Jacqueline Novak chats with Entertainment Weekly

Jacqueline Novak goes deep on getting down in her hit show Get On Your Knees

It was the unexpected feel-good (and then feel weird about it, and then feel good again) hit of the summer: Get On Your Knees — approximately 80 minutes of high-flying mediations on, essentially, the art and etymology of blow jobs, filtered through the fantastically discursive mind of comedian-turned-monologuist Jacqueline Novak.

After a sell-out run at the West Village’s historic Cherry Lane Theater, the show — presented by actress Natasha Lyonne and executive produced by Mike Birbiglia— has now moved to the larger Lucille Lortel Theatre, where it’s running through Sept. 21. Novak spoke to EW about elaborate vagina metaphors, celebrity fans, and why she won’t be giving out freelance sex tips anytime soon.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Do you care very much about the semantics of whether Get On Your Knees is called stand-up or a one-woman show?
JACQUELINE NOVAK: Well, I sort of joke that it depends who I’m talking to. If I’m talking to theater person and they’re like “You’re just doing stand-up in a theater!” I’ll be like “Um no, it’s theater, and here’s why,” or [mock-serious voice] “Consider this an experimental theater piece about a woman doing stand-up, and I am playing myself.”

And if I’m talking to stand-up people and they try to say “Oh, you’re just doing a one-woman show, there’s less pressure to be funny,” then I’m like, ‘Check the jokes count, motherf—ers! Laughs-per-minute, asshole, they’re all there!” [Laughs]

In the show you talk about discovering sexuality, and particularly blow jobs, through a friend’s older sister’s friend. But now when every kid has a smartphone, it seems like that era of finding things out more organically or socially is sort of over.
Totally. Totally! Now there’s so much information, and we’re so inundated, you can read endlessly about the blow job. But what I hope is relevant in my show is that the questions I have still stand, even when there’s endless takes on technique and videos of people giving them — it’s even more necessary to assess what the blow job might mean to you, you know? It used to be a lack of information and now it’s too much information, but you’re still left with the same questions. The internet certainly doesn’t poeticize it for me. [Laughs]

As you talk about coming of age and learning how to live as a girl in the world, you use so many great metaphors: That a vagina looks like a stepped-on rose, or the line that being a woman “is to be the great American novel baked inside a cheesy-crust pizza — whether someone’s hungry or they’re looking to read, either way they’re annoyed.”
Yeah, metaphors are really big for me obviously. I think it’s truly how I tend to understand thing — maybe even a tool I rely on too much. But there are some benefits. And it’s always evolving over the course of my life, like the metaphor’s a cap that fits on the thing I’m trying to describe, and if I come across about a better-fitting cap I might pick it up, try it, toss it around… That’s literally another metaphor, and I’m not sure it’s a good one. [Laughs] But the right one has a really satisfying feeling.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge started Fleabag at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival as a one-woman piece, just like you did with Knees. Do you feel an affinity for her considering that you both broke through with this very personal, boundary-breaking kind of show?
Yeah, for sure. I think Edinburgh has a real anything-goes kind of feeling, but also there’s a rigorousness at the same time. So I think it’s a really creatively stimulating experience, and also the sheer value of getting to put a show on 26 nights in a row is so huge in terms of getting used to turning personal material into a piece that’s just separate enough from you to be able to perform it. But I also just love her, so any excuse to compare myself to her, I’ll take. [Laughs]

How much room do you leave for tweaking or cutting or ad-libbing each night?
I see it as kind of locked in, as in the show that was reviewed is the show you’re going to see, right? But then I’m always trying out tweaks out each night. It kind of feels like I’m making a case for something, an argument, and every night I have the opportunity to make that argument again, so I absolutely leave room. And it does keep the fear of God in you as a performer. [Laughs]

You pretty much wear the same thing every night onstage — a plain grey T-shirt and jeans. Did you deliberately want sort of a blank slate, maybe a Spalding Gray kind of thing?
Yeah, I certainly enjoy having fun with clothes, but it felt like maybe because this show is my introduction to a wider audience, I didn’t feel ready to make an arguably strong sort of statement. To do stand-up is kind of this high-wire tightrope act, right? And to me, if you just go out in a leotard and do the tightrope thing, it really draws attention to what’s being done.

