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BACK ISSUES INTERVIEWS Stand-Up Comedians Jim Norton Robert Kelly Donnell Rawlings Brad Stine Tammy Pescatelli Leighann Lord George Sarris Nick DiPaolo Russ Meneve Shang and more By Tasha Harris, NYC Comedy Journalist STAGE TIME The Magazine That Stands Up For Comedy |
How was your experience performing in the Middle East?
It was amazing but I’ll never do it again. We were there for a month and moving around from
country to country in that heat. It’s not an easy thing to do. It was one of the most rewarding
experiences because these men and women really need a show. It’s not like people hanging
around, “Hey, let’s go to a comedy club.” These people need a diversion; they need the laughter.
They were the most appreciative audience I have ever performed in front of.
Even the conditions for performing were crazy because you couldn’t perform during the day.
It’s 110 degrees. We’re performing after the sun goes down…usually outdoors. We’re outdoors
at night during a sandstorm. It’s windy and there’s sand, so you never felt clean. And we were
treated special. We were allowed to have showers everyday.
What was disturbing was how young they are. You know they tell you to go to the military at 18
or 19 and that’s just a number but when you look at their faces, it’s like, “Does your mom know
you’re here?”
Overall, it was a wonderful experience but my family was furious. They asked a lot of comics to go
and most comics said no. I got the call and more women than men said yes. There were more
female comics on the show than male.
Who was on the show?
Peaches Rodriguez, Vanessa Hollingshead, Frank Vignola and Sean McClain.
What advice do you have for new comics?
Don’t do it. Do something else, anything other than stand up.
Why?
If it’s not in your blood and if you don’t love this, if there is possibly something else that would
inspire you more, then do that because stand up is incredibly demanding. It’s not an easy life…
Is it fun? Can I imagine myself doing anything else? Not really.
I was just talking to my agent and I said, “I want to get a TV show just so I get so popular that
when the TV show is not on, I can go back to doing stand up and more people will come to see
me.” Stand up is my first love but it’s difficult. With that said, if you’ve got that brain damage,
“Yeah, I want to do stand up” and you have to do it, then my advice would be watch as much
comedy as you can in the beginning–good and bad – because you’ll learn.
[It’s] good because it will show you how beautiful and effortless it can look in the hands of a
professional and where you want to be and bad because, even if it’s bad and they’re not funny
at all, they have the courage to get onstage. That’s to be admired because there are very funny
people who don’t have the courage to get onstage. The fact that someone unfunny can get
onstage, they got something you can learn from, even if it’s down to bad habits.
Across the board, whether they’re new comics or experienced comics, [they] have bad stage habits
and it’s good to watch them. “Oh, they play with the mic stand. I shouldn’t do that.” Or they drop
their head on a punch line so the audience doesn’t hear it.
The other thing I would say is that one is only a stand up if one does stand up. If you sit at home
and write, that’s wonderful. That makes you a writer; it doesn’t make you a stand up. The only way
to see what is working and to become seasoned and experienced is to get onstage in as many
places and as many ways as possible.
You have to write, write, and write. Do not steal. There’s never a good reason for you take anyone
else’s material or persona. Spend the time as painful as it is to figure out who you are onstage,
what you want to write about and what you want to talk about…Comedy is not music. You can sing
somebody else’s song but you can’t tell somebody else’s joke. I’m evil about that because I’ve
seen it.
Has that happened to you?
I’ve been told it happens on occasion but if you take the time to write and develop who you are,
no one can take that. They really can’t because it will seem weird coming out of somebody else’s
mouth. It just doesn’t fit. The other theory is that if you’re writing all the time, you’ll have new
material.
It was amazing but I’ll never do it again. We were there for a month and moving around from
country to country in that heat. It’s not an easy thing to do. It was one of the most rewarding
experiences because these men and women really need a show. It’s not like people hanging
around, “Hey, let’s go to a comedy club.” These people need a diversion; they need the laughter.
They were the most appreciative audience I have ever performed in front of.
Even the conditions for performing were crazy because you couldn’t perform during the day.
It’s 110 degrees. We’re performing after the sun goes down…usually outdoors. We’re outdoors
at night during a sandstorm. It’s windy and there’s sand, so you never felt clean. And we were
treated special. We were allowed to have showers everyday.
What was disturbing was how young they are. You know they tell you to go to the military at 18
or 19 and that’s just a number but when you look at their faces, it’s like, “Does your mom know
you’re here?”
Overall, it was a wonderful experience but my family was furious. They asked a lot of comics to go
and most comics said no. I got the call and more women than men said yes. There were more
female comics on the show than male.
Who was on the show?
Peaches Rodriguez, Vanessa Hollingshead, Frank Vignola and Sean McClain.
What advice do you have for new comics?
Don’t do it. Do something else, anything other than stand up.
Why?
If it’s not in your blood and if you don’t love this, if there is possibly something else that would
inspire you more, then do that because stand up is incredibly demanding. It’s not an easy life…
Is it fun? Can I imagine myself doing anything else? Not really.
I was just talking to my agent and I said, “I want to get a TV show just so I get so popular that
when the TV show is not on, I can go back to doing stand up and more people will come to see
me.” Stand up is my first love but it’s difficult. With that said, if you’ve got that brain damage,
“Yeah, I want to do stand up” and you have to do it, then my advice would be watch as much
comedy as you can in the beginning–good and bad – because you’ll learn.
[It’s] good because it will show you how beautiful and effortless it can look in the hands of a
professional and where you want to be and bad because, even if it’s bad and they’re not funny
at all, they have the courage to get onstage. That’s to be admired because there are very funny
people who don’t have the courage to get onstage. The fact that someone unfunny can get
onstage, they got something you can learn from, even if it’s down to bad habits.
Across the board, whether they’re new comics or experienced comics, [they] have bad stage habits
and it’s good to watch them. “Oh, they play with the mic stand. I shouldn’t do that.” Or they drop
their head on a punch line so the audience doesn’t hear it.
The other thing I would say is that one is only a stand up if one does stand up. If you sit at home
and write, that’s wonderful. That makes you a writer; it doesn’t make you a stand up. The only way
to see what is working and to become seasoned and experienced is to get onstage in as many
places and as many ways as possible.
You have to write, write, and write. Do not steal. There’s never a good reason for you take anyone
else’s material or persona. Spend the time as painful as it is to figure out who you are onstage,
what you want to write about and what you want to talk about…Comedy is not music. You can sing
somebody else’s song but you can’t tell somebody else’s joke. I’m evil about that because I’ve
seen it.
Has that happened to you?
I’ve been told it happens on occasion but if you take the time to write and develop who you are,
no one can take that. They really can’t because it will seem weird coming out of somebody else’s
mouth. It just doesn’t fit. The other theory is that if you’re writing all the time, you’ll have new
material.