Episode #419
Comedian and storyteller Gabe Mollica’s one-person show, “Solo,” begins with the declaration that upon turning 30, he realized he had no friends. Wait. Was that true? Is it still true today? After taking his show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2022, as well as Winnipeg, Dublin and Dallas, Mollica’s show has settled in for a second limited-engagement run at the SoHo Playhouse in New York City. Mollica joined me over Zoom to talk about what friendship means to him now, whether comedians have actual friends, the realities of the Edinburgh Fringe and the power of a critical review. Mollica also reflects on how his fandom of musical theater and Stephen Sondheim specifically resulted in a sincere correspondence with the late, great American composer, and whether the inspiration Mike Birbiglia’s shows have given Mollica might ever evolve into an actual friendship with him.
Click here for tickets for Gabe Mollica’s “Solo” at SoHo Playhouse in NYC.
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This transcript has been edited and condensed only slightly for your convenience.
Last things first, Gabe Mollica, congratulations on the extension of your SoHo Playhouse run of Solo, not a one-man show about Harrison Ford’s Star Wars character.
Though we do have some merch that is a knockoff on that and I’m hoping the show gets big enough where we get sued. That would be very exciting. But thank you. I was just doing some show math, because I’ve been doing this show so much, and we’re in week seven doing it Off-Broadway with a little interruption to do it in LA. And before that, it was Edinburgh Fringe, Winnipeg Fringe, 59e59 in the United States. So like it’s been a lot of the show. I’m not sick of it, because it keeps changing, which is very exciting.
So speaking about changing, my question for you right off the bat is, as you’ve done this show Solo: A Show About Friendship, for at least a year now: How have your own ideas about friendship changed?
That’s a really nice question. The reason it’s nice is because it’s one thing to talk about the show, and I’m happy to talk about the show, but to talk about my attitude about my own life I think is kind of even more interesting. Which is, my attitude has definitely shifted. I kind of put a label to this thing that I was struggling with, which is this idea of, I have these bros in my life. And there’s certain limitations to the way that we communicate and our default setting of how we communicate. And I’ve been able to share that with people and other people have come up to me and talked in their life about feeling similarly. So 1) It’s made me feel less alone about just like having the thought that oh, maybe I’m not as close with the bros as I’d like to be or as I could be or as I would ideally like it, and a year later, you know, my mother. A big part about the show is like my mom got sick, my friends didn’t know what to do. And so I was like, Wait, do I not have any friends? And so first of all, my mom’s doing a lot better. But in terms of relating to the friends in the group. We have gotten better. People in my friend group have brought up stuff to me that they would not have brought up before, I don’t think. Personal things. They call on the phone every once in a while. I call the phone more one-on-one. And that’s kind of my advice.
It’s funny, Sean. There are some people who are the friendship influencer types, where they’re like, join a bowling league. Do bingo. I don’t have that in me. I’m not here to be like, I’m an expert on friendship. I’m kind of just like, here’s my life. I made some art about it. Maybe you can relate to it. Maybe not. Maybe he can discuss that. But I don’t have advice, besides call your bros more often. Be intentional about the time you spend. Maybe bring up the thing that you are worried to bring up because you think they won’t want to talk about it. Those are basic general tenants about how to be a better friend in your 30s, but I’m not the kind of guy that’s like, yeah, if you join a choir, everything will work out. I don’t know if that’s true.
Although not that many people put on a show, basically challenges all of their acquaintances. Hey, I’d like friends. Tell me your actual truth, instead of just this small talk stuff. Then your acquaintances see your show and think, ‘Oh is he talking about me?’
Well, there’s friends in my life who saw the show description and were like, ‘What is this? Like, Gabe, I thought we were friends.’ They were a little weird about it, and then they saw it and they were like, Oh, OK. You kind of have to see it. Before anybody that has an opinion of, ‘What do you mean you don’t have friends, Gabe? People like you. You’re out of your damn mind!’ We’ve actually thought about doing a promotion of people in my life being like, I thought I was Gabe’s friend. What’s he doing? Just different comics, different people from Long Island. Just like saying that because it’s not like I smell, people don’t want to be be near me. It’s this desire to be closer to people. And a feeling of loneliness which I think in the Internet age, people relate to big and small, of all genders. Women come up and say, no, we have this, too. And I was like, Oh, that’s very exciting.
