Brent Weinbach
American alternative comic Brent Weinbach makes his Hong Kong debut this month. Why alternative, you ask? Evelyn Lok asks him about his style of humor on stage and off.
HK: How would you describe your own sense of humor?
Brent Weinbach: I like visual comedy. I like the idea that someone who doesn’t even speak English at all [can] get something out of my stand-up comedy. I’m not as interested in words as much as I am interested in the sounds of the words. I kinda like doing physical sorts of things, funny voices and stuff. The comedy comes from the way I am and portray characters—specifically, my deadpan, straight demeanor, in contrast to these more flamboyant, colorful characters.
HK: People describe your humor and style of delivery as absurd, alternative, and even post-modern. What do you think about that?
BW: I would agree with that. I like stuff that doesn’t make sense in your head, but on a deeper level that goes beyond language; when people can laugh at something and not understand why. I like silly stuff.
HK: And “post-modern?”
BW: I do kind of agree—even though this is going to sound pretentious—I would describe certain comedy as post-modern whenever people try to recreate familiar nuances. It’s not coming from them making fun of something, it’s of them just recreating familiar tropes in human interactions in a really precise way. There’s something really funny about that.
HK: When you're on stage, you look really stern and serious. Why is that?
BW: I don’t want to create the illusion that I’m having a conversation with the audience, or that I’m being spontaneous on stage. Most stand-up comedy looks like it’s spontaneous and conversational, even though it’s not. It’s really rehearsed. I’ve always felt phony about doing something like that. So the most honest and real way I could perform is by treating it more like a presentation, and to be more deliberate about it.
HK: What's the worst show you’ve ever performed?
BW:There’s a good handful of worst shows. There’s a show I did in Modesto, California. I’d only been doing comedy for about a year. Aside from getting booed off stage, the really difficult part about it was that people started throwing things like me, like wet napkins, and fruit—that was really interesting to me, because it felt like I was in some Vaudevillian era where people threw tomatoes at people. There was also another show where someone tried to spit on me. It missed me, fortunately, but that was scary. I guess I rise above it by having good shows.