It’s almost like clothes are another language, and my show is so much about words and what I’m saying that I almost have to get as close as I can get to nothing competing with it. And then because the show is also about my discomfort with the body, it feels like the most neutral kind of nondescript clothing makes sense for the show. And it’s sexual material, so if you see an image of me dressed as a kind of librarian, that would seemingly tell you something more about it than if I dressed sensually.  

Because you do have this sort of graphically honest show, do people assume when they meet you that they can kind of say anything to you because you must be this super open, sexual person?
When people see it they do want to talk sometimes — like when an usher on the show was like, “Can I ask you a few questions about, you know?” It was insane. I was like, I’m not a sex expert! I mean I know it’s pretentious to say “It’s a show about ideas!” but I think I’m more scandalized than people expect me to be. Like, I would gasp at a picture of a penis.

I wondered if it’s like on Seinfeld where Jerry’s dating a masseuse and always trying to get her to massage him, and she’s like, “No thank you, that’s my day job.”
Well luckily I’m in a long-term relationship, so there are no more blow jobs. [Laughs]

It seems like men too might have very different takes than women do on the show, but not always be sure how to express that to you.
It’s a wide variety. I would say that in general I’ve found that men for the most part actually receive it all really well, more than one would think. All of my stuff that’s like “the takedown of the c–k” — and I put that in quotations — I’m like, “No, I’m trying to restore authentic dignity to the penis by acknowledging what it really is, and that being okay.” So in a weird way it’s a takedown of the c–k, but it’s a defense of the penis.

You’ve been on Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon, all these shows, which is great for your career of course, but you’re also on television talking about…dicks. How have your parents handled that?
They really are proud, like unabashedly proud. They love the show! And if someone else were to say something disparaging to them, they would defend me to the death. We got through the awkwardness of sexual stuff literally when I was a teenager by watching Six Feet Under on HBO, or even The Sopranos. HBO programming really helped normalize sexuality in our house, so I always credit them.

Obviously you have Natasha Lyonne as a presenter, and the night I was at the show, Jemima Kirke from Girls and Alan Cumming were both in the audience in this tiny, tiny room. Is that strange for you?
Alan Cumming was, yes! I got to see his face from the stage, literally a round O mouth of shock. At a key moment his jaw was just open, and that was like, the greatest. Just thinking of him in Cabaret, I was like, “Maybe I need to throw in a dance number now?” [Laughs]

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Feinstein’s/54 Below Press Preview

Shoshana Bean, Krysta Rodriguez, Nicole Henry, and Jason Danieley Preview Their Upcoming Concerts at Feinstein’s/54 Below

Shoshana Bean chats with Forbes

Shoshana Bean, A Recording Star And A Force On Broadway, Has A New Show At Feinstein’s/54 Below

By Jeryl Brunner

Shoshana Bean began performing was she was just three-years-old. She had been watching her cousins in a tap recital, when suddenly she rushed onto the stage right in the middle of their performance.

Maybe it was a case of FOMO on Bean’s part. But at that moment her mother was convinced that she needed to enroll her daughter in tap class so she could experience her own recital. ”That was apparently the sign she needed and that’s where it all began!,” says Bean who was born and raised outside Portland, Oregon, and has a B.F.A. in Musical Theater from Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM).

Since then the singer, songwriter, recording artist and actress has been dazzling audiences with her fierce talent.Three of her solo albums have topped the iTunes R&B and Blues charts in the United States and United Kingdom. Her newest album, Spectrum, debuted on the Billboard Jazz charts at number one. A Broadway veteran, Bean’s credits includes Hairspray, Wicked and Waitress. Off Broadway and beyond she has appeared in Songs for a New World, Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell and the pre-Broadway production of Beaches.

