Robert's Eternal Goldfish at Stomping Ground Comedy Theater October 5 and 12

After touring my one-person show Robert’s Eternal Goldfish around North America the last few months, I am bringing my solo comedy home to Dallas for a limited engagement at the Stomping Ground Comedy Theater, 1350 Manufacturing St #109, Dallas, TX 75207. The show plays Friday, October 5, 2018 at 8 PM and Friday, October 12, 2015 at 8 PM.

The show concerns Mr. Robert J. Roberts, a man brimming with hate for “so many things” in the world. In particular, he really dislikes people. All people. One day he becomes the unlikely custodian of a magical goldfish and Robert’s misanthropic views are seriously challenged. Can a person be frustrated into being a better human being?

Over the last few months, Robert’s Eternal Goldfish was presented at the Minnesota Fringe Festival, the Nanaimo Fringe in British Columbia and the Elgin Fringe Festival in Illinois.

ROBERT’S ETERNAL GOLDFISH plays Fridays, October 5 and October 12, 2018. Both shows at 8:00 PM. At the Stomping Ground Comedy Theater, 1350 Manufacturing St #109, Dallas, TX 75207. Tickets are $10 and available at the door or online at: https://stompinggroundcomedy.org/calendar/roberts-eternal-goldfish-friday-oct-5/

#   #   #

Perhaps you would be interested in adding more excitement and romance, adventure and intrigue to your life. If that's the case, I don't know what to tell you. But I would suggest you subscribe to my newsletter. I mean, who knows? Life is full of surprises. I only send stuff out occassionally, but it is good stuff. Hit the button below...

Leave a comment. If you are a robot or a blatant marketer trolling Blogger, then you will be deleted. Humans only, please.

Comedy is Aggression

I remember seeing the movie WIRED when I was a kid. At the time I was a hard-core comedy nerd and had digested all the Marx Brothers, Buster Keaton, Chaplin, Danny Kaye, Robin Williams, Steve Martin, SNL and Kids In The Hall (which was really just starting here in America) I could find. I was just starting high school and I remember being bowled over by the sheer ferocity of Belushi. He was big and loud. He was an honest-to-god Wild Man! 

I remember thinking that that was what I wanted to be. But, you know, without the drugs and death. But as comedians we don't pick the form our comedy self comes in. Since the comedy stems from us, we just kind of grow into the kind of funny we become. From time to time, I open the lid on my id enough that my inner Belushi comes out. On occassion, I unleash the Wild Man. But it is not the place I live 24-7.

I do not know who the teacher is supposed to be in this clip (Del Close?), but I agree with the remarks. Comedy IS aggression. It is a penetrative kind of performance. I've also always kind of considered it, in its most powerful, most pure state, a touch with transcendence.

Think about what happens when you laugh. You head falls back, your mouth opens and you let out a laugh. You eyes water and then close. Your brain short-circuits, it stops and is stuck in that one sublime moment. Time stops. If it is a big enough laugh you can't breathe. You can't catch your breath. You gut hurts.You may even lose control of your bodily functions.

For a moment while you live, you die. That's transcendence.

Anyway, I love Belushi, the blessed monster!

My Six Titans of Comedy

In the January 2013 "Comedy Edition" of Vanity Fair, Judd Apatow has a photo of the six people who have most influenced his career in comedy. It is a good list he has. I was inspired to think about the same sort of thing for myself. Here's who would be in my pic as my Six Comedy Titans:

WILL FERRELL
Perhaps the most contemporary influence on my list. Ferrell is fearless and versitile and, well, big. He is a big guy and has figured out how to turn a lunk-headed oaf into someone audiences cheer for as much as the underdog misfit of smaller men ( a path not open to me at nealy six foot and well over 250 pounds).

The lines from his movies are infinitely quotable. Ferrell finds the funny and then leans on it. And he looks as though he is having such a good time while he is doing it, too.

GROUCHO MARX
...because this is what bottled chaos looks like. Groucho had the wonderful ability to ride on top of whatever situation he was seemingly entangled in. And talk about anti-authoritarian. The man could just tear down wall after wall of stuffiness and priviledge. Even better, he was often cast as an anti-authoritarian authority figure (great hunter, professor, dictator, etc.).And he could give as good as he got, especially on with his brothers Chico and Harpo. Best of all, he seemed to be operating on his own rules. He is an island of his own.

I particularly love his asides: stepping away from an interaction he wasn't even that invested in to begin with to rattle off a faux Eugene O'Neill heaviness filled with tangents and non-sequitars.

STEVE MARTIN
He deconstructed the whole concept of a comedy act. Martin also had a wonderful and subversive code of conduct resulting in a singular form of performer dignity. For instance, as he outlined in his wonderful memoir Born Standing Up, he had to be the only act. He didn't open for anyone and he never had an opener. Also, the audience had to be in darkness. No one laughs when the light is on them. 

Martin would keep ironing out a bit, show after show, until it shined like a diamond. And he very successfully branded himself with his white suit and "happy feet" (on par with Groucho's cigar and painted on moustache).

