Rory Scovel Crowd Works The Apollo on Conan

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Rory Scovel’s Wednesday night appearance on Conan was a lesson in crowd work. There was obviously no way that Rory was able to run his set by Conan O’Brien’s producers or the TBS reps because it was a totally unique and unpredictable piece of comedy which wouldn’t be the same again no matter how many times he rehearsed it. At right around 8 minutes, Rory Scovel received more time than most late night stand up guests get when performing for a television audience and he worked every bit of it.

He admitted to some jitters, but that wasn’t from taking the hallowed stage at the iconic Apollo Theater during Conan’s week of shows being taped in Harlem. The nerves were due to the upcoming Presidential election which feels like it will never get here.

It was while talking about Trump versus Hillary that Rory decided to leave the legendary Apollo stage and head into the audience. Literally. He pushed his way down rows of the theater where there was no room and invaded audience members’ personal space. There were plenty of jokes with the crowd work, along with times where he screamed at the audience to “shut up”, mocked and pointed out individuals he was standing crotch to face with and at one point, actually stood on the armrests between the seats.

Being completely topical, Rory Scovel talked about Presidential inspiration, the Trump – Clinton debates, the frightening proposition of having ideas in common with Donald Trump and how we’ll all die together if the reality star businessman gets into the White House. Standing in the middle of the Apollo, Rory finished his set discussing President Obama’s citizenship, mayors smoking crack (okay, only one mayor, Marion Barry), and the irony of being at the Apollo this close to Election Day. You can watch the entire performance below.

Rory Scovel did offered some wise parting words to Conan’s audience, both in-house and across the country- “Do the right thing on Tuesday”.

You can see Rory Scovel as Principal Geoffrey Quinn in all new episodes of the truTV comedy series, “Those Who Can’t” starting on Thursday, November 19th and watch for his upcoming stand up comedy special, produced by Jack White due out some time next year.

Ernie Tripper

Ernie Tripper