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Sarah Bursich
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Photograph by Thomas Crone
Kenny Kinds
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Photograph by Thomas Crone
Stryker Spurlock
For our second round of interviews, profiling active members of the St. Louis standup comedy community, we selected a group of performers that are hosts, show creators, and performers. All can be found at local open mics, as well as the shows listed at the end of this piece. And, of course, your best option for following all the action remains St. Louis Independent Comedy.
Prefaces aside, let’s get the answers to seven questions about the craft and creation of comedy from three great, St. Louis-based practitioners of the art: Sarah Bursich, Kenny Kinds and Stryker Spurlock.
What types of mindset are ideal for creating good comedic bits? Do you work best with deadlines? Do you write best under pressure? Or do you work more productively when life's playing nice? Have you worked something that's happened that day into a set?
Bursich: I think my best writing comes when I stop being critical of myself—just writing for the joy of writing, or the joy of the story. That leads to a lot of editing later, of course—I throw most of my stuff out before it ever makes it to stage. I can sit and write two or three pages and most of it’s fluff, so it gets cut. But it’s easier to pick out the good stuff if it comes from a sincere place, so I just try to let an idea run before I worry about perfecting it. I am vehemently anti-deadlines, but I’m a lot more efficient when I have to finish something, so… I guess it’s somewhere in the middle. I have a great support system… my husband, basically… and he doesn’t hesitate to remind me when I haven’t written anything in a while. It’s very annoying, but it’s also really nice. I usually brush it off and then “come up with this great idea for a bit all on my own accord” a few days later. It’s stupid, but it works. Or if I feel like I’m not satisfying my creativity enough, it starts to wear on me a little, and I realize I should write something. A lot of my favorite stuff has been bred from pressures like those.
Kinds: I can't speak for everyone about what the ideal mindset for creating good comedy would be. I normally write premises that I think are funny into my phone and expand on them in a notebook later on. I'm sure everyone has a process that works for them. I definitely work better with deadlines, but I don't really have any deadlines that I deal with. I could see myself benefiting from setting deadlines. I can go weeks without writing anything because I've gotten too comfortable with the material.
Spurlock: I'm pretty manic when I think of most of my ideas. Usually while pacing around my basement, or driving and talking out loud. Pressure/urgency helps me. It's easy to get caught in a hazy ennui slog of going to empty open mics and spinning my wheels. Talking about things the day they happened is how I write a lot of bits. My grandma died on a Sunday, and I did a bit about it the following Tuesday. It hasn't worked since.
Similarly, describe your experiences with open mics and how important (or not) they are in how you shape a set, or incorporate new material?
Bursich: I think this really depends on the type of comedy, probably. I do a lot of biographical stuff—stories about being a sad kid or my grandparents getting older. Mics are incredibly important for me when it comes to that type of stuff. I want to relay how I feel about these experiences, why it’s OK that they’re kind of weird and imperfect, and that takes a lot of trust in my writing and my ability to get the audience invested. I do a lot of editing on stage at mics to try to avoid just talking at people. If something I think is funny doesn’t hit right on stage, I’ll rewrite it or throw it out completely. Sometimes I realize an entirely different direction a joke should be going in because of the audience’s response at a mic.
Kinds: Open mics are crucial if you want to get better. There's no way around it. I would say that the bulk of getting better is the repetition, especially if you are working on something new. I've seen national headliners come to an open mic after a night at a club. Getting that rhythm down takes a lot of work and a lot of hours. Someone who does it every night is going to get a lot stronger a lot faster than someone who does is intermittently throughout the month.
Spurlock: I used to love "grinding," going to every open mic I could. These days, I skip a lot to work on Fatal Bus Accident, instead. I love getting onstage, and I write a lot of new stuff, but mics only help me so much. I feel like I'm wasting everyone's time and my own if I don't have anything to actively work on. Also, a lot of open mics are just three comics at midnight in a room with bad acoustics. At that point, the show is just a weird illusion, and probably not actually helpful. I still do those empty mics, and get onstage about five times a week. I know you're supposed to get up at every possible opportunity, but everyone who says this is an insane person. I'm over-simplifying, but it's comedy. Do literally whatever you want to do. I never thought I'd have this attitude, but I got burnt out and priorities shifted.
Do your sets involve topical humor, i.e. based on the news, politics, current events or "now" pop culture? Or do you enjoy working with more evergreen types of material?
Bursich: Evergreen, I guess. I don’t really do topical stuff. My main focus is just pulling from experience. Also, I have no real grasp of topical humor. It would just be uncomfortable for me and the audience. They would know I was a big ol’ phony as soon as I picked up the mic.
Kinds: I don't do a lot of topical humor, throughout my set as most of what I do is a close to personal experiences as I can. Honestly, everyone has experienced everything is some form or another. The key for me is to make it as unique and ridiculous as possible. When I do go topical, I normally do it at the top of set because it helps get the crowd involved more quickly, because they can relate. I don't watch or listen to a lot of relevant television or music so it can be a little tough, but now you can just talk about Trump, and everyone in usually on board.