Martin also "turned off" when not onstage. He was not constantly on. It shows he took his role as funnyman seriously. Unlike his contemporary, the equally crazy Robin Williams (who I also love), Martin refused to be a dancing monkey for interviews and such.

NICHOLS AND MAY
You can trace back most threads in contemporary comedy to the groundbreaking work done by Nichols and May, first at the Compass Theater in Chicago (my youthful Camelot of theatre companies), and later around the country, on Broadway, and on thier awesome Grammy-winning comedy album. Relentlessly honest and ironic, the pair used impeccable comic timing to pack every routine with tiny explosions of subversive hilarity. The two excelled at urbane characterizations and mundane-turned-absurd relationship dynamics. And the percision. Oh, man! Mike Nichols usually played straight man to the flamboyant Elaine May.

SAMUEL BECKETT
On the surface, this seems like a surprise to have on this list, but Beckett is hilarious. And his humor is painful.

If you haven't read Waiting For Godot, do it. It is funny at its most sad.

"Let's go." followed by the stage direction... (They stand.)

BUSTER KEATON
Ah, the Great Stone-face. I like Chaplin, don't get me wrong, but I love Keaton. Where Chaplin was bouncy curves and gooey emotions, Keaton remained all angles and stoicism. He never melted or weakened into bendiness. He never descended into sentimentality. Like Groucho, he stood firm against wishy-washiness (maybe not as aggressively hostile as Groucho, though). Keaton's stance invariably demands uprightness, backbone and a firm gaze set ever-forward. A Keaton character had to win hearts not warm them. He was all irony and fatigue, high velocity and tough luck, frustration and toil, and hard-line grace.

One of the most profound lessons of comedy I rememeber, upon discovering the world of Keaton as a high schooler, was from the opening bit of his 1921 film "The Goat." A starving Buster is sent to the back of a breadline that stretches down a sidewalk outside of a clothing store. He gets in line, but doesn't realize he is standing behind a couple of mannequins. And he waits. And waits. And waits. And the camera waits there with him. He's doing absolutely zilch and this comic tension just slowly simmers and builds. This stretching out of time was so simple and so relevatory for me. It has shown up in so much of my work since I first saw that Buster Keaton film as a sophomore in high school.

Woody Allen on Comedy

"It’s one way of dealing with life. People think it’s very hard to be funny but it’s an interesting thing. If you can do it, it’s not hard at all. It would be like if I said to somebody who can draw very well, My God, I could take a pencil and paper all day long and never be able to draw that horse. I can’t do it, and you’ve done it so perfectly. And the other person feels, This is nothing. I’ve been doing this since I was four years old. That’s how you feel about comedy—if you can do it, you know, it’s really nothing. It’s not that the end product is nothing, but the process is simple. Of course, there are just some people that are authentically funny, and some people that are not. It’s a freak of nature.

This is from a great Woody Allen interview in the Fall 1995 Paris Review. I appreciate that Allen doesn't put a value judgement on being funny, he just explains, in a very straight-forward fashion, that if you are funny, it's not really a big deal. It is a natural thing. For some...

As a performing artist - improviser and actor (as well as a director, for that matter) - I'm often coming up to situations where I'm working with people slightly out of their element. That is to say, people who are expected to be funny, but who are not naturally good at comedy.

Upon reflection, this might be why I work rather exclusively with the same people from project to project. Like my friend and frequent collaborator, Jeff Swearingen... he's funny. It is not a big deal when the two of us are working together because we are in our element. I keep working with him, especially on comic projects, because of this. He's just one example, too. 

As a director, I have a list of actors who I wanna work with on other kinds of projects. There are actors who can sing well and move well, who look at the world a certain way. But my list of comic actors... oh man, I kinda hoard that list. 

You can't tell someone who isn't funny how to be funny.

Read the whole Paris Review interview HERE.

Falling-Down Funny

Genius: Stan Laurel

 I am a comedian. By which, I mean, I use comedy, in a variety of forms, to express a lot of what I have to express. That said, I remember a quote from Stan Laurel (though I might be paraphrasing a bit here):

"Comedians don't open funny doors, they open doors in funny ways

That quote says so much. And usually, it should be left at that. Comedy kinda dies if you try to analyze it too much. Ever try to explain why something, a joke maybe, was funny to someone that didn't get it. Hardly worth the effort.

this is not to say comedy doesn't have theory. I love thinking about comedy theory. Seriously. But of all the shop-talk I do, I never talk a lot about the mechanics of comedy.

All of this above has been sort of lead-up to a great article, "Falling-Down Funny" by A. O. Scott, I stumbled across lately. Check it out HERE.

"Physical comedy did not exactly die with the rise of the talkies, as any fan of the Three Stooges, Jerry Lewis or Jim Carrey will attest. But it did suffer a loss of prestige; what for Agee was the highest form of laughter is frequently seen as the lowest, fit for the amusement of children or French people.