This month she makes her debut at Feinstein’s/54 Below in New York City and will perform there through September 3rd. Bean, whose belt is as nuanced and richly layered as it is powerful, will sing an all-Broadway repertoire. She has included songs from roles she has played, roles she wants to play and roles she’ll never play. “I was inspired to do a show of all Broadway material because it’s something I’ve never EVER done in New York City,” says Bean who describes the show as “warm, folky and soulful.” And, she adds, “It is made up of songs that tell wonderful stories and evoke powerful feelings.”

Jeryl Brunner: Can you put into words how singing makes you feel? 

Shoshana Bean: Oh that’s easy! Singing makes me feel I am the truest, purest most authentic version of myself. It’s my superpower so I always feel empowered, powerful—like I’m in my purpose and have a responsibility. I can get lost in it. I lose track of me. And when I’m really locked in, I lose track of myself. In the absence of self-consciousness and self-judgment, I feel liberated and limitless.

Brunner: Do you remember the first Broadway show you saw? 

Bean: When I was 8-years-old my mom brought me to New York City to visit relatives and we went to see Cats. I had been preparing for months listening to the vinyl and memorizing the entire soundtrack. While I had seen plenty of theater at that point in my life, I had never seen a theater come to life all around me in the way that Cats did at the Winter Garden Theatre. I was riveted!

Brunner: Can you talk about when you heard you were cast in Hairspray and going to make your Broadway debut? 

Bean: I was home in my apartment in Astoria on a Friday evening. My agent at the time called with the news. I remember being over the moon and calling my parents and closest friends. I remember riding the subway into the city later thinking about my cousin who had told me as a teenager, ‘you have a better chance of landing on the moon than you do landing a Broadway show.’

 The timing was divine because at that point I was considering moving out to Los Angeles to work on my music as nothing had really taken off for me in New York City since doing Godspell [off Broadway], almost two years prior. Getting Hairspray was the sign I was looking for. It was a clear sign that New York City and theater was where I was meant to be, at least for the time being. And it turned out to be some of the best years of my life and gave me friends who have become family.

Brunner: Music virtuoso, James Sampliner, is your music director for your show. Why do you love collaborating with him?

Bean: James is like family. He loves, lives and breathes music the same way that I do. He loves taking tunes and reimagining them for our purposes. And he’s wonderful at it. When James shows up to the gig, he commits himself fully. And above being a professional and a skilled player, he shows up with his whole heart. And heart is very important to me.

Brunner: What role are you aching to play? 

Bean: Oh there are so many! But as always, the number one is Fannie Brice. In my opinion, it is the single greatest score of all time. OK next to West Side Story. And because the character is in me, I know her, I feel her. She is painful, hopeful, challenging and familiar.

Get to know Smith Street Stage’s Beth Ann Hopkins

Smith Street Stage has always looked for new ways to tell classic stories and they are doing just that with Lear – That Old Man I Used to Know, a new take on the classic story of King Lear.  Performances begin at the A.R.T/New York Theaters on September 5th, for a limited engagement.

Since that inaugural production (a five actor adaptation of Romeo and Juliet) 10 years ago and under the artistic direction of Beth Ann Hopkins, the Company has grown to hiring over 40 artists a year, receiving New York Innovative Theater Awards across multiple seasons, and bringing full productions of critically acclaimed shows to theaters throughout the city. They believe that easily accessible productions of plays produced at a high artistic level can transform audiences’ relationship with great literature.

The Company’s foremost principle is that classical texts are not elitist, and they aim for their productions to be both meaningful and accessible by focusing on relatable human dilemmas without diminishing their complexity. Their goal is to demystify the classics.

In Lear – That Old Man I Used to Know, King Lear is told through the eyes of a child as the words on the page literally come to life before her eyes while in her grandmother’s attic.

This adaptation explores the conflict between love and disappointment. It presses audiences to think of how much we are able to bear for the people who are most important to us. It challenges us to think of what we’re able to forgive, what that forgiveness is able to do and the strength of the family bond.

At its core, it’s a human story.

T2C posed a series of questions to get to know Beth Ann Hopkins and learn more about her creative process.

T2C: How did you get involved with Smith Street Stage?

