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For The Future Indicative, Ep 8 Part 1
Transcript
ALEX EFFGEN
Welcome back to the Future Indicative. I’m Alex Effgen, and as we continue to explore stand-up comedy in Part 2, we’ll move from the stage, to the ring.
STEPH DALWIN
“I 100% think that we need to regard Richard Pryor as like Four Kings era of boxing like whatever that is in comedy he is one of the Four Kings. He’s one of the greats. He’s amazing. He is seminal. He influenced generations. He helped define and make the art form what it is today.”
ALEX EFFGEN
That was Stephanie Dalwin, comedian and pugilist. Her stand-up hits different in no small part because she’s also a boxer. And if you don’t get her reference, the “Four Kings” era of boxing involved Sugar Ray Leonard, Thomas Hearns, Marvelous Marvin Hagler, and Roberto Duran at the height of their powers (in the 1970s and 80s).
I, someone comfortably defined as Gen X in those decades, thought Richard Pryor was the best. A lot of people did. But as an African American comedic contender, he stood between Eddie Murphy as his successor, and the champion of mainstream comedy at that time that transcended race: Bill Cosby.
I want to contemplate the importance of Richard Pryor on comedy, and we may need to get analogous to another pastime to do it. Steph, what kind of fighting?
STEPH DALWIN
“Not all martial arts. Specifically boxing. You’re taking hits and no one knows what taking that hit is like until they’re in the spotlight themselves. But, man, they have a lot of opinions on how you should take that hit and how you should get up after you take that hit.
It’s constant training in both of these disciplines. There’s this idea in boxing of, like, you always be ready. So you stay in shape, you keep sparring because someone who is not staying in shape and not sparring like Andre Ward, for example. Probably the greatest fighter of his generation. He couldn’t fight today because he hasn’t been sparring and you lose those instincts.
And I mean, it’s the same thing with stand-up comedy. As much as I preach inclusion and this that and the other and how difficult it is to get on stage, you still have to get on stage. You can really tell who is a new comic or an unpracticed comic versus who is actually getting a lot of reps in. There are just little things like how do you handle an audience when they go wrong? How do you reset the temperature of the room? A light goes out. How do you deal with that? It’s this idea of always staying ready.”
ALEX EFFGEN
The comedian must stay ready. They must be present in the moment to deliver value to their audience. But what does the audience value? And what does the comedian value?
STEPH DALWIN
“One of my mentors said to me, like, audiences want to see more of themselves in lineups, and that’s the biggest value to me. It’s…I mean there’s monetary value for me as a producer. I get money that I can either pay my comedians with, or donate it to a cause, or pocket some of it. These days it’s mostly been paying the comedians and donating to causes. So there’s that value.
Stand-up has turned into real rugged American individualism, you know, a comic gets on stage and it’s them against the world. They’re going to pick on the audience. They’re going to say what they want. To hell with everybody else.
That’s not really what it was supposed to be. We are, at the end of the day, providing a service to the audience. And so the value in stand-up comedy is we’re stewarding experience. What do you want that experience to be? Some people gravitate towards being roasted and that’s fine. I want my experience to be representation and joy and community.”
ALEX EFFGEN
In the last part, I mentioned what Boston stand-up comedy, and comedians, have been like. I quoted Conan O’Brien. One of the stand-ups to come out of that earlier era is Dana Gould. He began as a teen in the eighties. And while he’s made a career writing for and appearing in your favorite television shows (Seinfeld, Simpsons, Parks and Rec, Ted, etc) he continues to go on the road to perform stand-up. He’s compelled to do it. And from a lifetime performing, he’s reached similar conclusions.
“The late, great Kevin Rooney…he was the Obi-Wan Kenobi to my Luke Skywalker when I was coming up…I was middling for him, and he said best advice I’ve ever gotten in comedy. Because I was a rabid dog… He said, “Ya know, the audience wants to like you. But first, they want to make sure that you like them.”
And I was a better comic the next show.”
Dana also learned from Kevin Rooney that stand-up is a show. You’re in a light. They paid to come in. It’s a show. So…give them a show!
But sometimes, the economics of that show get in the way.
STEPH DALWIN
“There’s disruption on the actual—we’ll say business model disruption—how you sell tickets, how you get butts in seats, how you push this to a wider range of audiences, at least financially. And that is probably the most negatively disruptive hit to progress, the focus on revenue, finance, kind of like, making money making money.”
ALEX EFFGEN
So business model disruption can be bad.
STEPH DALWIN
“I think ultimately what can positively disrupt comedy is value. So someone comes along and is doing something totally weird, but if it has value to an audience, if it has value to people that want to see you on stage, and—I don’t know—cut off all your hair and paint your face blue, like sure let’s do it sure.
