Jacqueline Novak chats with Interview Magazine

JACQUELINE NOVAK AND NATASHA LYONNE TALK PERFORMANCE, BLOW JOBS, AND THE PERFORMANCE OF BLOW JOBS

By Natasha Lyonne and Sarah Nechamkin
Photography Lia Clay

At one point in Get On Your Knees, Jacqueline Novak’s one-woman stand-up (er, bent-over) play at the Cherry Lane Theater in the West Village, she compares a college-aged version of herself to “a broken Philip Roth character,” a Jewish pervert among the stone-walled buildings of an academic eden. Throughout the 90-minute set, Novak saunters back and forth, the microphone cord saucily draped over her shoulder, orating (“I’m a natural orator,” she tells us), the entirety of the blow job. With poetic precision, Novak dissects the semantics of all things fellatio, from the lurking danger of her teeth to the conundrum of the “rock hard boner” (“Rocks have properties.”) Perhaps never, since Roth and his Shakespearean accounts of guilt-laden masturbation, has someone tackled the mechanics of male genitalia with such literary profundity.

It is this resonant frankness, the singular candor of the philosopher-comedian, that binds Novak to the show’s presenter and a mentor of hers, Natasha Lyonne. Both are linked by a particular flavor of New Yorkais, the bits and riffs and hand gestures and relentless tango around a subject to arrive at its Talmudic essence—something that also links them to a line of New York comedians in the shadow of Larry David. And yet, unlike David and his nebbish ilk, Lyonne and Novak possess a brassy self-awareness that reads as “feminism” only in a society where expressing one’s overthinking, sex-driven selfhood is a political act.

On a humid afternoon inside the overly air-conditioned Cherry Lane Theater, just days after receiving 13 Emmy nominations for Russian Doll and in between promotions for the final season of Orange is the New Black, Lyonne chatted with Novak about Missy Elliot, male allies, and of course, the tireless pursuit of the perfect blow job. But in an unfortunate twist seemingly lifted from Russian Doll, a torrential downpour upon New York City and an ensuing flash flood warning interrupted our recording, necessitating that we all reconvene on the phone two days later. The following, dear reader, is the result. –SARAH NECHAMKIN

———

NATASHA LYONNE: Hey Jacqueline, it’s Natasha from Jacqueline Novak Enterprises. I’m so glad to be speaking with you again. In a twist of fate, our initial discussion that was one for the ages was lost to a flash flood warning.

JACQUELINE NOVAK: It’s unbelievable. It was one of the greatest things, listening to you talk about me. I had that sense of peace that it was all being caught, so I sort of let it wash over me. And then it’s gone, and it’s devastating. To me, in the spirit of authenticity, we can’t recreate that. We’ve just got to be free and live now, I think. Right?

LYONNE: Right, or we have a choice to just wallow in the past, because one of the great joys was speaking so eloquently about you. Of course, the event that transpired is that the previous interview was on opening night, so it was ahead of your opening night performance. Then in between this interview, there was a type of cosmic downfall that came, and the heavens were split and a torrential rain followed that cleansed the earth, much like in Taxi Driver. The morning after—we’re now two days later—so we’re now post a night of glory, and I am now no longer just a hype man, but like everyone else, get to be basking in your golden glow. How did that night go for you? How are you feeling in the aftermath?

NOVAK: Well, relief to have gotten through the initial presentation, all those people and the excitement. That always feels really weird to me. At the party, I came in, and then some of you guys started applauding, and I was really afraid to turn around in case it wasn’t for me and that someone would think I thought it was for me. Then I did turn around. I really felt weird, because I don’t have birthday parties. Obviously I force attention on myself when I’m performing, but something about it just truly being my show and people showing up was disorienting. I feel oddly exposed.

LYONNE: It’s a deeply exposing, vulnerable show, so that’s maybe why. I will say that I was trying to be a confident bolster.

NOVAK: You were.

LYONNE: In the days prior and the night of. I would be terrified going out there like Spalding Gray. There’s nothing scarier.

NOVAK: Really?

LYONNE: Absolutely. I think that what you do is truly triumphant in not only its linguistic artistry and the living embodiment of the articulation of brilliance, and experience taken and claimed as one’s own in the most beautiful way, but also just the vulnerability of it, of really being out there by yourself. The jokes are tremendous and hilarious, but also the exposure of it—it’s big boy stuff. It really is.

NOVAK: The audience being an opening night audience, it was almost like they were a little weird when I first came out. A couple things that normally get laughs didn’t, and I was like, “Oh, fuck. Maybe this isn’t going to be easy.” It was interesting in that way. Then I found you a huge confidence booster before the shows. And now I’m basking, and I do feel exposed—not so much even with the material of the show, because obviously I don’t mind doing it in front of strangers—but just professionally exposed, because there’s attention on it that I’m not used to having. It’s very weird. I do feel slightly disoriented by it.

