kristen schaal

written by Ken Carlson
(Jan/Feb 07)

“Seven years ago, my manager at the time set up a showcase for some of Conan O’Brien’s people. I asked him to put me on. He had never watched much of my stuff, but he said OK. He didn’t know what I was going to do. It was at Stand-Up New York. It was a stand-up showcase.”
“I had this character who wore a wig and was completely incoherent. She would just describe these movies she had seen without using words. I loved her, but you don’t do that at Stand-Up New York. So, I go out there and people didn’t know what to think and just began to talk with other people at their tables. I bombed. One woman at the front liked it a lot. I left the club and had to take a cab to go temp at a law firm throughout the night.”

It’s easy to see why some stand-up audience members would not appreciate Kristen Schaal’s act. She’s different. She doesn’t walk up there with hard-hitting setups and punchlines about standard topics. But, with Comedy Central credits, a ‘Best Alternative Comic Award’ at the Aspen Comedy Festival, and great reviews for her Hot Tub Variety Show which she co-hosts with Kurt Braunohler, who cares? I asked her how she would describe her act. “It’s not stand-up. I don’t really know. I opened for Paul F. Tompkins at Comix, a stand-up environment. They (Comix) just asked me. Rocky, the woman who books acts there, saw me in ‘Aspen’ and asked me to do a show. I think that my stuff played OK. But, I like to use props. I just want to make sure that I paint the most accurate picture, to not limit myself to just words; of whatever I’m trying to do. So, I’ll allow myself to use props and not be ashamed of it.”
“How do I describe my stand-up? I would like to say that I’m a performance artist, but that would sound snobby. I think I’m a performance artist, but with a funnier edge. But, I like to mix some stand-up, too. I like stand-up. It’s funny. It surprises me. Whatever image it paints of the person that’s saying it; I love it.”
“I think it is nice to watch someone doing something that no one else is doing that night. I think it’s interesting if someone brings up a soapbox (as Kristen did in a great bit I saw her do at Moonwork last month). I like to think that my stuff has an arc. I like to play with the form, the whole idea within the stand-up world of having eight minutes or 20 minutes and not do what everyone else is doing.”

“I think the genre (of stand-up) is stale; not here in New York. It’s hard for me to talk about this because I feel so snobby. But, it’s like painting a canvas. You could use oils when you paint it, but what if you stuck some plastic figurines on it, did a diorama, cut a hole through the middle, put it on a dog. What if you push it and push it and push it when it doesn’t go. The fact that there is a canvas to push, that it exists, I think is important and I would never poke fun at that. It’s sacred.”
Kristen was born in Colorado and raised on a farm in Longmont. “I made it through high school without dropping out or getting pregnant. I spent one year at the University of Colorado, then transferred to Northwestern.” She was brought to New York with a group of ten student actors to perform for some agents. “I got an agent and moved to New York. I still have her, Ellie Goldberg. (laughing in mock drama) She saw something.”
“This is my first year without a day job. When I first moved out here, I had gotten some acting work right away; two national ads, a movie and a TV series. Man, that was a great fuckin’ year. I was an actress. Then 9/11 happened and I stopped working. I’m not blaming 9/11, but I didn’t get any acting work for three to four years. I was working terrible jobs. One of the worst jobs I ever had was to be a character at FAO Schwarz. Luckily, I got laid off and got unemployment. I just stayed in bed. It was a dark period which lasted six months. I didn’t do any comedy.”
“Then, my unemployment ran out and I got a job waiting tables and decided to get back into improv. Suddenly, I was back in the whole thing. So much so, that even though I had been around, I had dropped out long enough, a couple of years, so one night here (at Rififi) Nick Kroll asked, ‘Where did you come from?’ It was a little rude, but it was true. Where the fuck was I? I was just out. Then I got back in and boom (snap, snap, snap) things started happening. I think I needed that time. I like to look back on my life and think that it’s all good.”

“Improv is so huge in everything, absolutely everything I do. I’ve been doing it for over ten years. I took classes in Chicago at the IO and Second City. I took a couple of classes at The Groundlings in LA and a couple of classes at UCB. At auditions, improv is huge. If you add just one line at the end of a commercial and it’s funny, you’ve got a better shot. Also, I think improv in acting helps you learn structure in scenes and understand the components better. For comedy, if I’m writing something, I’ll just improvise and go back if it’s funny and write it down.”
“I remember taking classes at UCB and being angry. I really wanted to get in there and they said, ‘Hey, since you’ve taken all these classes, you can take Level 2.’ To relearn it after all these years of doing it, is not fun. I could never teach.”