Suzy Eddy Izzard is a great example of that. What she was doing, wild in their time. But, like, ultimately served an audience of weirdos who wanted to see themselves in her. Her comedy at the time was really seeking a need that hadn’t been addressed.
So, what can disrupt progress? I think negative disruption of progress is obsession with the business. Obsession with the financials. I think what can positively disrupt and push progress forward is just obsession with creating new value and reaching new audiences. Whatever that looks like. Making bad art.”
ALEX EFFGEN
One person’s bad art is another person’s brilliance. And those social perceptions can shift like tides, and turn with storms. Recently, I went to a record store to peruse the dollar bin. Albums…still playable on a turntable, but for whatever reason devalued. I came across a large collection of Bill Cosby’s comedy, all in good condition, all priced at a dollar, all devalued for his now infamous conduct. Records, like “I Started Out as a Child”from 1964, had already been accepted to the National Registry by the Library of Congress as works of art. Can we walk that back? Should we walk that back? Bigger questions than I’m willing to answer here. I just know that the legacy of Richard Pryor somehow improves by Bill Cosby in the dollar bin.
STEPH DALWIN
“We’ve had innovation on content in the past, right? Richard Pryor is a great example. Lenny Bruce. People that were saying things that could have gotten them arrested, were swearing on TV, were breaking with popular canon and norms. That’s one of the reasons I gravitated towards Ali Wong, too, is she was saying things I had never heard, not necessarily in terms of profanity, but in terms of identity and representation. Outside of Margaret Cho, who is a pioneer in her own right, I had never heard a comedian speak to my experience that personally.
And so we’ve had a lot of innovation on content. I think we’ve had innovations on representation. But I think generally innovation—not just the content but the form of stand-up comedy—is something we need to be pushing. Part of that innovation is of course representation: Who gets to do this. It’s not always a cis-gendered white dude who gets on stage and talks about, “My wife.” ”
ALEX EFFGEN
If the market demands a white dude talking one-sided gender politics, and you’re not that? Then make a new market.
STEPH DALWIN
“When I first started, it would often be the case that you’d have a very homogenous lineup, either in form or in the way folks looked. I would often be the only woman, and the fact that I’m mixed race, bisexual, and a woman, people are like that checks enough boxes. And so I’d often be the only any one of those three things on a lineup.
And then you feel this pressure for perfection because, If I don’t do well, they’re never going to book another woman again, another Asian person, another queer person. You know?
Shortly after we started doing our thing at New Normal, we saw a lot of other folks follow suit. And I’m not trying to credit us with that rise in historically marginalized producers, but it forced some existential questions. As the market gets more crowded do I want to be capturing more market share?”
ALEX EFFGEN
If you want to SCALE as defined by traditional business: to get more butts in seats. To franchise the New Normal? I’d think, yes?
STEPH DALWIN
“I think for me, the path to growth that I want to see is being able to explore new audiences and get out of one lane and explore another.
Just by opening up the floodgates of the market to be more inclusive, now I don’t have the pressure to be perfect. The stakes for failure aren’t (insert identity group here) are never going to be able to do this again. The stakes for failure are now, like, was this funny or not? Can I talk about something besides identity? And so how do you lower the stakes for failure? You increase the ability to make bad art.
And so increase the ability to make bad art and learn from it and iterate. The only way to stay obsessed with a craft is to let it be a craft. Something that you iterate on. Something that you’re refining, that you’re constantly honing over time, and so lowering the stakes for innovation means increasing the ability to make bad stuff.”
ALEX EFFGEN
I often say you cannot innovate on the operating budget. May we all have the courage and the currency to fail. Or, to quote Robert Frost:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
(FART NOISE)
Farts are still funny, right?
STEPH DALWIN
“It’s impossible to please everybody, nor would you want to. But incorporating someone who’s doing something different with the art form ultimately makes for a more interesting product. And when one subset of folks is leveling up their game, everybody else has to.
I dated a blind person for many years and learning things from him about, like, telling someone when you’re approaching them or a screen reader on a phone. That’s technology and information that’s good for everybody. When you can serve the most vulnerable, you can serve everybody. And the end product is ultimately better for audiences.”
ALEX EFFGEN
Thank you for joining us on the Future Indicative, a podcast produced by me, Alex Effgen, and Indicate Marketing. Our mission is to show what great narratives accomplish for your industry. While I stand on this stage to express these views (which you can find at IndicateMarketing.com) you can witness what Steph Dalwin and New Normal Comedy has to offer at the Boston AAPI Comedy Festival, next month (May 21-23) at Rozzie Square Theater in Roslindale, Massachusetts. Please reach out to Indicate Marketing and we’ll send you the link.
On behalf of all of us exploring our humanity to drive business growth and market positioning, we appreciate your patronage, and continued support.
