Essay
THE DIVULGERS How the stage changes comedians’ perceptions of the truth
words by jackson weaver illustration by jaik puppyteeth Ed Hill nav igates the stage in the same way. A child of Taiwanese immigrant parents, he has morphed with his comedian persona. Asked how years onstage have changed his relationship with the truth he presents to his audiences, he doesn’t hesitate before answering. “Initially? It was 100% fake,” he admits. “It was ver y gimmicky, ver y cliché, ver y objective. At the start, you tend to look at generalizations, because those are the easiest topics to do.”
The stage turned Ivan Decker into someone else. Why? Because the truth doesn’t work the same way up there. After more than a decade of working as a stand-up comedian, Decker’s perception of who he is has changed. Stand-up is about telling true stories, but framed in a way that get a laugh—and as Decker figured out the types of stories he wanted to tell, it actually changed how he saw himself. Now he recounts experiences that really happened to him, but through a persona he has developed—and they’ve both moved from where they began.
After over five years of touring, the stage changed that. From accidentally murdering his pet turtle, to his father not bringing a camera to his first band performance because “no one wants to remember this,” to his f irst forays into self-pleasure that somehow resulted in his mother breaking her hip— Hill shares his most private thoughts and stories in his sets now, and is still somehow able to make them funny. He mines for personal tragedy and then displays it when he gets onstage. “My entire set is just a vulnerability pit,” he says. “But I have to talk about it. Because that’s how I process it.”
“When you start comedy, your onstage persona is over here,” he explains, spreading one hand far away from the other. “But what makes a great comic is that they’re as close to their personality onstage as off. That shift doesn’t happen with your onstage persona coming closer to your real persona—it’s that they meet in the middle.” His hands join, and the empty space between them disappears.
“I’m not omitting the truth, but I’m not revealing all the information. And that’s where there’s truth in comedy.” That’s the nature of stand-up; it has always been a place of personal admonitions, often going as far as the near-painful honesty of Tig Notaro’s infamous set crafted around her breast cancer diagnosis, or Louis CK’s personal admissions about his failed marriage and struggles with depression. In Decker’s case, his set has become a curated window into his offstage self. His skit about being terrified of the gym is really about his own self-consciousness; peppered with self-derogatory remarks, it gets laughs even though it would elicit cringes anywhere else. His routine on drinking coffee first thing after waking up, even though being a stand-up comedian means he has nothing to do but watch Netflix until 8 p.m., is a not-so-subtle dig at a supposed lack of productivity, or perhaps a loneliness that comes with the job. Still, when we hear it, we laugh. It’s a level of profession we don’t want anywhere but the comedy club—an openness that Decker needs, and one that it took him time to be comfortable with. He had to learn that the truth was integral to his art. He’s now able to cultivate that vulnerability, and use it to his advantage. “You put yourself into a joke. It’s better to watch somebody just being vulnerable,” he explains. “It’s like a relationship: the first time you tell your partner something you wouldn’t tell anybody else, you strengthen your connection. That’s what I love about it: really picking up the energy in there with those people, and working with it, and making it the best it can be… then you all leave, and you never see each other again.”
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And yet, stand-up is not an all-access pass; it doesn’t simply give a full picture of the comedian’s life. Rather, it changes the standard for truth. Outside of Decker’s show one night, a woman stands next to him, her hand in his. She’s his partner, but Decker didn’t speak a word about her onstage that evening, and never has. It’s the same with Hill; his wife will never be featured in a single one of his jokes. It’s a rule made as part of their marriage. “And I’m going to respect that, because that’s important. There are things that need to be left unsaid, out of respect for others,” Hill says. “When I talk about my family… it’s the truth, it’s not fact.” By requiring only the emotions of an experience without the facts and details framing it, comedians create a different form of truth. The stage demands something unlike any other space; it requires stories that would be painful in any other venue. The main objective, of course, is to make people laugh—but that has to be done within the frame of real life. That’s the very nature of the game. Stand-up requires the lightness of truth without the baggage of fact. “It’s not not true,” Decker says of his act. “I’m not omitting the truth, but I’m not revealing all the information. And that’s where there’s truth in comedy… you don’t have to lie, but you can certainly take out parts of the story that aren’t necessary.” To connect with an audience, comedians like Decker and Hill give away their rawest, most vulnerable memories, but tweak, stretch, and obscure them—and, consequently, themselves. It’s personal truth, but it’s not fact. Just because what comedians talk about onstage is intimate doesn’t mean they are divulging everything. It doesn’t mean you’re getting the entire story. “It’s the appearance of truth,” Decker says. He smiles.
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