I have been thinking about my shows and have been reviewing them. I realized I might have an issue with my show, and that is my materials is a little too localized.

That means, about 50% of my jokes and punchlines are understood by the locals while the rest are pretty much "understood by normal people".

The problem comes when I was doing a gig for an international bank and almost 80% of the audience are foreigners. Obviously half the time they don't understand my jokes. That really kills.

I was thinking, perhaps I should extend my "non-localized" materials so that they can replace my "localized" materials in the event that the audience are non-locals.

Then, when I watch some of the ventriloquists on YouTube, there are quite a number of ventriloquists (famous ones) having a lot of localized jokes.

I feel that localized jokes is one of the easiest to hit off with the crowd, but the problem is that it doesn't hit well with non-locals.

What do you think? Do you think I should expand my materials further? How about your material? Is it very localized?

Of course, you should always expand your materials to cover all possible types of audience you may and want to face.

I have different sets of materials. I have a "universal" material that I have been using if there are a lot of foreigners in my audience. With a few tweakings, this type of material go well with whatever audience I have. I also have a lot of "localized" bits that I mix with my universal material if needed. And I constantly write new jokes based on current happenings and news to make my show fresh and relevant.

Because of my close proximity the the United States, I have become aware that some of my more "Canadian" material doesn't work in all parts of the states. I think you can be too localized, but for a local audience the more familiar things become like an "In joke".

I do try to keep things pretty general. I do like to customize for company events when they give me inside information

Knowing your audience is very important.

Use material that your audience can relate to. Change your material when you are in a new area to relate to that area. A great example of this is Jeff Dunham's joke with Peanut, "We're in Hell!" He can easily substitute the town's name, weather it's hot or cold there, etc. and the joke still works.

Always ask about your audience when booking the show, too.

I have noticed in SoCal I will occasionally get booked for a gig where the "audience is bi-lingual" I've learned that doesn't always mean they speak 2 languages...it can mean that half speak English and the other half speak only Spanish. That is an important difference, especially since I don't speak Spanish. I actually changed a routine part-way through a corporate party once when I realized over half the audience couldn't understand English and I went with some more physical humor using audience members onstage & improvised a lot and it went great!

I encounter Spanish speaking audiences occasionally here in San Antonio. My act is always has a lot of puppet physical comedy in it, so it gets past the language barrier to some extent. Usually most of the kids speak English and Spanish, but some of the grown-ups are Spanish speaking only.

Because of the type of shows I do, my material is typically related more to a specific storyline or theme, and isn't really regional.