You've Been a Wonderful Audience!

The subject of audience reminds me of speech and debate competitions last year. In an event called "duo," (a two-man skit in ten minutes) I was one of two mans in a duo pair. As a part of the humorous skit, I was supposed to say the line "I know that the real James Bond would have wanted his name to live on, embodied in the body of some other hot-blooded, muscular young ruffian." My partner and I would then stare at a predetermined and unsuspecting member of the audience in a creepy way. There was formulaic timing in this. We stared for 3-5 seconds. The audience caught on to what we were doing and chuckled. The chuckling subsided. We continued to stare for another few seconds. The uncomfortability of the fact that we were still staring creepily and earnestly led the audience to an even louder laugh. As it died, we would move forward with the piece.
It was fun, it was funny. Until that fateful morning. Our audience changed. We stood in our pressed suits in a small classroom, performing for about twenty attentive audience members. The time came, and I deliver my line: "hot-blooded, muscular young ruffian!" We stared at the specified person. Nothing happened. He stared back with a dazed unflinching look, as if to say "oh, the monkeys stopped talking! Interesting,..." An awful silence filled the room. Everyone stared at us. No one laughed. 5 seconds passed. My partner and I increased our creepy look from "hey there, I'm your facebook stalker!" to "Come here and let me eat your liver, child!" Nothing. 10 seconds.
AWKWARD!
We moved on quickly, trying not to laugh ourselves at how utterly ackward the situation was.
Clearly, audience is important. What one audience thinks is funny or worthwhile, another audience will observe with disinterest (or dyspepsia, I'm still not sure what the issue was that day.) Interestingly enough, individuals change their responses to a certain stimulus depending on the audience they are a part of. I have laughed at stupid movies like "Napolean Dynamite" with my friends in ways that I never would if I was with my parents or teachers. Doing so would undermine my competence and intelligence. But not laughing with friends would undermine my sense of fun in their eyes.
I would say that audience is just as important in how a message is delivered as the message itself. Feeding meat to babies is unwise, and so is feeding Gerber's Baby Food to adults. Trust me, my older brother spat it back all over me!
But really, the metaphor applies. We need to tailor our messages to the audiences consuming them. That's an important part of communication, as well as culinary work.