Comedic Timing/Pacing

The All American Girl Margaret Cho couldve greatily improved her performance we had watchen in class would she have limited the pauses in her routine. When I think about the comediens that the class responded well to, Bill Burr and Chris Rock for example, those comediens have a well timed pacing within their acts that keep the laughs coming. There is a steady flow of aggressiveness or anger throughout their routine that the audience connected to. What an audience doesn't want is what Cho did, tell a joke, take about four seconds to recollect her thoughts, and then continue. But waiting can just kill a routine, especially, if memory serves me right, Cho didn't make any "returns" to previous jokes. So not only did the flow of the routine get interrupted by her incessant pausing, there were no return jokes that connected her routine together.
Now compare that to Wanday Sykes performance. Already familiar with Sykes, I knew I would enjoy her performance. She doesn't pause between every single joke, and does a great job at keeping a joke going if it is met with a good response from the audience. For Example, she tells a joke about police officers checking her breasts for finger prints. The audience laughs at the absurdity of having her breasts checked for finger prints, and Sykes keeps the laughs coming.

"I got to be honest, I started to like it" - audience laughs

"My next appointment is on Tuesday. I've been going there since '86" - audience dying from laughter

So she keeps the joke going by adding additional lines to the joke, about beggining to like the absurd procedure, and later revealing that she has been doing it for years!

Pausing in a routine is necessary when an audience is laughing so loud during a routine, or to establish that a grouping of jokes has ended so as to prepare the audience for a new set of jokes/story lines. When used randomly however, the audience, as was the case with our class, lost attention/interest in what Cho was talking about. I can remember her impression of her mother, and the steve "THE gay" that called for Cho, but I dont remember there being jokes that piggy-backed off of the original. Pacing and timing are everything in comedy, something I assume Cho perfected as she is still working today, and has appeared in films, even action films like Face/Off. But when comparing Sykes performance to Cho's it is obvious that Sykes' timing throughout her routine led to a better response from her audience.