Comedy

I had spoken at teacher conferences across the country, but telling jokes in a dive bar at midnight was the most terrifying stage I’d ever stood on. This was different. This was entertainment. This was more performative. This was therapy.

Comedy and tragedy are two sides of the same coin and their relationship goes back as far as Ancient Greece. Much of the greatest comedy is derived from a place of deep pain and where I was in my life had me primed for performance.

In the span of three years, I lost my teaching career, my marriage, my daughters, my father, my house. Samantha terminated our first pregnancy. Then, after only four days of engagement, she left me. At some point, grief piles so high that laughter is the only way to breathe. Then, just like my friend Mark had convinced me to start writing, my friend Abe convinced me to try standup.

Comedy shows up in my visual art now and then, but it runs all through Perfect Day. Matthew does standup. Work scenes play like sitcoms. Even the darkest moments are laced with humor — not to mock pain, but to wrestle back control from it.

People dismiss comedy as low-brow, the cheap cousin of tragedy. But history tells a different story. Both stood side by side on the same stage in Athens. Both lived in Shakespeare. And both live in me.