Heroin & Shakespeare

Comedy and tragedy share some essential qualities.  Both require the basic dramatic elements.  Each must engage the intellect and the emotions.  But only one has to make you laugh.

There is no more definite test of success in the theater universe than the laugh response.  The joke’s absolutely quantifiable nature might seem to render comedies uniquely suited for reward.  But arguably, depending on your comedy accounting, about ten times as many straight plays as comedies have won the “best play” Tony; the Ovations’ record seems little better, if you can find it.  Just like drama, comedy can plumb psychological depths and ask philosophical questions, but most people think of comedy as inherently less valuable, more escapist, than drama.  Dramatic actors get acclaim for making you cry, which, given decent writing, isn’t all that difficult.  But while a talented comedian can still eke a laugh out of mediocre material through gesture and timing, she’s unlikely to be as highly respected among the public as her tragedian counterpart.  This, though comedy provides the vitamin E lacking from so many diets: endorphins.

Unfair, right?  It gets worse.  There are degrees and degrees of reverence in the comedy world.  Among its lowest rings is the sketch comedian, a performer popularly perceived as lacking the bravado of a stand-up and the dazzle of an improvisator.  Having spent years on the stand-up circuit and as a working actor, writer and director, as well as his present stints as Adjunct Screenwriting Professor at USC and Associate Artistic Director at Write Act Repertory, Ken Cosby knows how low a sketch comedian ranks in the comedy hierarchy.  He believes that the reasons for that infamy are largely self-produced.

“A lot of people, theater people,” Cosby says, “see sketch as an art form that’s not an art form.  Audiences think it might be fun, and actors see their craft as, ‘Let’s put this together,’ rather than taking it seriously as theater.  So you get some shallow examinations of the possibilities, sometimes.  Practitioners think it might be enjoyable, but what’s the end game?  It’s like a transitional phase you go through to get somewhere else, because except for Saturday Night Live, there are no jobs in sketch comedy.  Not for money.”

And yet Cosby insists on writing and performing sketches, a preoccupation that has kept him busy in Los Angeles off and on for nearly 15 years.  Beginning in 1998, he wrote and performed for three years with the topical revue Live! Live! News! News!, before forming and leading his own troupe, 3rd Degree Burn.  Now he and another 3rd Degree Burn victim, Jackie Marriott, comprise The Deuces Wild Duo, selected to represent L.A. during Sketch Week at the upcoming North Carolina Comedy Arts Festival.  His commitment to the form in the face of competing interests speaks to his sense of mission.

He says, “People think of sketch as the bastard child of theater and stand-up, or a step-child of improv.  But it has its own merits if you put them in.  You have your writing, okay; that can’t just be a revisitation of existing archetypes. You have to do something with that.  And what about sets?  What about costumes?  What about how your audience is reacting?  Lately I’ve been thinking a lot more about what the audience thinks is funny.  My mind tends to go to the sick or the avant garde, but if the crowd doesn’t get it, what’s the point?”

Cosby is a student of the best sketch artists, especially Monty Python’s Flying Circus – “they made the potential seem possible” – but lately he’s been focused on the great man-woman teams, from Nichols and May to Stiller and Meara.  “It’s about mutual respect in the writing and performance,” he says of his working relationship with Marriott.  “Our sketches together always popped when we did 3rd Degree, so we decided to see what would happen, just the two of us.”

Cosby’s sketch writing has always reflected his interests in society and how a culture adulterates the humanity of its members.  For Live! Live! News! News! he created a character, journalist Alejandro Jones del Negros Frijoles, who investigated the obsessional nature of marginalized minority populations: Alejandro once reported on a speech, delivered with great gravity by Latino icon Edward James Olmos, dedicating a Boyle Heights water fountain sculpted in the shape of Jennifer Lopez’s buttocks.  When Angeleno Latinos complain that J. Lo isn’t Mexican but Puerto Rican – and by implication part black, therefore insufficiently Latina – the ceremony devolves into a race riot.  Also for Live! Live!, Cosby accepted a recurring role as Jesus Christ, presenting a controversial version of a figure who in the West has traditionally been represented as barely Semitic, let alone black.

With 3rd Degree Burn, Cosby went further.  “People heard about this all-black sketch group,” he says, “and they were like, ‘Ah, shit.’  Because they expected the black comedic archetypes you’re used to seeing: the In Living Color crackhead, the black guy in a dress, the loud overbearing African-American woman from a Tyler Perry show.”  But Cosby exploited stereotypes to create a conversation; always, instead of the easy laugh, he went for the revelation.  In one sketch about a black Olympic hopeful beset by adversity, Cosby selected a different white audience member each night to deliver discouraging remarks, lines typically reserved for the racist villain in one-dimensional TV movies.  In my favorite 3rd Degree sketch, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele (rendered dead-on by Marriott) is visited, Dickens-style, by the Ghosts of Negroes Past, including Lincoln “Stepin Fetchit” Perry, Martin Luther King, Jr, and Sojourner Truth.  Admonishing Steele for his Uncle Tommery, the committee of black icons shoots him in the ass; their attack bears an uncomfortable resemblance to a lynching party, and thereby brings the conversation not full circle but into a drunken spin.

Now the The Deuces Wild Duo carries on that tradition, with a NoHo Stages show Saturday January 14 to benefit their trip to perform in North Carolina.  This show should prove that Cosby has not withdrawn the vinegar from his pen.  One of their new scenarios parodies the PBS tendency to feature the most obscure material during pledge drives; the Duo version involves Compton Methodone Clinic patients nodding out while reciting Shakespeare.  The sales gimmick is that if this pledge option raises sufficient funds, PBS will be able to hire real actors and fire the junkies; the killing joke is that the addicts, having lost the support of do-good liberals, will return to lives of despair.

That a pair of black performers is willing to present such provocative material is reason enough to support them, but their investment in craft is the real audience reward.  Marriott talks about the difficulty, coming from a classical acting background, of imitating a “normal, average” dud like Steele.  Her approach to the character involved a study of his physical mannerism and monotonous speech pattern, and how those reflected the limited workings of his mind; clearly, this is not what Marc Maron famously refers to as “kids in funny hats.”  This is sketch as art, asking the big questions, pushing the boundaries of the sacred, opening doors to future dialogue.

Cosby and Marriott have few illusions about the potential of their appearances in North Carolina.  Cosby notes that “there are a few sketch duos running around the comedy clubs these days; mostly they’re not great, and that doesn’t create much opportunity for the rest of us” – but that’s not why they’re going.  Cosby says that the invitational will be an opportunity to measure themselves against the best performers from Boston, Chicago, New York, and from other countries as well.  “North Carolina has become the place to go,” he says.  “It’s an honor to have been invited.  Now that Aspen [the Aspen Comedy Festival] is pretty much dead, I kind of just want to see what’s out there, and learn something, if I can.”

Much of the theater I see seems to feel obligated to solemnly uphold traditions it does not respect enough to honor – so maybe now is the time for new agendas, new manners, and a good laugh.  The Deuces aren’t charging nearly enough, in my opinion, for their upcoming NoHo gig.  You may contribute to their travel fund here, and leave them an encouraging note; but please see them live, and enjoy one of the least compromised, most original theatrical products I know about in Los Angeles.

Link to The Deuces Wild Duo site

Link to North Carolina Comedy Arts Festival site

ADVERTISEMENT FOR MYSELF:  I, Jason Rohrer, will read from my novel Sleeping Beast at 7 p.m. Wednesday, January 11 at the Rumor Mill coffee house in Mar Vista.  I will not be wearing a beret.