LYONNE: Leading up to your performance to get you in the bone zone–which is a professional term–we spoke about how we met because you were an opening act with Fred [Armisen], my boyfriend, on tour, and we would spend time together backstage palling around some. One question I have is how you came to speak about ghosts so fluently?

NOVAK: Oh, good. I just want to say, it’s interesting articulating our own stories. I think I’m the worst extemporaneously trying to talk about things. I always feel I can barely get anything out, because I change my mind halfway through the sentence. I’m always blown away because I feel like you, Natasha, really get it done spontaneously in the moment. I feel like I say things to you in complete abstraction, that I’m not landing on it at all, and then you somehow reflect back to me and understand what I meant. Me on stage—that’s the illusion of me being articulate. I’m working out these phrases over time, obviously. So I just pretend. I just fake it. But I always feel like, even now, you just really cut to it and meet the situations. I don’t know how you do it.

LYONNE: Well, takes one to know one.

NOVAK: Exactly.

LYONNE: What about [director of Get On Your Knees] John [Early]? How did that all come to be?

NOVAK: John has been a real champion of mine, personally encouraging me through believing in what I do, even though it’s different from what he does. He’s been a real confidence bolster. We did some shows together where he would give me notes on stage, even though they weren’t really notes. They were just compliments. We did that last year before I went to Fringe Festival, and then we did it again in L.A. recently. He knows exactly what I’m thinking and I can’t hide from him. It’s kind of scary, actually, hearing his notes. I’ll try to hide, like I’m doing some angry empowered show, and he’s like “You were just upset you weren’t getting laughs and you tried to turn it into that or something.” I’m like, oh fuck, you’re right.

LYONNE: That’s a good director.

NOVAK: He was calling out that I slow down when I try to find my way into something in a new way, and then I want to translate, in real time, the rest of that set into that tone, so I’m slowing down to filter everything through the new tone. He just spots all of it. It’s disturbing to be seen.

LYONNE: I feel like mention is warranted for these beautiful boys who support our female giants. I really came to know you through Fred, and then [Mike] Birbiglia, I think was the one that connected you with the Cherry Lane Theater as a producer. Then there was John being this trusted ally and the person you could be most honest with. I think it’s a beautiful thing to note when we speak about the ways in which we, as a community, can be allies to each other, and not in a state of the war of the roses. This is what it looks like when everybody is on the same team working in this beautiful way for the arts. This is such a particularly female lens, and it’s so beautifully empowered and articulated by your specific experience and point of view. It’s a really nice thing to note in this time that’s so much about boys and girls. There’s also this version which just makes me delighted about what a utopian future in the arts can look like.

NOVAK: Totally. That is absolutely what I was feeling. What I was taking away from the night, what just absolutely gave me the most joy, really, was these people who had either come together recently, like I have with Natasha, or these people that I’ve known since I started in comedy. The most satisfying part of it was getting to do the show with those people around me, and getting responses from people I love and respect.

SARAH NECHAMKIN: How did you come up with the idea to make a show about the male phallus primarily, but also using it as a vehicle into a more philosophical arena?

NOVAK: I can’t remember how I first started doing any of the penis jokes. I don’t think of myself as that interested in penises as an idea. I had a joke that I’m not proud to be a heterosexual. Why would I be, as a modern woman? It seems uninteresting. In order to explain that, I’ve said I like the penis, I’m drawn to the penis. The way I express it is by saying there is some dignity to lust after the common shaft. It’s not like the penis is this thing I’m that into. It’s assumed that it must be. Then in order to further explain what is the penis in this way, a dumb object that you see in museums, ancient civilizations worshiping with stone phalluses and that sort of thing, it made me start asking one question after the next. I had some jokes that led to me saying something about the “rock hard boner,” and it not really being rock hard and that being inaccurate. I remember when I was opening for Birbiglia on the road, a male audience member was audibly, like, doubting whatever I said. He called out something or shook his head toward the front row. So I leaned into it. I was trying to explain that it’s really not that hard. If you ate it in a restaurant, if you took a bite, you wouldn’t think that was the tenderest meat you ever tasted. Then that led to another joke. Then it became: let me look at all the things I’ve heard forever about the penis, and let’s just point out how they’re all absurd.

NECHAMKIN: It’s so intellectualized. That’s what makes the show so funny—the contrast between it being such a base topic looked at with such an intellectual approach.

NOVAK: Totally. That’s just how I think about things. It’s my read on my own life. 