Beth Ann Hopkins: I founded Smith Street Stage back in 2010 with my good friend, now husband Jonathan Hopkins. We had adapted a 4 person production of Romeo & Juliet and wanted to find a platform where we could perform it again. The production was really well received, and we felt we had a certain way of working on these plays that made them resonate with people.

T2C: What is the mission of Smith Street Stage?

Beth Ann Hopkins: Smith Street Stage seeks to tell classic stories in new ways through affordable, exciting and consequential theater arts. The Company holds that universally recognizable and deeply human conflicts are inherent in great literature, and by exploring such texts with rigor and creativity, one may apprehend these truths and reveal anew their relevance to our lives. Such stories presented skillfully and earnestly have the power to engage philosophical issues, excite spectators of all backgrounds and predispositions, and bring communities closer.

T2C: Where is Smith Street Stage located?

Beth Ann Hopkins: Our home base is Carroll Gardens Brooklyn, where we’ve done free summer Shakespeare for ten years now. But we’ve performed work all over the city, including an Off-Broadway house on 42nd street.

T2C: How do other get involved in Smith Street Stage?

Beth Ann Hopkins: The best way to begin is to come and see one of our performances. If you find what we do exciting, we have seasonal auditions for Actors, interviews for our Assistant program, and plenty of ways to volunteer to get in on the other side of the table. Lastly, we exist because of the support from our community, and our subscriber program is a way that Smith Street can continue to produce exceptional work.

T2C: You adapted Lear – That Old Man I Used to Know. What made you choose Lear?

Beth Ann Hopkins: Every Shakespearean actor or director holds one of Shakespeare’s plays closer to their heart than the others, and for me that’s King Lear. The themes of forgiveness and love are epic and, I believe, unparalleled in dramatic literature. It’s about the power of familial love, which is something that affects everyone. I also think this play has some of the most beautiful language that I’ve ever heard. It sings to me.

T2C: What fresh ideas do you bring to this age old story?

Beth Ann Hopkins: I began to think of this story through the lens of Lear’s youngest daughter, Cordelia, the one whom he banishes at the beginning of the play. I imagined a scenario in which a girl, mourning someone from her life, would retreat into a hidden space and find a sort of solace in the story of King Lear, which would come to life around her. The girl identifies with Cordelia, becomes her in the story, and through trying to influence the stories characters, learns we don’t always get the ending we expect to have with our loved ones. I wanted Cordelia to be able to watch her father’s decline, in order to understand and not only forgive but come to a higher place of learning about death and age.

T2C: What other shows would you like to bring to the stage?

Beth Ann Hopkins: I have an adaptation of An Enemy of the People, that I’d love to express fully. We did a workshop production a few years ago. It has very little text and the movement spans from dream like to tribal. Elliot Roth wrote a magical contemporary classical score which I would love more people to experience.

I also have a Tempest I’d love to play with inside. We performed it a few years ago outside with our Shakespeare in Carroll Park program. Clara Strauch wrote the most haunted musical score.

T2C: You are an actress as well as a director. What roles would you like to perform?

Beth Ann Hopkins: I love playing the misfits, the leftovers, the weirdos, the ones on the brink of madness and brilliance. For Shakespeare that means Ophelia, Lear’s Fool, Lady M, Hamlet. Otherwise I look to my favorite authors, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee and Jez Butterworth.

T2C: What do you prefer more acting or directing?

Beth Ann Hopkins: I love them both for completely different reasons.
With acting, I love being able to get lost in a role and be a part of someone else’s vision. It’s very playful and fun. I get to shut off parts of my brain and swim around in beautiful waters that have been filled for me by designers & Directors. Directing a play spins the brain. All your cylinders have to be working. I have to be ready to discard ideas and concepts that don’t feel right or aren’t helping the play. That can be a downright heart-breaking and exhausting experience. But when something works, when the music and movement and acting swirl in such a way that can take away someone’s breath or remind an audience member of what it feels like to be human? That’s something very special.

T2C: What would you like our readers to know about you?

Beth Ann Hopkins: I think collaboration is essential in the arts. I believe in the magic of storytelling and think that live theatre can change people. I have every confidence our Lear will do that.