Right because I am a generation older than you, or maybe two. But there is something to be said about how it’s different when you hit 30 but then it’s also different when you hit 40. Do you even want to make new friends anymore? Or are you just done with that? Then on top of that, because you’re a comedian. There’s also this paradox that we all know about, which is, as a stand up you’re a solo act. You go through your career as a solo act, but you get up onstage in front in front of a bunch of strangers. And you’ve ask them to be your friends for a half hour or an hour. And then you get offstage. And then once again you’re alone, in solitude in the hotel room. Is there something to the idea that — I know conventional wisdom has talked about the idea of the sad clown — but is there something to the idea of being a comedian, you don’t necessarily have to be sad, but you might have to have some sort of friendship hurdle to start with?
Yeah, there’s a melancholic I think attitude to a lot of comedians. I see that in other comics. My sister who I would say is much more well-adjusted than I am, does improv and sketch and she’s like, I love the community of those things. And as a stand-up, I love the solitude. I love that it lives and dies with just me. I love that I can write, go to a coffee shop and write and do that. I’ll answer this in two ways. One, I think is the the creative element of being alone. And I got to a place during the pandemic where I’d done the Edinburgh Fringe once and it didn’t go great. No real audiences. Zero reviews. Basically I wasn’t there. For all intents and purposes, I did not go to the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe, but I did go and I had those experiences. And I got back and I remember thinking, Oh, I’ve gotten as far as I can get alone. If that makes sense. Like I can’t, I need help. I need to talk with people about structure. I need to write with more people. And once I started doing that, the show started to get a lot better. If you’re a comic and you’re listening to this, or anything creative, I would say at a certain point you have to understand that like you can only get so far alone, and I had gotten there. And so that’s when I started to work with a director and creative consultants and just like calling up people and running jokes and all that stuff. In terms of socially, yeah, I mean, comics, it feels like a lot of us do stuff later, like socially. Like I’m 30 and I’m single. And I feel like if I lived in the Twin Cities, even, people would be like you’re 30 and single and like don’t have kids and no girlfriend and nothing? I feel like that’d be more odd. But there’s something about New York where it’s like everybody’s so singularly focused on what they’re doing that that’s a little bit more OK. And yeah, I think, so there’s a creative aspect to the social aspect to it. You know, like we see each other. It’s like we’re at work, so it feels like it’s fun. We’re at a comedy club. We’re dicking around. We go out late for pizza. But I don’t know. Those are different maybe sometimes from the people I call at two o’clock in the afternoon with my coffee. That’s when I feel like the real bonding happens. When I call for me it’s like Raanan (Hershberg), or a couple other comics, I’ll call.
Was there a point in your life where stand-up comedy wasn’t going to be the path but maybe Broadway and musical theater would be the path? I mean, I know you’re a big Sondheim guy. There’s still evidence on the Hamilton College website about you publishing a complete analysis of Into The Woods. Why Into The Woods?
Honestly I never had the follow-through to audition for Broadway. I’ve never taken a dance class and been like, I’m going to be a Broadway auditionee and do that. For a while, it was, I’m going to teach music. That was the dream for a long time and then I went to college and I got this teaching fellowship in Scotland and I moved there. It’s where a lot of my show takes place. And when I was living in Scotland, I started to do stand-up mostly as a way to pass the time. All day long I could sit and write and listen to the Pete Holmes podcast and just really learn about stand-up. So that was the path for a long time. And then it kind of pivoted when I was about 22, 23. But before that, musical theater was my main creative force, and I would say mostly because it was so encompassing. You’d do a musical and it would take a few months. And it was social, and you’d hang out every day after school and you’d work on it. And then at some point, I was in a musical, at least one musical every year from fifth grade to the time I graduated college. In high school, sometimes it was two or three musicals a year. So that was a big part of my life and then Sondheim, those musicals spoke to me on a new level. Guys and Dolls is one thing. But if you were obsessed, completely obsessed with Guys and Dolls, that feels odd. But a lot of people are completely obsessed with Sondheim, I think because it’s so dense. Sondheim is like a Carlin special, or for me a Birbiglia special or a Hasan Minhaj special, where it feels so dense and careful and and mulled over. Whereas Bye Bye Birdie is maybe not even a special, maybe just like some guy you’re watching do 40 minutes somewhere. And Bye Bye Birdie is a professional show that people like and people enjoy. And there are professional comics who do that version of things. But for me the thing that really interested me and really inspired me to start writing is something like Sondheim.