Spurlock: My material is mostly about my inner monologue/relationships with other people. I don't passionately care about much else. I'll do material about the external world if I can make it about me. I've lately been doing a bit that's basically me advocating left-wing terrorism. But I tie it into my own personality, and make it about how I'm just impotent and frustrated.
Any recollections of your first set? Went smoothly? Better left in the past? What stands out weeks, months, years later?
Bursich: It went better than it should have. I spent maybe a month crafting this very intricate set. I did theater and speech performance and stuff like that throughout high school, so I rehearsed it and tried to craft it to where it flowed and had some sense of purpose. It was really stupid, and I thought I was very clever. I did this joke about my mom reading excerpts from 50 Shades of Grey aloud to me and then, like… I said I tried to kiss her or something, and “now there are 50 Shades of Grey between us.” Ugh. I feel sick. See? That’s why I can’t do topical jokes, because I actually have no sense of humor at all. Anyway, it went OK. People laughed, and I felt pretty good about myself. My next set was at a different mic; both were in Carbondale, Illinois, but it was all comics in the audience. Since I was SO funny my first set, I barely prepared. I went up with a bunch of premises and no jokes. I don’t know that I got a single laugh. It was so bad. I learned: Just because they laugh, that doesn’t mean it’s good. Why they laughed is more important than whether or not they laughed, in my opinion. I also learned not to be an asshole, to have humility, and to bomb as gracefully as possible if you have to.
Kinds: My first set was memorable only because a guy offered to give me advice and then proceeded to get on stage, drunk, towards the end of my set. In hindsight, that probably helped.
Spurlock: I was 15. It was at a music open mic at a winery in California. It went well because my family and friends were all there. I told a seven-minute story about the first date I'd ever been on, which happened a week before the set. I shook for the first minute. I got banned from that place later for not being a clean act.
If given the choice, would you prefer to: deliver a technically solid, polished, rehearsed, all-cylinders-firing set to a middling-into-it audience; or would rather offer up a loose, spontaneous, messy, circus-wire performance to an appreciative audience?
Bursich: The second one. The best feeling in the world is coming up with a joke right before you go on stage, or while you’re on stage, and just going for it—and they LIKE it. Oh, baby. So good. I just think it’s really rewarding to be genuine on stage—if the audience doesn’t like it, there’s something liberating about being totally yourself. It’s like “Oh, they don’t like me. That’s fine. Plenty of people don’t like me. This is normal.” And if they like you, then… well, that’s nice! That means some people like you just fine!
Kinds: I think anyone will tell you that the latter is more fun and more engaging.
Spurlock: Definitely the second choice. The majority of audiences are "middling-into-it" and I'd rather have fun onstage with a crowd actively engaged with the performers where I'm also in the moment. I'm on autopilot too often.
The set's over. People are milling around the room. What's the best way to compliment a performer's set? What's the best comment that you've heard of late, whether it be a compliment or a smart observation? How much do you wanna hear from patrons, as opposed to other performers?
Bursich: A sincere “Hey, I really liked that” is golden. Standup is a really vulnerable thing—so any recognition or validation is really, really cool. The best compliment is probably to just be dying laughing the entire set. Sometimes people will find me after shows and tell me that they really related to what I was saying, or tell me an embarrassing story that mirrors whatever I shared. I think that’s great, because it makes me feel like I’m making it okay to be uncomfortable about stuff and laugh at things that some people don’t want to hear about. As far as patrons v. performers—I think both sides have different, valuable opinions. I’m open to whatever. If anyone has anything to say, that means it was worth listening to in the first place, so… cool.
Kinds: A “'hey, great set” or “I enjoyed that” is good enough, as far as I'm concerned. I did have someone tell me that they were going through a tough time and that what they heard really cheered them up. That means a lot.
Spurlock: Audience compliments are great when they're accurate. Even if they miss the mark, the effort is still appreciated. Hands down best compliment I ever got from an audience member was a woman trying to give me unsolicited tips on how to enter the Indianapolis BDSM community. But the things that have made me feel the best were said by other comics I respect. Their praise seems to hold more weight because they know the craft themselves and know what's good or not.
When are your next, planned public performances?
Bursich: I’ll be on A Solid 20 on Friday, February 10th at the Monocle (doors at 7, show at 8)—with Carolyn Agnew and Brandon Judd. I’m so excited for this show! Chris Cyr and Eric Brown have done a great job pulling it together; it’s the first one they’re doing and I love the concept. Carolyn and Brandon are both great, too, so it’s nice to be in such good company. I’ll be doing 20 minutes of my favorite stuff… and I think my parents will be there, so that’s neat. I’ll also be on Ken Warner’s Coffee Break on March 3rd at Foam (8 pm). This show has been growing a lot; Ken’s great and so is Foam. And 20% of proceeds go to Grounds for Health, which makes me very happy.
Kinds: Everything's Bigger in Chicago on March 2.
Spurlock: I run a monthly showcase at Shameless Grounds called Contraceptive Comedy. Next one is February 18 at 8pm, $5. I also co-produce Fatal Bus Accident, a mostly monthly sketch/un-talk show at the Heavy Anchor. Next one is February 22 at 9pm, $5. We basically write a new hour long play every month. It's the best show in North America.