Lear – That Old Man I Used to Know: A.R.T/New York Theaters, 502 W 53rd Street, starting September 5th, for a limited engagement through September 22nd.

 

Shoshana Bean chatted with BroadwayWorld

BWW Interview: Shoshana Bean On Her Feinstein’s/54 Below Debut and How Life Can Be Its Own Muse

Broadway’s Shoshana Bean, most recently seen as Jenna in Waitress, will be making her Feinstein’s/54 Below debut this summer!

This electric concert will feature music from the iconic roles she has played (such as Elphaba in Wicked!); roles she has dreamed of playing; and other Broadway favorites!

BroadwayWorld had the chance to catch up with the talented singer, songwriter, actress, and recording artist about her debut and return to New York City; the musical influences that inspire her; the most empowering part about her time on stage as Jenna; and how life in general can be its own muse.

Congratulations on making your Feinstein’s/54 Below debut!

Thank you! I’m really looking forward to it and will be happy to be back in New York City – I’ve been going through withdrawals!

Love that your song list will encompass all things Broadway! What is your creative process like for choosing your material?

I usually start by making a list of songs I’ve performed, in addition to the ones I’ve always wanted to cover. I get it down to about 20-30 songs and then go through the selection process. I have to consider what will resonate the most and what feels the strongest lyrically. I’m really happy with how this set will fall into place!

Right on! Who are some of your biggest musical influences and how do you find inspiration in life?

Some of my biggest influences include Aretha; Barbra; Frank Sinatra; Stevie Wonder – I love 90’s R&B. Definitely an eclectic mix.

I would say that I receive inspiration from life in general. You learn so much just from walking through the day and all that you experience. There’s certainly plenty to choose from!

Speaking of lessons in life, you most recently starred as Jenna in Waitress who we see go through this incredible journey. What was the most empowering part about playing that role?

I had a great experience! The biggest lesson that stayed with me was just how powerful vulnerability can be. The more willing you are to show the deepest and darkest parts of yourself, the greater the connection you will have with others. Some of the other roles I’ve played [such as Elphaba] were examples of women who led with this outward strength. Jenna’s journey was different, and it was a little more challenging to play her.

Looking back on your career, is there a lesson or piece of advice that has continued to move you forward?

Not something specific, but something that I think is important is that it’s not enough to just have a goal or dream in life – because it can’t just be about yourself. It needs to serve a bigger purpose. I’ve always lived by that and knew that performing was what I was meant to do – – there was never a Plan B. I wanted to share my journey with others.

Shoshana begins performances on Saturday, August 24th and her run at Feinstein’s/54 Below will go through September 3rd. Click here for tickets and to learn more.

Michael Feinstein chats with Forbes about his engagement at Feinstein’s/54 Below

Michael Feinstein’s New Show Celebrates New York And An Earlier Time In A Fresh Way

By Jeryl Brunner

In 1980, before his Grammy and Emmy award nominations, Michael Feinstein was a fresh-faced kid living in Los Angeles. The composer and lyricist, Harry Warren, introduced him to one of the great vocalists of the post-war era, Margaret Whiting. Warren, a legend in his own right, who wrote “Forty Second Street,” “Lullaby Of Broadway” and countless songs for musicals said, “this is a talented kid.” Whiting replied to Feinstein, “Well, if you ever come to New York, call me.” And she wrote down “Margaret Whiting Girl Singer, Plaza 3 8084.”

At the time Feinstein was working for Ira Gershwin and had just begun his performing career. When he got to New York he took Whiting up on her offer. “She said, ‘Come on kid.’ And she took me around,” says Feinstein. Whiting who had more than dozen gold records (“That Old Black Magic,” “It Might as Well Be Spring,” “Come Rain or Come Shine,”), was the cabaret queen. She also took Feinstein under her wing. “She did that for a lot of people,” he says.