LYONNE: One of the things we spoke about was Missy Elliot, and the ways in which my experience of you was that you really “flipped it and reversed it” in terms of the entire English language and gender, but more importantly, existence as a whole. I think of you as one of our great new philosophers with a deeply existential show, and that’s ultimately what it’s really about. How much of the show is autobiographical? 

NOVAK: It’s all autobiographical—other than some tweaks, in order to be able to get through it in one show. If it was five blow jobs in my life, but I could only get through three, I try to leave some out. That way if I ever want to write a book about all this, I don’t have to contradict myself. 

NECHAMKIN: An oral history.

NOVAK: Exactly. I like to try to maintain the truth as much as possible and only alter it if it’s necessary and isn’t altering my emotional truth. I definitely wouldn’t throw anything in that didn’t happen in order to create an emotional experience that I did not have. 

NECHAMKIN: What do you think makes the perfect blow job? Is it the intention? Is it the enthusiasm? Is it the will to follow through? Is it the actual thing?

NOVAK: I think my thesis of the show in regards to the blow job is that the intention is the most important part. Then whatever spills out, whatever unfolds from the intention is as it should be. If someone’s enthusiastic, if it’s coming from passion and that means that drool is slipping down their cheeks, then I would encourage them to feel like that is part of the beauty of the thing. I’m just defending the idea that the details of this life that happen organically have a beauty to them. I’m not trying to act like I’m saying something that’s a revelation. In the show, I’m so irritated at the world for not having picked up that lesson in eighth grade English. I’m like guys, haven’t you ever read a poem? It’s the details of this life that make things juicy and textured.

The perfect blow job is certainly not about a physical perfection. If the blow job is an expression of your soul’s desire, then however it looks is great. The body is inherently an embarrassment, and yet you can choose to embrace it in its flaws and its crassness. I like for things to be bigger than the containers that are meant to hold them. I like this idea that the soul should be bigger than the body. The body should behave as a poor container for a soul that’s spilling out over the edges, ideally. My metaphor there is like a loaded baked potato. To me, it better be overloaded and those ingredients better be spilling out over the sides because if they’re not, then I don’t trust you fully intended to fill it. You never know you filled something completely until it begins to spill. In that way, I believe passion should spill over the edges of the container of the body.

NECHAMKIN: Did you ultimately end up enjoying the blow jobs, or did you feel like it was just the need to prove to yourself? 

NOVAK: I think as an expression of desire, or whatever intention you have behind it, it’s a pretty interesting one. For me, part of the show is trying to absolutely end the idea that getting down on your knees is degrading. Obviously, anything can be degrading. Something is not inherently degrading. No one likes to be told they’re being degraded when they don’t feel they’re being degraded, right?

NECHAMKIN: Do you still have the line analogizing the toothy blow job to the jelly toy in the cereal box that you stick it to the wall and it keeps falling, and that it will never stick, but that’s the beauty in the process? 

NOVAK: I do. I was like, maybe I should give those out. A favor on the way out of the show. It could be cute.

NECHAMKIN: Can you find them online now?

NOVAK: Yeah. You can find versions of them in bulk.

LYONNE: So what’s next for the great Jacqueline Novak?

NOVAK: What’s next? Hopefully you and me doing something together. Not letting you slip off into the ether. I want to make a film. I want to make some TV, write some more books. Those are the big ones. 

LYONNE: I can’t wait. The world is a better place. The more Jacqueline Novak, the better.

Vanessa Williams previews The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture’s Fall Season

The Sheen Center for Thought and Culture unveils its upcoming programming through the end of 2019.

Brian Stokes Mitchell returns to Feinstein’s/54 Below

Tony Winner Brian Stokes Mitchell Sets Holiday Engagement at Feinstein’s/54 Below

The November concerts coincide with the forthcoming release of the Ragtime and Shuffle Along star’s new album, Plays With Music.

Tony Award winner Brian Stokes Mitchell will return to Feinstein’s/54 Below this fall with his all-new show Plays With Music—Holiday November 12–23. The concerts expand upon the Ragtime and Kiss Me, Kate star’s acclaimed nightclub act, adding fresh arrangements of holiday favorites and some non-traditional surprises as well.

Mitchell’s 10-concert run also celebrates the forthcoming release of his new album, Plays With Music. Show time is 7 PM.

Mitchell won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for the 2000 Broadway revival of Kiss Me, Kate, and has been nominated for his performances in Man of La Mancha, August Wilson’s King Hedley II, and Ragtime. Other notable Broadway shows include Kiss of the Spider Woman, Jelly’s Last Jam, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Shuffle Along, and Oh, Kay! The Broadway veteran was honored with an Isabelle Stevenson Award from the Tonys in 2016.

