in the cold for another night, or entering, and having to get clean and sober.

For those inside, the staff is incredible. They are professional, patient, respectful, caring, and extremely down to earth, in very difficult circumstances. And they always greet me warmly, and frequently tell me how much their patients have asked about me and appreciated my jokes.

I remember the first time I performed there, I wasn’t sure how to start, because I knew that sugarcoated comedy was not going to cut it. They also don't want anybody preaching to them. Recently, at one of my shows, someone revealed they had just gotten out of prison. When I asked if anyone else had ever been incarcerated, nearly everyone raised their hand. So, for my first show there, I was quite perplexed.

As a veteran comedian, I’ve learned to adjust my act for each situation. When I entertain at corporate events, I am clean, politically correct, and I know the rules of engagement. When I entertain at nightclubs, the boundaries are looser, while country clubs, commerce chambers, and other civic organizations, are somewhere in between. But there is always a key that unlocks an audience.

Some groups surprise you. The most extreme example was the night I entertained an audience that consisted of the parents of murdered children. That’s right – the parents of murdered children. I honestly couldn’t imagine them laughing at anything and wondered if it was okay to do jokes about my own kid. I worried that the mere mention of any child, would simply remind them of their own horrific loss. But the second the show started, they were terrific. The laughter was their therapy and a way to help them cope with the unthinkable.

My experience has taught me that the best way to connect to any crowd is to do material specifically about them. So for example, whenever I perform at a firehouse, I open with a joke about how “I got lost looking for the place, because my GPS took me to the town but not to the actual station. So, I set fire to a building and followed the trucks right back in.” When I entertain at fundraisers, I often open with a line about having done an Alzheimer’s fundraiser recently, but, “for some reason, I never got a thank you note.”

Still, my first show at the rehab, I initially wondered what I was getting into, when several of the clients refused to make eye contact, while a few others simply rested their heads on the table and tried to go to sleep. And, as I came to learn later, for some, it was not the first time through.

So, now I often open by saying that, “I see a lot of new faces here tonight, but I also see a few familiar faces, so it’s nice to know, that some of you liked my show so much last time, you decided to come back and see it again.”  I usually follow that with, “I know you're in a rough spot and you don’t want to be here right now, but I hope you can appreciate it isn’t easy for me to be here today either, because I just came from the bank, so I've got a wallet full of cash, and I'm in a room-full of drug addicts, so how great do you think I feel?”

At this point, I've usually gotten them beginning to laugh, or at the very least, picking their heads up off the table, and the rest of my set goes from there. We talk about everything; drugs, politics, family, relationships - you name it. 

Sometimes, it’s like a hilarious therapy session, not only for them, but for me, as well, as I talk about stuff in the world that I find absurd or frustrating.

When I get done and I’m packing up my equipment, I feel a change in the room. Faces that were stone cold and silent in the beginning are now joking and laughing. Most come up to me and shake my hand, thanking me for the entertainment.  

As I leave, I feel pretty good, knowing that for a little while at least, I was able to help take them away from their cares and worries and temporarily lighten their load.

Harry Freedman has performed customized corporate comedy Put-ons and emceed for hundreds of Fortune 1000 companies. He also does stand-up comedy, personalized toasts and roasts, and creates hilarious biographical tribute videos for landmark birthdays, honorariums, weddings and bar/bat mitzvahs.