Stage fright is normal. So is the heckler.

Give your body one steady thing, then find your breath.

Look at one face, or one part of the room — not “the crowd.”

Your opener, a transition, your closer. It’s why the book says to “Know one closer that can start quickly.”

One quiet moment is only a moment. Say it once if it’s funny, then move: “do not make the failure the new topic unless you can genuinely make it funny.”

The Boston comic, now a counselor, brings himself back to the present by asking himself where his feet are, with a slow count of four breathing in and four breathing out. Anxiety lives in the future, he says, and depression in the past; now is where your feet are.

“the future is anxiety, the past is depression.”

Starting out in Las Vegas, he peeked through the curtain every night to find the trouble tables. One night his music started before he’d looked, and he decided that whatever happened, he would handle it — and stopped scouting.

“And I thought to myself, well, I'll handle it. Whatever happens, I'll handle it.”

He thought he was a joke writer until he found out he wasn’t. What mattered more was being comfortable on stage — looking like he knew what he was doing — and then the jokes came.

“being comfortable on stage was more paramount than writing jokes so i learned how to just be on stage and look like i know what i'm doing”

His brother’s rule: don’t be afraid of silence. If they’re listening, they’ll laugh when you get there.

“If they're listening, then they'll laugh when you hit it.”

The Houston club owner who took him on at 17 taught him eye contact: don’t be afraid of it, because it brings the audience closer — and keep moving it around the room.

“Well, the eye contact thing is like, you know, you bring the audience closer. Like, you just don't be afraid of eye contact.”

She doesn’t write set lists: she knows her opener and her closer and does the rest as it comes, to stay in the moment. A set list on a teleprompter, she says, made a taping feel like a pageant.

“I don't like to write set lists. I just want to be in the moment.”

Mid-set in South Carolina, weaving crowd work and fully in the moment, she stopped and told the room she was good at this — after years of fearing that anything good would be taken away.

“I stopped and I said, I'm good at this.”

“Use a short boundary or response, then move on when possible.” “A quick boundary can be enough,” and “If a sharp line ends the exchange, end it.”

Pick up where you were. “Do not give one disruptive person more stage time than the paying audience.”

“Humiliating someone far beyond what the interruption requires can turn the room against you.” The book’s rule: “Win the room back; do not win an argument at the expense of the show.”

“Persistent disruption, threats, or unsafe behavior belongs with venue management and security.” A look to the back, or ask for help over the mic. “The comic does not need to personally remove anyone.”

At his first nightclub booking, in Houston, a drunk woman in the front row kept calling his routines garbage — while his debut album was being recorded, and that night’s tape was thrown out. His rule since: with a drunk heckler you get maybe two lines before the room’s sympathy flips to them.

“with a woman drunk, you can do maybe two lines, and then you better stop, because the sympathy immediately shifts to her.”

When his days were spent with a very difficult child at a special-needs school, he made himself ignore hecklers at night: he knew he’d unload the whole day on someone who just wanted to join in. The times he has let one have it, he has mostly regretted.

“if anyone heckled me, I had to not respond.”

When she wants to go after someone talking or on a phone, she tells herself she isn’t seeing it, and looks just above them. Nobody else knows.

“Just don't look that way. And no one knows it, so just kind of look above them.”

In the rooms where he learned, a strong host worked the crowd so hard that nobody messed with the comics who followed. When you host, protecting the comics is part of the job.

“When you have a strong host that sets that tone and sets that precedence, like a Robin Harris”

Hosting at the Comedy Cellar, he does only a little crowd work at the top and makes sure to do real material — if the crowd decides the show is a conversation, it turns into a heckling free-for-all for every comic after him.

“It becomes a heckle fest. It's not fair to the comics behind you.”

He walked into a club to find a drunk holiday party of fifty — half the crowd — and one of them already on stage with the mic. He asked the staff to deal with it before the show; they said they wouldn’t. Facing a table that could beat him up, he couldn’t push back hard, and fought his way through the set.

“went back to my hotel room and realized I wasn't even halfway done the week and started crying.”

Two weeks after Ferguson, in St. Louis, a half-built bit about policing got shut down by the crowd — the heckle was at the idea, not at him. He changed topics, and spent years fixing the bit offstage rather than arguing with the room.

“Like when someone heckles your ideology, I don't know what to do with that.”

At a $50, fifteen-minute spot where her material didn’t fit, the crowd heckled and she didn’t know how to handle it — but she stayed the whole fifteen. The booker paid her anyway and told her to keep at it.

“but I stayed up there the whole 15 minutes because I wanted my money, right?”

Opening a show in San Francisco, a man heckled strangely, off the mark; when he was answered he ran up the wrong stairs into the restaurant’s kitchen, and the people with him quietly left. Not every heckler is a drunk jerk — look before you swing.

“And this guy was like kind of heckling. But it was like off the mark.”

Stop talking, step back from the edge of the stage, and ask for the staff over the mic. The mic is the loudest thing in the room; the room will look where you look.

“The comic does not need to personally remove anyone.” Don’t touch anyone, don’t go after anyone, and don’t follow them outside.

Tell the manager what happened, and write down the time, who, and what was said — “Document serious issues factually.” If you were threatened or hurt, call the police.

Ask the door person or another comic to walk out with you, keys in hand before the door. For the rest, see On the Road → Alone out there.

Long ago, at the Laugh Factory, a very drunk man pulled a gun on her while she was on stage. The staff converged on him and got him out. She says she always felt safest on stage — because of all the witnesses.

“Well, a guy did pull a gun out on me one time on stage.”

At a college show a kid rushed the stage with a bottle and, when Saget wouldn’t drink from it, smashed it down. In that moment, he says, it stopped mattering who had paid for a ticket: all he cared about was security.

“So all I care about is security at that point.”

In Las Vegas a man drifted up to the lip of the stage a minute into her set; security only walked him back to his seat, until she insisted he leave the theater. Months later she learned he had posted a threat naming her. When the casino wouldn’t add metal detectors, she hired her own security.

“I will have to hire my own security.”

For a year she got messages, some threatening her at the places she’d be performing. For a while she went up at the Comedy Cellar under another name.

“At the cellar, I was going up under a pseudonym just in case.”

At 18, sharing comedy condos on the road with older headliners and whoever they brought back, she pushed the dresser against her door at night, and tried to get booked with other women.

“or I would try to put the dresser against the door so that nobody could get in.”

At a notoriously rough London club a chair came at him within thirty seconds. He won the room — and turned down the encore: he had beaten them, and wasn’t going to risk it twice.

“I beat them. I'm done. I'm never coming back. Why risk it?”