For tickets, priced $105–$175, visit 54Below.com.

NY Times Critic’s Pick – Jacqueline Novak: Get On Your Knees

Review: In ‘Get on Your Knees,’ a Comedian Goes There

Jacqueline Novak’s show, a stand-up comedy set that inclines toward theater, offers a personal and intellectual history of oral sex.

Take away the hormones, the pheromones, the heat and the dark and the drink (or three). Turn off the flesh and turn on the analytics: Oral sex, at least in the abstract, seems like a pretty weird thing for a couple of bodies to do.

Most of us don’t spend a ton of time contemplating the practice theoretically, divorced from desire, but Jacqueline Novak devotes nearly an hour and a half to it. In “Get on Your Knees,” at the Cherry Lane Theater, a stand-up set that inclines toward theater, Ms. Novak provides a personal and intellectual history of fellatio. Shrewd, explicit, though not exactly raunchy, this is the funniest show about Cartesian dualism you will see all year.

The evening’s early moments, at least after Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” stops playing, have to do with short-circuiting expectations. Ms. Novak bounds onstage in a passion-killer ensemble: gray T-shirt, gray jeans, gray sneakers. Then she walks back the bounding. “I hate a confident entrance,” she says. “I find it crass.” A born overthinker, Ms. Novak rarely seems to have met a word or an action she didn’t want to probe. (That’s the intellectual kind of probe, thank you very much.)

In place of off-color riffs and lewd visual aids, Novak deconstructs the semantics of heterosexual sex. She explains why a penis is not like a snake, why penetration is a misnomer, why we might want to rethink a word like erection. It is, she says, “a bit architectural for what’s going on there. No one’s going in that building. It’s not up to code.” She has thoughts on female genitalia and its metaphors, too: “If someone gave me a bouquet of roses, and one of them looked like my vulva, I’d say I think someone stepped on one of the roses.” Bachelorettes in search of a good time and fewer T.S. Eliot quotations may want to look elsewhere.

Even as Ms. Novak segues into reminiscence, she prefers to cast herself as an observer. Recalling the first time she performed oral sex, she says she found herself wishing she had a second mouth to narrate the attempt: “We are aware of the situation. We are working on the problem, sir! We appreciate your patience.” Her director, the fellow comedian John Early, should probably have told her that the show doesn’t need two climaxes. (Get your mind out of the gutter.) But that’s how she likes it. (Ditto.)

Ms. Novak is a big fan of her own mind. She has a poetic sensibility, she tells us; she is a born orator and, if anything, too articulate. I’d bet that her actual inner monologue is a lot more self-critical, but arrogance is a good look for her. Her body or, as she likes to call it, “a sack of sex potatoes” seems more like an inconvenience. She paces the stage obsessively, tracing the length of the microphone cord as though walking a mandala and clutching the mike close to her chest. Still, she’s clever enough in using a hand, an elbow or her chin when she needs to give a joke a visual boost.

The penis is her ostensible subject, yet there are other stories here: a coming-of-age one, and another about what it means to be the not-so-proud owner of both a sack of sex potatoes built, at least in part, to give pleasure to men, and a brain that finds a lot of the business of sex farcical.

I’m not sure how good a case Ms. Novak makes for fellatio — as text, as pastime. (These days, if I’m on my knees, I’m usually brandishing a wet wipe before a toddler, so it’s possible I’m a hard sell.) But she is brilliant on the absurdity of having and being a thinking, feeling, desiring body, especially a female one, in a world that might not want that.

To be a woman “is to be the great American novel baked inside a cheesy crust pizza,” she says. “Whether someone’s hungry or they’re looking to read, either way they’re annoyed.”

Jacqueline Novak: Get On Your Knees Opens Off-Broadway

Russian Doll star Natasha Lyonne is behind the New York City premiere of the comedian’s newest show, now playing at the Cherry Lane.

The Off-Broadway premiere of Jacqueline Novak: Get On Your Knees, a new comedy written by and starring Jacqueline Novak, opens at the Cherry Lane Theatre July 22. The production is presented by Russian Doll and Orange Is the New Black star Natasha Lyonne, with fellow comedian Mike Birbiglia attached as executive producer.

Jacqueline Novak: Get On Your Knees, directed by John Early, began performances in New York City July 10 following runs at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and in Los Angeles.

Part feminist outcry and part coming-of-age story, in Get On Your Knees, Novak spins her material on the femininity of the penis and the stoicism of the vulva into an unexpectedly philosophical show.