The experience with Whiting turned out to be life changing. “She took me around to all the night clubs and places that were happening,” shares Feinstein. She introduced him to everyone from Mabel Mercer to Bobby Short. “It was a community that was so special. All of these performers were embracing songs and music that were specific to New York. Not necessarily in theme, but in style, content and aesthetic,” explains Feinstein. Since then he realized many people have never experienced those songs. “So musically I want to recreate that,” he says.

His new show I Happen To Like New York at Feinstein’s/54 Below pays tribute to those songs. Not only does it celebrate the music of New York, but also the great nightclub entertainers who have made New York unique. “So many songs have been written about New York,” says Feinstein. “I thought it would be great to do a songs of New York show.” I Happen To Like New York contains familiar songs that people know and adore, but Feinstein also mixed it up with lesser known songs. Throughout the shows this month he will have special guests including Marilyn Maye, Melissa Manchester, (August 15–20) and Jackie Evancho, (August 21–23.)

I Happen To Like New York also offers a special tribute to the divine cabaret singer and pianist Bobby Short to thank him and remember him for his dazzling career and talent. “Bobby Short had extraordinary taste in music. He took classics and reinvented them to be absolutely fresh and timeless, which is what this music is all about,” says Feinstein of the bon vivant Short who was born in Danville, Illinois and totally reinvented himself as a sophisticated and magnetic performer who was unlike anyone else.

“Bobby Short infused so many different styles into what he did. He was an amazing jazz pianist. All the different things that he put into his music made him unique.” As Feinstein observes, Short would take all the newest Broadway songs, like “Losing My Mind” from The Follies, and combine them with an obscure Cole Porter Song. “What Bobby did is a lost art today. Everybody went to see him so they could steal the songs that he was singing.”

Jacqueline Novak on Late Night with Seth Meyers

Jacqueline Novak chatted with Seth Meyers about her Off-Broadway show Get On Your Knees. 

LATE NIGHT WITH SETH MEYERS — Episode 871 — Pictured: (l-r) Comedian Jacqueline Novak during an interview with host Seth Meyers on August 8, 2019 — (Photo by: Lloyd Bishop/NBC)

LATE NIGHT WITH SETH MEYERS — Episode 871 — Pictured: (l-r) Comedian Jacqueline Novak during an interview with host Seth Meyers on August 8, 2019 — (Photo by: Lloyd Bishop/NBC)

LATE NIGHT WITH SETH MEYERS — Episode 871 — Pictured: (l-r) Comedian Jacqueline Novak during an interview with host Seth Meyers on August 8, 2019 — (Photo by: Lloyd Bishop/NBC)

When It Happens to You to play Off-Broadway at The Sheen Center

Tawni O’Dell to Bring ‘Theatrical Memoir’ When It Happens to You Off-Broadway

The play explores a mother’s reaction after her daughter becomes the victim of a sexual assault.

Writer Tawni O’Dell will take the stage in her piece When It Happens to You, a play billed as a “theatrical memoir” based on her own experiences grappling with sexual assault’s impact on survivors and their loved ones. Performances will run October 2 through November 10 at Off-Broadway’s Sheen Center for Thought and Culture.

The world premiere is directed by co-conceiver and Tony nominee Lynne Taylor-Corbett.

The cast will also include E. Clayton Cornelious, Connor Lawrence, and Kelly Swint. The staging features sets by Rob Bissinger and Anita LaScala, lighting by Daisey Long, and costumes by David Woolard.

O’Dell’s additional works include the novels Back Roads, which she recently adapted for the screen, as well as Coal Run and Sister Mine.

“The first time I held my daughter after she was born I made a silent promise to her I would always protect her,” says O’Dell.

“Then came a night in our future when that promise was shattered. I couldn’t protect her from the man who stalked her through the streets of her beloved New York City, broke into her home, and assaulted her,” O’Dell explains. “During the next few years, her life fell apart and so did my own as I tried to help her deal with the fallout from this awful crime. As a way to help make sense of what we were going through, I did what writers do: I wrote about it… Rape touches just about every one of us. More women are sexually assaulted in this country than are affected by heart disease and breast cancer combined. To say it is an epidemic is not hyperbole.”

Opening night is set for October 13.

