The best way to find out what material does and does not work is through trial and error. Here I am testing material at an open mic night for both Spoken Word Poetry and Stand-Up comedy. This footage is the first public performance of any of my material.
A friend of mine kindly filmed the performance so that I could watch it back and critique it. It is interesting to note the difference in audience when performing. My friends who attended are a similar age to myself and all have the same occupation while the rest of the audience were a mixture of ages and occupations. It is interesting to consider, when watching the video back and during the performance, the differences in responses between the different sections of the audience. As the video shows, some material was found to be funny by all the demographics and some was found to be funny by certain sections of the audience.
Some of the material did not work, either at all or as well as it should have, it is important to remember when watching the footage back that it is my responsibility to communicate the material. There is a huge difference between material not working because of its structure or content and not working because of the delivery or performance these two distinctions do cause the same result: no laughter. It is an important thing to remember when analyzing a performance because a joke may not need to be removed or restructured but may need to have the delivery changed, that is tone, inflection and posture. The best way to improve is to practice.