“Jacqueline is a one of a kind voice for the ages,” says Lyonne. “I’m thrilled to present her show, as she is a total original whose linguistic gymnastics took my brain topsy turvy while doubling me over with laughter. I can’t wait for people to experience her hugely relevant show and singular artistry at Cherry Lane.”

Get On Your Knees is presented by Lyonne and executive-produced by Birbiglia. Mike Lavoie and Carlee Briglia are producers. The limited run is scheduled through August 18.

Visit Getonyourkneesshow.com for tickets and more information.

Jacqueline Novak chats with Vanity Fair

Jacqueline Novak Is Getting Thoughtful—And Very Funny—About Sex

As her off-Broadway show Get On Your Knees gets going, it’s time to pay attention to comedian Jacqueline Novak.

By Sarah Shoen

Jacqueline Novak has a way of thinking things through. Over the course of a single lunch in SoHo, she goes from worrying over personal data breaches to considering that they might lead to a social reckoning. She wonders if Target’s clothing line will continue to age with her and praises how their swimsuit selection continues to reign supreme when you’re looking for sheer variety. And when it came to her first off-Broadway show, currently playing at the West Village’s Cherry Lane Theatre, she found a single lens through which to examine her entire life: oral sex.

“Experiencing it for the first time is kind of shocking,” Novak says. “And I’ve just always thought it was interesting to think about the journey of discovering that experience, sort of as a thread through my life.”

The result is Get On Your Knees, a 75-minute comedy set that is deft and intellectually rigorous, but never pretentious. The show is a culmination of her years spent studying the nuance of oral sex. The comedian weaves her coming-of-age tale like a poem through a series of rollicking arguments regarding the “hysterical” quality of the penis and a particularly memorable comparison between oral sex and a doctor’s office waiting room. Novak says she has been storing her awkward, relatable, and endearing encounters in the back of her mind for years.

“I always felt, even as a teenager, very aware that the things that were unfolding, but you couldn’t really talk about them at the time,” Novak says. “I feel like I was cataloging in my mind what was happening, almost for discussion later.”

Novak, who released the comedy album Quality Notions in 2014 and has appeared on The Tonight Show, has a thought-provoking approach to sex jokes, asking audiences to look deeper into questions of male ego, pride, and the desire to fit in. “She can talk about one subject from a hundred different angles,” says fellow comedian John Early, who directed the show. “Thanks to Jacqueline, I’m able to see the indignities and embarrassments of the mundane all around me.”

Early, along with fellow comedian Mike Birbiglia, who serves as executive producer, are among those who recognized Novak’s star power from the beginning—everyone else just needs to catch up. “It’s one idea presented after the other in the way we’re used to seeing in stand-up,” Early says. “But then, as it goes on, there’s this slow-burn feeling of like, Oh my God. It’s all connected.”

One of the most charming bits in Get On Your Knees involves the comedian’s relationship with author and life coach Tony Robbins; she claims to have read Personal Power in the sixth grade. When she left New York after college, Novak struggled with depression, an experience she wrote about in her 2016 book, How to Weep in Public, which serves both as a memoir and a guide through depression.

“I’m talking to you from my depression to yours so you can trust me,” Novak says. “You know, as Tony would say: break down, break through. That kind of shit.”

Get On Your Knees, for the most part, is not so earnest, more concerned with flipping the script on male versus female pleasure and proving that “rock hard” is never the right way to describe a penis. But the six-minute finale, in which Novak leans into her poetry background to deliver a moving, resounding and surprisingly emotional ode to oral sex—one that will surely spur some discussion long after you leave Cherry Lane.

Sherie and Norbert Photos

Check out Stephen Sorokoff’s photos from Sherie Rene Scott and Norbert Leo Butz’s performance at 54 Below! https://www.broadwayworld.com/cabaret/article/Photo-Coverage-Sherie-Rene-Scott-and-Norbert-Leo-Butz-Come-to-Feinsteins54-Below-20190717

Jacqueline Novak chats with Vulture

Jacqueline Novak, the Great Conversationalist

By Rachel Davies

Jacqueline Novak has spent the past few years meditating on the blow job and the language that surrounds it. She doesn’t think a penis has ever deserved to be referred to as a “cock,” and she thinks it’s rare that a boner ever lives up to the descriptor “rock-hard.” The result of these years of consideration is Get on Your Knees, a stand-up show — or depending on whom you ask, a one-woman play.