Jacqueline Novak chats with Rolling Stone

Oral History: Comedian Jacqueline Novak Breaks Down the Blowjob

In her one-woman show, ‘Get on Your Knees,’ Novak goes deep on going down

Jacqueline Novak is worried about her entrance.

“I remember reading magazines as a teenager, and the description of the person on their way in to the interview would stick with me,” the writer and comedian says over lunch at Via Carota in Manhattan’s West Village. “I remember Maggie Gyllenhaal once being described as carrying a purse that looked like a grandmother’s sewing bag. I don’t want to slander Maggie Gyllenhaal, but I bet it was, like, a Vera Bradley bag and the author just didn’t know.” Novak takes a final sip of the mid-day margarita I encouraged her to get, as if toasting our shared responsibility in the impression she makes in this story.

“I had this moment this morning,” Novak continues, “Where I was like, Oh, Jesus, how would I want to show up to this thing if I had seven hours to prepare for it? What would I want my hair to be? What call would I want to be just getting off of in this performance of an entrance?”

The production of Novak’s appearance at this interview was fabulous: grey T shirt somewhere between fancy and tatty; auburn bun curling at the temples from an afternoon storm; non-Vera Bradley purse nice enough that the server was compelled to present Novak with little footstool to rest it on; phone whose fading charge indicated it had recently fielded a number of very important communiques. Perhaps she’d had gotten a text from John Early, the director of the Novak’s one-woman show Get on Your Knees, a genius ode to fellatio running at New York’s Cherry Lane Theatre through August 18th. Maybe there was a Slack from Mike Birbiglia, its executive producer, or a WhatsApp from Natasha Lyonne, who helped bring this production of the play to fruition after meeting Novak when she was the opening act on the comedy tour of Lyonne’s boyfriend Fred Armisen. Or Novak could have already received the news that Get on Your Knees would be moving to the nearby Lucille Lortel Theatre from August 28th to September 21st following sold-out shows and gushing reviews in the New York Times and New Yorker.

Novak’s ingress in Get on Your Knees projects its own ambivalence. “OK, that was hell,” Novak says after tentatively making her way from the side door to the microphone at center stage, retreating a few times before taking up the pacing that will continue until the show ends 90 minutes later. “The journey from backstage,” she explains, flipping the mic cord over her shoulder like a backpack strap, “to me it’s very similar to the journey from someone’s face… down their torso… to their pelvis… to give them a blow job. Everyone knows what you’re about to do, but you’re not doing it yet, so this question hovers in the air: Can she do it? Will she do the thing well or not well? That tenuousness! Do you feel it, even now?”

Despite its fairly overt title, when I purchased tickets for Get on Your Knees, I was unaware of its subject matter. I blithely walked past the theater on Commerce Street and recognized Novak’s name from tweets like “when the yoga teacher adjusts you, it is cause they [are] in love with you and when they adjust other people they are doing it to cover up their love of you by adjusting them too.” Then I read the list of illustrious comedians on the poster, pulled out my phone, and bought a seat to what I guess I assumed was a humorous show about prayer. (Given how little front-end research I did and how susceptible I evidently am to advertising, my day could have just as easily ended in enrollment at the University of Phoenix or a bed full of MyPillows.)

Blessedly, Get on Your Knees turned out to be the seminal work on its subject, exploding with trenchant analysis and autobiographical experience with the act. Novak manages to compare the teeth’s role in oral sex to the stone wall that separates Romeo from Juliet — you know, two barriers to pleasure — and recalls her high school field hockey team encouraging her to perform her first BJ, cheering her on with supportive chants of “Blow him! Blow him!” Get on Your Knees is a gleeful rant on the indignities of romance. (“At times, to be a woman is to be the great American novel baked inside a cheesy crust pizza. Whether someone’s hungry or they’re looking to read… either way they’re annoyed.”) It’s a loving examination of the gentler, more pensive qualities of the penis. (“I think it has the soul of a poet. It responds to visual stimuli, sees something it likes and fills with inspiration!”)