And so Into The Woods, in college. I studied it with a professor over a summer. And I don’t know how familiar you are with it. But the first act is about wanting things and the second act is about the consequences of getting what you want. Chris Gethard recently told me, success always creates more problems than it solves. Which I think is a honestly a Sondheim-ian kind of line. But I was with his music professor. And I was just like, Oh, I’d love to study this. And so we come up with an idea of like, oh, how does the music change from the first act to the second act? What changes musically after the characters get what they want? And what we discovered when we studied this all summer, is that that’s not really how it works. How it works is like the first 10 minutes of the musical gives you every melody, every musical idea that he’s going to use for the next hour and 40 minutes. And so, yeah, it was just like, a summer project where they gave us some money to study stuff. So it’s funny now that I put together solo shows, I’m so glad I studied structural stuff. Because a solo show is kind of this symphony, but just instead of music, which I can’t manipulate at all. It’s words and ideas and jokes, which I’m much better at moving around and understanding how they work. I’m not a good enough musician to write a symphony, but I can put together a solo show. I do, kind of know how to do that.
Do you want to get to the point where you have an intermission and then you have a big act one climax? You take a bow, go offstage, say go get a drink, we’ll be back in 20 minutes. There are some British comedians who do that.
What’s so funny. So Raanan Hershberg, my buddy, did a solo show over the pandemic, where the first act was about his growing up, and the second act was about his grandfather in Nazi Germany. And he had an intermission. And it was so ambitious where I was like, this guy is out of his damn mind. I want to be a part of it. So I produced it. I would run the board on Zoom. And it’s how we met Zinoman, and it’s really how I met you. Because I invited him to this. I was like this is the most ambitious comedy thing happening on Zoom during the pandemic. It’s a two-act show about like, sexual awakening, and also family Jewish history, and he was like, Cool. I will show up on Zoom for two hours to watch this lunatic do stuff.
So yes, to answer your question. Yeah, I am open to all types of solo shows. I kind of have a few ideas for what my next one might be. I’ve got this fellowship in Texas that I’m going to go work out in September. I have an opportunity to do five nights of this new idea. It’s going to be loosely about health care. I think being an artist and needing healthcare and some personal story. The vague outline, the pitch for them was half Birbiglia, half John Oliver. Combine those things in a new way, but I don’t know how to work. It interests me that I could do that. And so let’s see.
It’s not just doing Birbiglia with an accent. Before I move off the point of musical theater and Sondheim. You had a correspondence with him?
As the show has gone on, we have really turned the knob on the theater elements of this. This will sound name dropping, but Neal Brennan came to the show. And he was like, Listen, man, I was doing it with a microphone. He goes make theater choices. He’s like, you know theater. And so we’ve been really leaning into those theater choices and one of those is turning up the Sondheim stuff. And going more into detail about that. So the version you saw, I maybe talked about it a little bit. Now. It’s a whole section with pictures and graphics and jokes. And so yes, I had a correspondence with Stephen Sondheim in high school, and I’d become pretty obsessed with his books. He wrote books about lyric writing, which if you know things about lyrics, you kind of know they’re a little bit like jokes. And they’re a little bit like solo-show writing, because a joke is a bit in a longer show and a song is a bit in a longer show. And so he wrote all these rules for writing and so I’m not only obsessed with him as what his output was, but the way he did the input, the way he kind of put the shows together. And so we used to write letters to each other. I probably have six or seven letters from him. The first one is just he’s thanking me for the compliments that I sent him. And then when I had that Into The Woods project, he would answer my technical questions. And he was a little snarky. My favorite is, at one point, he broke his wrist and he normally would type it out on a typewriter and then hand sign the letter. And he said, Hey, I’m sorry. I can’t hand sign this one. I’ve hurt my wrist just so you know that why this one’s not hand signed, and I remember being like Oh, that’s so cool. Like this feels even more valuable than the ones he did sign.