Novak has starred in a half-hour Comedy Central special; released the comedy album Quality Notions; and authored How to Weep in Public, a book about depression; and while these are all entertaining and certainly insightful in their own right, Knees is clearly her masterwork. In the years that she’s been working on it, she’s turned to trusted friends for notes, like John Early and Mike Birbiglia, who directed and executive produced the new show, respectively. What begins as a hilarious questioning of masculinity and a woman’s role in relation to it becomes a chronicling of Novak’s understanding of the sexual act since teenhood. Part hero’s journey toward the unthinkable act of giving head, part dissection of the narratives we create for ourselves, Get on Your Knees delivers on the promise of a plethora of dick jokes, and Novak manages to do a hell of a lot more in the process.

The subtle brilliance in Get on Your Knees is Novak’s ability to deftly mix the high- and lowbrow without diminishing the details that distinguish each half of the pair. When Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” booms over the theater’s speakers, it feels natural, just as Novak’s off-the-cuff references to T.S. Eliot or Mary Karr do. She doesn’t suggest that there is anything overly pretentious about the latter, nor does she condescend to the former — it’s a seamless meld, one that makes you question why we’re so eager to separate the two in the first place.

Less than a week into the nearly five-week run of Get on Your Knees at New York’s Cherry Lane Theatre, Vulture sat down to talk with Novak and the show’s director, John Early, about how it came together.

I know in your book there’s some little bits about blow jobs and on your album, too. When did you realize that you were going to do a whole show on blow jobs? 
Jacqueline Novak: I think it was because I wanted to be working on a longer-form thing. I wanted to be working toward the hour, ideally the hour-long special or the touring hour. I was going to Edinburgh and I was thinking about if I was going to thread a narrative through my material. I was doing all this penis material, all this stuff about the cock versus the penis. I had this sort of blow-job narrative that had been this essay [from college]. It was like this never-ending essay that I had been writing the whole time.

I always felt like there was something about the blow job coming-of-age stuff, and I continued to think about it later on in my life. I was considering what I would do if I were to do a narrative thread. I knew it would be this coming-of-age [story about] sexual concerns. It’s weird to me that you’re alone in that journey. You have friends — if you have friends — but you’re kind of figuring it out on your own. It’s a weird time. It was this intersection where I was like, All right, what if it’s this penis material that I’m doing that is very much my current thinking about the penis, and how does that intersect with this narrative about my early fears and anxieties? They’re kind of two different attitudes. The thinking was, Well, hopefully the confidence of where I am now in my take on it would offset and make the audience feel comfortable going into this vulnerable 12-year-old feeling pressured that she’s going to have to give a blow job. It’s kind of crushing in a way, but since you see this confident material up top, it’s a bit like, It was okay, she’s fine.

So you came separately to the material about language, and the stuff about your life, and you realized that they could serve each other. 
Jacqueline: Yeah, totally. I was working on the penis material in short sets and then going to Edinburgh, which I kind of really was just going to for stage time to work on an hour because there’s kind of an expectation there. They almost were like, “These American comics, they come here and, quote, ‘just do stand-up.’” There was this pressure where I was like, I want to do the assignment; I’m not going to let them say that about me. I’m going to give them the narrative of my damn life. It was this good-student mind-set.

It’s the same thing you come back to in the set — of never wanting to seem less wise than anyone else. 
Jacqueline: Yeah, it’s exhausting, and it’s also like, Oh, so I’m actually really easily manipulated. All you have to do is tell me, “The common fool thinks this,” and I’m like, “Not me!” It’s a really specific recurring dynamic. I was working on it with [Mike] Birbiglia a bit — me and my boyfriend, Chris Laker, we were both opening for Mike, so we were working with him on some narrative stuff. It just came together in that way. He’d seen pieces of the show develop and ended up producing it, basically.

How did John end up as the director of the show? 
John Early: Well, honestly, very organically. Jacqueline asked me when she was trying the show out at Union Hall almost a year ago to basically open for her. We co-hosted a show at Cake Shop for a couple of years every Tuesday to crowds of tens. We always had such a fun time just talking onstage. As you can tell from the show, Jacqueline is one of the great conversationalists. The show is essentially the privilege of being in conversation with Jacqueline Novak.

Jacqueline: Ridiculous.

John: You watch her go through thoughts and get distracted, go on tangents, then bring us back. I feel like we just discovered a very pure conversational dynamic where it was purely about delighting each other. We were already friends, but that was a really fun thing to discover as collaborators. Then [when she was working at the show at Union Hall] she was like, “Maybe we can talk instead,” instead of a crass ten-minute opening. I was also like, “I don’t want to do material,” so we talked onstage together. Jacqueline came up with a very funny conceit of what if I then took notes, kind of very performatively — like stepped offstage, took notes during the show, and then gave her the notes at the end of the show.

Jacqueline: Onstage. Almost like a fun hook, like “John Early notes Jacqueline.”