On this night at Rififi, Kristen is performing with Kurt. They’re working on a new sketch and the small house gives a it a cordial reaction. It’s hard to compare Kristen with other performers since her persona is so distinctive. There is certainly heart in her stage work resembling one-woman performances by Lily Tomlin. But, Kristen speaks in such a simple, gentle way which sets up outrageous punches, like Emo Philips. “My digs come out in material, but I never sit down and write material to make digs. You’ve got to see where it will naturally go. If there are bad things in your material, you can get away with it if your character is likable. ‘Oh, she’s innocent. She talks with that voice.’ Then you can say something about your vagina. It makes a bigger impact which is nice. I don’t talk about my vagina much, just once I did.”
“‘Aspen’ came about when New York Magazine posted their list of ‘10 Funniest New Yorkers You’ve Never Heard Of.’ Then I got a call from the Aspen guys. Then they wanted to see a tape. Then they weren’t sure. I had to audition seven times in one month because they just weren’t sure. I thought, ‘What do you want?’ They didn’t know where to put me. I wasn’t ‘stand-up,’ and I wasn’t a ‘one-woman show.’ So, what is it? After doing so many auditions for them, I had an idea of coming out with a bloody head because of the stress and ridiculousness of it. So, for my last callback, I came out on stage with this fake blood in my hands. I told them I wanted to play them a song. As I went to get my instrument, I fell. So when I got up, there was blood oozing all over the place. I had this moment where I freaked out. Then I told them that I still wanted to do it. So, I picked up my instrument to play. But, it hurt so much, I started bawling.”
Kristen added that nobody thought she was really hurt, but they loved it and she did it in ‘Aspen’. “I like that bit, but will probably never do it again. I’d be too worried that I’d get it on my clothes. It’s also pretty weird.”

“I feel like I’m acting in my stand-up the whole time. So, I don’t really see the difference between acting and stand-up. I don’t get that at all. I know stand-ups who are excellent actors and if an actor is funny and can write, then they should do that too. Actors don’t write because they’re actors, but if they did, they’d get a lot more work.”
“My process is that I get a little idea and I let it incubate in my head. I start with an image that I’d like to see. I’ll close my eyes and imagine a stage. I imagine me up on stage and I’m watching. Then, I imagine what I would like to see me do, what would entertain me. I think of an activity I want to do on stage. I trust myself enough to know that it will get layered with a whole other idea. Then, something else might layer that, too. By the time it’s done it has different layers and I’ll do it. Mostly, it’s improvised in my bedroom. I like to know where it’s going. Most of my stuff isn’t written down. I did a 30-minute set and my manager wanted to send it out to LA. Then, I had to try to write it all down. I always keep it up in my head.”
“At Comix, this past week, I did fifteen minutes. It was my first chance to see what that’s like; performing for a crowd at 10:30 on Saturday night in the meat packing district. I don’t think they were my fans. I hated every second of it. I said the word, ‘Stupid’. There were these women who were all made up and couldn’t get into a club so they were at the show instead. They were repeating the word for their boyfriends, but I thought they were saying I was stupid. So, I had to keep going, battling the thing in my head about it. ‘She thinks I’m stupid? Is everything I say stupid?’ Afterwards, that woman stood up and said I was the most original blah, blah, blah. So, she didn’t think I was stupid. Going on the road to comedy clubs, people would have to be willing to go with me for forty-five minutes. If they want to watch me being abandoned by a bird in a cage with a dead caterpillar, OK. I want to have more material. I don’t think that the pieces that I have flow together in any way. I didn’t write them to flow together. I wrote them to happen in an eight minute thing here or there.”
“That’s the thing with stand-up. With my stuff, it’s a different world that I’ve created. It’s like shifting gears. I’d like to do colleges. You can make a lot of money doing colleges.”

“People come out to see comedy shows all the time here. It’s a really nice community here in New York. It’s a way of seeing something that everybody’s been thinking. That’s funniest thing about being in a club, when there’s something that’s been on everybody’s mind and finally being said out loud. If you can find what that thing is, you’ve got a funny joke on your hands. Sell that to Leno.”
“I’m happy with everything now. I would be happy if my career went in the direction of me creating everything. I would love to create my own show on TV, my work being put up. Kurt and I are working on this thing for Turner (‘Penelope Princess of Pets’ a webisode), three episodes, five minutes each. I love it.”
“As far as TV goes, if the show is good, I would love to be on it. If there was a movie like ‘Waiting for Guffman,’ I would love to be on it. I would hope that I would always be in a situation, that if it was a terrible, terrible show, I could still go on without it, that I wouldn’t need the money. You hear, ‘What an opportunity for exposure!’ That’s not worth it for me.”
“It’s not hard for me to say no to things. I said no to the ‘Ugly Betty’ show which is, like, the number one show. I don’t know if that was smart, but I’m so happy in my work that I don’t care.”
“I’m shooting a show with ‘Flight of the Conchords’ in January. They’re a duo from New Zealand. They do funny songs. We shot the pilot over the summer and they green lit it for eleven episodes. It’s like a sitcom where their songs are interwoven through it. It is like Tenacious D a little bit.”