Get on Your Knees is also hilarious, reimagining themes of sexuality introduced in Novak’s more meditative first album, Quality Notions, and How to Weep in Public, her book on the depression that drove her back to her parents’ Westchester County home in adulthood. The comedian deploys the kind of uproarious, dexterous provocation seen in Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette or Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag. (Novak says she intends to turn Get on Your Knees into a special, though she’s not sure whether it will find broad distribution on a network, or on a streaming service.) When I left the theater after the show, I had to Google poetry allusions I’d missed (shout-out to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock!) and ask my childhood best friend about the hand job technique we’d read about in Cosmo during our desperate, eighth grade search for information on what one does with one’s hands while giving oral sex. (Cosmo’s recommendation was “the Eternal Vagina,” which Novak deems “brilliant” when I tell her about it at lunch. “Is it as if the penetration is forever, because there’s more pleasure on the ‘in’ than the ‘out’?” she wonders, gazing at the sky. “Wow.”)

Get On Your Knees’ tonal clashes are inseparable from Novak’s real-life high-to-low, oral sex-to-literary analysis conversational swings. They’re also an intentional squirm out of the claustrophobic grasp of characterization. “If someone said to me,” Novak says, “’Your stand-up’s on a more intellectual level,’” I’d be like, ‘How dare you? I’m a tradesman. I’m a comic.’” And then if they were like, ‘You’re telling dick jokes,’ I’d be like, ‘No, this is my spiritual world view. You aren’t paying enough attention.’”

Though Novak is lovely and gracious in person, kindly encouraging the sharing of dishes and providing a much-needed correction of my pronunciation of the Italian pasta stracci, her brand of adult-onset oppositional-defiant disorder gives Novak’s stage persona a deliciously dickish quality. Like her collaborators Birbiglia, Early, and Lyonne, Novak is deeply aware of her own flaws. As they all do in performance, Novak catalogues the rules she’s ignoring — from blowjob technique regulations passed down from other women to feedback from men about whether she should be blowing at all — and consequently floats above such societal commandments, lofted by her own self-recrimination.

In addition to performing the extension of Get on Your Knees and deciding where its forthcoming taped version will be broadcast, Novak has moved to Los Angeles to develop TV projects and is working through the attention that comes with incipient comedy stardom — her current recurring stress nightmare is that she keeps finding more and more cats in her house. “I want to keep them all,” she says. “I don’t want to discard any of them.”

Still, Novak says of her newfound abundance, “I basically think all things should overflow. When you get fries at a restaurant, the plate should be heaping. It should look like those are just the only fries that made it onto the plate. There should be an onion ring that appears as a mistake. To me, it suggests the right spirit in the kitchen. If something is too perfectly contained, it was too small to begin with.”

I’m nodding, rapt with Novak’s lyrical transformation of the flaws of life into cosmic encouragement of joyous ambition. She finishes the thought with a rumination on her current area of focus. “It’s like with blowjobs,” Novak says. “Your teeth get in the way because there’s an insufficiency of the body’s ability to express a much larger desire. I’m, like, throwing myself on the altar of my attempt.” Novak contemplates the toothy blowjob for a second and smiles, baring her own incisors. “This maybe is just a way of defending all of my imperfections,” she says.

Jaqueline Novak: Get On Your Knees extends & finds new home

Jacqueline Novak: Get on Your Knees Extends Off-Broadway, Finds New Home

By Ryan McPhee

The Off-Broadway premiere of Jacqueline Novak: Get On Your Knees will remain in the West Village—albeit at a new venue—for a month longer than initially scheduled.

Novak’s 75-minute comedy routine will play through August 18 at its current home, the Cherry Lane Theatre. Following a brief hiatus, the show will resume performances at the nearby Lucille Lortel Theatre August 28–September 21.

In the show, directed by fellow comedian John Early, Novak weaves a story of sexual coming-of-age with philosophy, her love of literature, and meditations on the femininity of the penis.

Jacqueline Novak: Get On Your Knees is presented by Russian Doll and Orange Is the New Black star Natasha Lyonne, with Mike Birbiglia attached as executive producer. The producing team also includes Mike Lavoie, Carlee Briglia, and Abingdon Theatre Company.