John: Then she went to Edinburgh and did [the show], and then when she moved to L.A., we decided to do the same [notes] thing because it was so much fun. Because she did this long run of shows, it turned into me genuinely taking notes. I would give her notes onstage, and mostly onstage, I would actually just say like, “Here are the funny lines I loved.”

Jacqueline: John’s very concerned about the audience going home with the right bits in their mind. He’s like, “I’m going to underscore this now ‘cause how dare they forget.”

Do you feel like doing the show so much is coming naturally to you? Do you find the prospect daunting at all? 
Jacqueline: Edinburgh was like 26 shows in a row with no days off, I think. I enjoyed that process so much and I actually felt sad when it was ending. I haven’t been that daunted by the prospect of the run, but I have no idea what it’ll feel like [toward the end]. Weirdly, my ADD thing is that when I’m in something, I’m in it. I’m almost not thinking of the run and its length.

You’re being present. [Laughs.]
Jacqueline: For once!

John: I have a feeling, from what I’ve witnessed so far, that [you might be daunted by it] if your jokes were more stark or something, if there were less going on, if you had developed a signature delivery that was deadpan, if you were locked into some overly simple joke structure. But the only way you know how to do your comedy is through this conversational, tangential way where you’re genuinely finding the thought in the moment. It’s very hard for me to believe, based on what I’ve seen so far, that that’s going to dry up.

Jacqueline: Well, with every crowd it’s like, Oh, God, they don’t know what’s coming. In my mind it’s like, They’re doubting me; they’re afraid; they’re concerned.

John: Well, you’re in control. That’s what’s actually easier about stand-up: The repetition of stand-up, night after night after night, is what makes it fun. You don’t have to act surprised. In plays, you have to pretend that all this stuff is happening to you. With stand-up, you’re the one driving. You don’t have to feign surprise. So of course, night after night, in plays you’re like, The events can’t possibly be surprising anymore. You have to drum up surprise at the circumstances of the play every fuckin’ night.

Jacqueline: Or your best impression of it in a pinch!

At this point, are you changing any of the jokes a lot or adding new material? Or is it just playing with your delivery?
Jacqueline: I tend to write things a number of ways, so it’ll be a joke that has a number of variations, and I’ll try different ones and go, Okay, I officially like this version better than this version; let’s try to keep saying that.Something might happen in the moment that leads me down a path where I use words that send me to a different version of it. There’s a little bit of that still. What you’d think of as the set list is the same.

In an interview with Interview magazine in 2016, you said that you titled your album Quality Notions because it was easier to say that than to say that they were jokes. Do you feel like the way you approach your comedy has changed now? 
Jacqueline: I think if I was talking to a comedian and they didn’t know me and they asked me if they were jokes, I’d say, “You’re damn fuckin’ right it is!” If I was talking to a theater person who was like, “Oh, is it just stand-up?” I’d be like, “Fuck you, you’re going to sob.” I think these days it really just depends on who I’m talking to because I want it to be all of those things at the same time.

Do you feel inclined, in your own definition, toward calling yourself a comedian, a writer, or a performer? In a 2016 interview with Splitsider you said that you were glad your book was being received as a book rather than “a comedian’s foray into writing” because you self-identified as a writer prior to doing stand-up. With the show, there are parts that could be an essay, or exist only on the page, but they’re enlivened by your delivery. 
Jacqueline: I think of myself as one of my identities — one of them being a writer identity, and another is a comedian identity, like I go into comedy clubs. I think on longer, bigger, more ambitious projects, it’s going to inevitably pull on a variety of those things. It’d be weird to put together something big that I have to work on for a long time like [the show] and I very actively didn’t use everything I have to give it, I think.

In the New York Times piece about the show, you talk about how Mike Birbiglia says that vulnerability comes more naturally to you than “the ham,” and I’m wondering if that’s something you’re more consciously trying to bring now. 
Jacqueline: Well, that’s a note from ten years ago. He was saying that where I started — like I went into comedy and the first day I go up and I’m baring my soul, kind of. I was very self-conscious about trying to get laughs through physicality or performance. I could get up and go, “I love someone who doesn’t love me and here’s a joke about that” or whatever, just vulnerable shit. I would write a joke about it, but I wouldn’t make myself vulnerable in the sense of putting oneself on the line by committing to a performance that was risky. I’d never go for a laugh with a big gesture or a face.

It was very hard for me to do that, ‘cause to me, that was a more embarrassing version of trying to be funny and failing. I worked my way toward it. It was like, At least if someone walks in the room, there’s no laugh, but you’re not upside down with your tongue out. Then I was like, No, no, fuck it. I’m going to be upside down with my tongue out. It was an interesting point of him saying that there are other comedians who are very comfortable going for the laugh in a very performative way, but the material in itself is not very personally revealing. It was pointing out that there was another way to be vulnerable that I could try, and phrasing it that way to me made me realize, Oh, shit, he’s right. I am hiding. It made it a spiritual challenge, tricked me into it.

