CD: Was it a success?

 

JF: It went well. There were way more people than I expected. I was afraid we were going to run out of pizza. But we didn’t so that was good. It was fun. We got five different people to write plays. They were all very different. I think the audience did not know what to expect and they were pleasantly surprised.

 

CD: There’s a lot of pressure in comedy to do things that are large scale with a kind of anonymous audience. It’s all about the performer. But what I find so interesting about your comedy is that it’s the antithesis of that. Your shows are participatory: they have to be local, you have to be there. There’s real magic in being a participant, even though it doesn’t scale and doesn’t work digitally at all.

 

JF: Oh, okay, yeah. I see what you’re saying. But I think I’ve thought about it in the opposite way, like in a negative way? Like, “Oh fuck, this is nothing. Nothing’s gonna come from this.” The worst way to make a comedy career is to make it only for fifteen people, and only for an hour. I feel like you need momentum to spread and to get as many viewers as possible, and nothing that I’ve done has really had that power. But that’s okay. I think that’s okay. It’s just, I see other people doing it and I’m like, “Wow, that’s really amazing. I don’t think I can do that.”