Just as Kristen has made a name for herself, she’s also part of a popular team. Kurt Braunohler and she co-host the Hot Tub Variety Show at Comix each month with a guest list that has included David Cross, Janeane Garofalo, and Zach Galifianackis.
“Kurt’s an excellent improviser. He was doing something at the PIT one day. I was doing something at the PIT. We both had separate ideas to host an open mic-type show. They put us together and we did it. We didn’t know each other until then. He’s great. He says, ‘Yes’ to a lot of ideas. I say, ‘No’ a lot in workshopping. I know what I like. I like things that are absurd, but only if the absurdity is justifiable. I like the thought put into it. Some of the things I see that are absurd have no rhyme or reason and that’s usually not OK for me. I like another world created around the absurdity.”
“I like to be surprised. I really don’t like when things go blue just for laughs. I do that and I don’t know when I will stop. But, I’ve come to the point where I think it’s lazy and something I have to work on. If you can take a blue thing and push it farther than anyone else has pushed it, I am going to laugh my ass off and love it. But, if you can’t, then don’t do it. It’s been done enough. It’s like airplane jokes. I love poop jokes. I don’t have any myself, but anything with poop in it, I’m going to laugh.There’s this sketch that the Whitest Kids did. It’s on the internet. It’s a meeting and one of the people takes out some poop. They try to keep the meeting going with the poop. It’s so funny.”
“I love writing stuff for me and I love working on stuff with Kurt. There are so many more possibilities. All of a sudden, there’s a relationship to explore. If you have a joke and a relationship behind it to emphasize the joke it can set up things and create all sorts of scenarios. I once described my stand-up basically as tiny plays on stage.”
“We listen to Nichols and May. It’s so good. They are my favorite. Gracie and George Burns; I went to the Museum of TV and Radio to watch their show. There are more aspects of a personality to be played up with two people. It’s fun.”
“Jon Glaser. Every time he performs, he does stuff that’s pleasing to me. He’s does a lot of characters and always surprises me. Right now, he’s my favorite.”

“Here’s something that bothers me; when comics make a comment on their appearance. ‘All right, I know you people think I look like a monster.’ They call it out right away to put the audience at ease. Then the audience laughs, ‘We did think that.’ I’m getting tired of that line because everybody is doing it. Here’s what I hate the most and do not understand; stand-up comics will come out and get angry at the audience. The other night (at Comix) I did have to stop because some people were talking. But I didn’t say, ‘Shut the fuck up!’ Why would you do that? Why would you yell at an audience there to see you? People insult the audience, then get angrier and angrier at them for not laughing. If the audience doesn’t laugh, the comic lashes out at them. What is that?! You see it all the time. It’s not going to help anybody. It’s not going to get them back. You’re losing your cool up there. I hate it. Even if an audience is shit, and I’ve had some shitty audiences, it is a privilege to be on stage. To yell at people who have come to watch you because they’re not giving you what you fuckin’ need; that’s not their fault, asshole. That’s your fault. Even if the joke killed last night and it’s not going over this night, don’t yell at the audience. That’s really getting my goat.” She finishes with a giggle.

“I like Kristen because we have the same approach to life. We don’t get along comically at all, but life...
We like to embrace things. I like that she’s a good communicator. When we’re doing our thing together, we’re a unit.” – Kurt Braunohler, actor

“Kristen Schaal is a horse. Look at her dance like a horse...” Those two sentences form the entire dialogue in a popular, physical bit you can see on Kristen Schaal’s MySpace page. It involves Kurt clapping and shouting the words over and over again like a psychotic square dance caller while Kristen dances. A little like a horse. Kurt explained its creation, “We had just seen Michael Showalter’s film, ‘The Baxter’ and were walking through Tribeca. Kristen started dancing and I came up with the song. Totally spontaneous. We just walked around doing it anywhere. It’s the rule of 28. The third time you do something it’s funny. Then, the 28th time you do it, it’s funny. 6 - 27 are fucking awful.”

“This is something I had to do,” Kristen explained in regards to her pursuit of a career on the stage. “I had ideas and I wanted to get them out. I can’t be a musician because I can’t play an instrument or sing. I imagine – this is going to sound snobby. Let the readers know that I’m not snobby.” She’s not. Really. “I like to pretend that my pieces are like a Bjork album. That’s the closest you can get to being a rock star. You have to write stuff. You have to make an outlet for it. Without an outlet for it, I don’t know what I’d do.”
“I do these shows at night. I’m around comedians all the time I like to meet other people too. When I meet other people I want them to be as excited about what they’re doing as I am. There are not a lot of people out there like that. It’s not an easy world to be in. I think the higher up you go, the people there have figured out how to do it and be happy.”
“I don’t have many rough sets because I perform for really nice audiences here in New York. They laugh when I want them to. When I did Comedy Central Live at Gotham, they asked me to do jokes. They didn’t want my other body of work because they didn’t think it would read. But, I’ve got it on tape in my room, so if I ever pass away...”
To see where Kristen is performing, visit MySpace.com/KristenSchaal

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