Michael Feinstein returns to Feinstein’s/54 Below

Michael Feinstein to Be Joined by Marilyn Maye and More This August at 54 Below

This summer, two-time Emmy Award and five-time Grammy Award nominee Michael Feinstein returns to Feinstein’s/54 Below in his all-new show I Happen To Like New York. Performances are August 6 – 23 at 7PM. $85 – $105 cover charge, $120 – $130 VIP seating and $150-$165 premium seating. $25 food and beverage minimum.

To purchase tickets, visit 54Below.com/Michael.

Michael will be joined by the marvelous Marilyn Maye for his performances from August 6 – 13. She is known to audiences around the world for her iconic eight-decade long career, which has included 76 appearances on “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson,” making her the most frequently heard singer in the program’s history. A masterful lyric interpreter, Marilyn is an artist for connoisseurs, renowned for her powerhouse delivery and chatty rapport. Marilyn is the epitome of New York and the sophisticated, nostalgic era that we all long to be a part of.

From August 15 – 20, legendary singer/songwriter Melissa Manchester will join Michael on the 54 stage. Having been born and raised in the Bronx, this native New Yorker will share the stories and spirit of her New York. Together, Michael and Melissa will celebrate this glorious city in the way only they can. Best known for her work as writer and recording artist, Melissa’s hits include, “Don’t Cry Out Loud,” “Come in From the Rain,” “Whenever I Call You Friend,” “Through The Eyes of Love,” and “Midnight Blue.” This will be a dynamic show full of surprises and musical delights, all while paying homage to the tradition established by past generations of great New York entertainers.

19-year-old multi-platinum recording artist Jackie Evancho will be joining Michael on August 21, 22, and 23. A superstar who gained wide recognition at only age 9, Jackie will bring a unique and fresh perspective to classic songs that have shaped both this great city and our society as a whole. In this collaboration, she will share with us what New York means to her, while representing a new generation paying tribute to the great entertainers of Manhattan nightlife.

Michael Feinstein, Ambassador of the Great American Songbook, has built a dazzling career over the last three decades bringing the music of the Great American songbook to the world. From recordings that have earned him five Grammy Award nominations to his Emmy nominated PBS-TV specials, his acclaimed NPR series and concerts spanning the globe, his work as an educator and archivist define Feinstein as one of the most important musical forces of our time.

Ali Stroker to Appear as Guest at BROADWAY’S RISING STARS Concert

Ali Stroker to Appear as Guest at BROADWAY’S RISING STARS Concert

The 13th Annual Broadway’s Rising Stars concert, taking place at The Town Hall (123 W. 43rd Street) on Monday, July 22nd at 8:00pm, brings back one of its own, this year’s Tony Award winner for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for Rodger’s and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, Ali Stroker. Broadway’s Rising Stars is the national showcase event for recent graduates of Performing Arts schools.

Twenty up and coming students from nine different prestigious performing arts schools including AMDA, Pace, NYU-Steinhardt, NYU-Tisch, University of Miami, Circle in the Square, Webster College, Wagner College, and Marymount will be participating in the evening,

Ali Stroker performed in the third annual Broadway’s Rising Stars concert and has gone on to appear on television in “The Glee Project” and on “Glee”, itself, as well as becoming the first person in a wheelchair to appear on Broadway in the revival of Spring Awakening. Now a Tony Award winning actress, Ali will be back at The Town Hall to welcome this latest group of future stars.

Stroker performed at the Tony Awards and received a standing ovation upon winning her Tony.

The 13th Annual Broadway’s Rising Stars Concert was created by Scott Siegel who will once again write, direct, and host the show for The Town Hall. The show’s vocal coach is Bill Daugherty (Daugherty & Fields) who’s voice students have included Bobby Steggert, Matthew Morrison, and Ali Stroker. For the 12th year in a row the Musical Director will be John Fischer.

“I am incredibly excited to put these amazingly talented performers on The Town Hall stage for all to see,” said Scott Siegel. “Their talent is off the charts and their skills are so diverse that the concert, itself, will be a veritable smorgasbord of different sounds and styles. If audiences want to see the stars of tomorrow, they will be onstage at The Town Hall on July 22nd.”

Tickets for Broadway’s Rising Stars are $27-$42. For tickets and information, please visit www.thetownhall.org or call 800-982-2787. Broadway’s Rising Stars was created for The Town Hall and is presented as part of The Town Hall’s presenting season.