Tag Archives: comedy

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Do you remember your first…

Everybody remembers their first, their first humorist. (Get your mind our of the gutter!) Today, my heart may swoon over David Sedaris, author of humorous delights like SantaLand Diaries in Holidays on Ice and When You Are Engulfed in Flames. But long before Sedaris, there was Dave Barry whose Homes and Other Black Holes had me rolling on the floor in laugher identifying with frustrations of my own home buying experience. Before Barry, (yes I am a humorist whore!) there was Erma Bombeck. Bombeck was a homemaker whose syndicated commentary on suburban life beginning in the mid-60s captured life as we knew it and humorously. If we can learn to see the humorous side of life as expertly as Bombeck did (as seen in her books like If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? and The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank, ) life has got to be better.

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Want some humor help? Test the waters at the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop at the University of Dayton.

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The August 2014 StoryDame Methuselism Award goes to…

Joan Rivers, born in 1933 according to Wikipedia. According to We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy, Rivers, who wanted to be an actress, fell into comedy because she could make a little money at night after hitting agents all day in the mid-60s. She was the first woman who was part of “the new confessional wave.” Today the Barnard College graduate hosts the Fashion Police on E! and sells her own line on HSN. Catch Joan on her YouTube series, In Bed With Joan, or read about her in her own words in her newest book, Diary of a Mad Diva.

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Going on the ride of her life

Classic car. ©iStockphoto/Zoediak

Classic car. ©iStockphoto/Zoediak

“What is your favorite comedy?” my hairdresser asked as we talked about movies. “Being There,” I said without so much as a pause naming the film based on the classic by Jerzy Kosinski. Add truth to the comedy/drama genre mix and I might as easily have said Riding in Cars With Boys. I liked it so much, I read the memoir on which it is based.

Based on her own experience, Beverly Donofrio’s memoir is both confessional and redemptive. Having made what seems, to her parents immediately and not long afterwards to Beverly, too, a bad decision, the youth finds herself pregnant at 17 and married to a drug addict barely able to provide a roof over their heads. Beverly, divorced with son in tow, is able to begin clawing her way hand over hand out of poverty when the doors of the prestigious Wesleyan University open to her at age 24.

On graduation Beverly packs herself and her son and moves to New York City where in 1988, according to a 2011 interview with Amye Archer in Hippocampus Magazine, she sells her memoir based on two memoir articles and a five-page proposal. Donofrio illuminates the path to life narrative good enough to find an audience saying, “Although one tries to tell the truth, in order to make a story readable, one must choose what is told and what is omitted, enforce a structure, a story arc, impose meaning on raw life.”

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Alone not lonely

If you love comedy like I do, when it comes to your doorstep you have to open the door and hug it like a long absent family member.

Too many vacant seats. ©D.L. Ewbank

Too many vacant seats, faces blurred to protect the lovers of comedy. ©D.L. Ewbank

So I embraced, if only from the audience, four of the Blue Touring Group of Second City at the Clinton School Tuesday. When Mom said, “You should go see them,” I thought, “Why not.” I looked at the schedule and Wednesday night included free champagne. I’m a sucker for free things and sparkling wine. But as a last minute decision, I didn’t have time to find anyone to go with me. This is no problem for me when I’m out of town. Would being alone on my home turf make me feel like a leper? I stirred up my courage and bought a ticket online.

Wednesday night I arrive a little after 6:00 p.m. which is the time in Little Rock when the meters downtown become free. I go upstairs where the champagne is located, sit on the window seat alone sipping cold bubbly and eating a small square of cheesecake. As I gaze around the room at friends busily chatting, I admit I feel a little discomfort. But it is minor. I don’t feel much better when the usher takes me to my box seat where only I am sitting. Should I have opted for the orchestra center?

When the lights go down, flying solo no longer matters. And it actually gives an unanticipated benefit; alone I am able to turn a critical eye to concentrate as a professional rather than enjoy as a private citizen. Things I have never considered become crystal clear.

Apparently word hasn’t quite gotten out about the Second City engagement because there are way too many empty seats. To much “dead space” makes for less connection between the audience and performers as well as a sense of connect among the audience. For the first time I appreciate the ultra small, black box style theaters of LA. The smaller the venue and the closer the players and the audience means better flow of the funny and a better night for everyone.

Another plus is that I am able to judge more critically the content of the show. “Have you noticed I don’t laugh as much as you do?” an improv teacher once said to my class. He pointed out the fact that he had a more discerning eye and ear from years of comedy exposure. Having more exposure didn’t lessen my experience that night, but helped me more easily identify the material that really worked for me – a sketch that turned plans for a family vacation into a political campaign and a middle Eastern take on “Dirty Dancing.” And I spot for the first time in my experience, the successful use of  multiple, very short scenes which seemed like flash fiction for the stage.

Home alone, I realize going sans friend was way less painful than I imagined. Will I do it again? You betcha!