That never gets old to me hearing about these legends, Stephen Sondheim or George Carlin, the fact that they were so accessible to any newcomer.
Totally. It makes me feel really bad because people have been reaching out to me because they saw the show or, you brought your show to Edinburgh and then it made it off Broadway. Can you talk? Listen, I could talk to you on the phone. But it feels like my life is so busy. Because I’m having a little bit of a moment. It hasn’t related to monetary success or a million Instagram followers or anything like that, but my life is changing. And I keep thinking about that exact thing, Sean, where I’m like God Sondheim had time for these people. Why can’t you fucking take an hour phone call with everybody? And so I’m trying to do that more, and more particularly the people who like to respond to the show. You know what I mean? Like sometimes people, somebody will message me, Yeah, haven’t seen the show, but like, it looks successful. I’d love to talk to you. And I’m like, you don’t even know if you like me! Why would you want to talk to me? That kind of pissed me off where I was like, see the show first before you want my advice. Don’t blindly admire success. That doesn’t seem like a good idea.
The other formative experience for you was working at the Double H Ranch. That’s gonna impact you. on a cellular level, not just a would-be performer because you weren’t even really performing yet when you showed up at this camp. Dealing with those kids versus dealing in future years with audiences. But then also in terms of relating one human being with another, that has to change you as well. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Yeah, I’d love to. So I worked at that camp for kids with illnesses. I worked there from 2013. My last summer full time was 2019. Six full summers and then a volunteer year. Yeah, it really changed my life. I mean, it’s one of the most important things I’ve ever done. And I did it long into my 20s, which like for camp counselors, you don’t meet a ton of 27-year-old camp counselors and I was doing it because it was just the kind of like the most meaningful thing I could think of, if that makes any sense. I had started comedy. And I was working at this camp still. And I had a teaching job so I would have off for the summers. There was a part of me that was like just do a bunch of open mics this summer, Gabe. What are you doing? You need to get better at comedy. And then there was another part of me that was way stronger, that was like, you can’t be a camp counselor forever. You can always go to open mics. And so I just kind of kept doing the most meaningful thing that I could think of. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had in my life. It’s the most connected to the universe I’ve ever felt in my life. Like almost a spiritual experience. It’s the most giving I’ve ever felt. You just like live every day to like give these kids the best week they can have. And by the end of the unit leader so I was really putting my stamp on the week for the kids. I was deciding which rooms they would live in, which counselors they would spend more time with, the culture of the cabin. The kind of jokes we would make, the kind of jokes we wouldn’t make. It was very, very important to me. And every week, there’s new volunteers. There’s new counselors. So it’s a lot of responsibility. I’ve never been more tired in my life than working at these camps. But it did give me an attitude about life, which is, you can find things that are really important to you, that are meaningful and fun. I had a lot of people during those same years that were working in accounting firms, and not having nearly as fun as I have and I felt very, Dead Poets Society, where it felt very like I’m sucking the marrow out of life, like this is the most important thing in the world. And so when it comes to comedy, it was kind of like, how could I not talk about this, about the camp and the kids? Because there’s a bunch of kids that are still really important to me. Kids? Now they’re adults, but I still text them a bunch and they’re in my life and I go visit them. And what I didn’t realize about comedians when I was younger is that what they talked about onstage is usually what the stuff that they’re thinking about in their real life. Like on their own time. And so I was thinking about camp a lot and I was like, well, it’s gonna have to end up in the show. Because it’s 1) it’s the funniest thing in the world. You get these kids from all over the world with all these different disabilities who are silly and weird and have tough lives and they just see the world differently. I could talk about it forever. I loved working at camp. And when camp people come to the show? That means a lot to me. Because people come up to me after the show. And they might be like, Hey, I have a friendship story. Hey, I have a Sondheim thing. Hey, I worked at summer camp Hey, my brother has a disability. It could be anything, and when it’s the camp people that’s a particularly nice thing when they’re like, oh, like I know about these camps, like I have a connection to them. I know exactly what you’re talking about.
There were camp people at the show that I saw at QED Astoria.
Yes, yes. Yes! Oh my God. Yeah, I remember exactly. Yeah, that stuff is so important to me and more have come. And every once in a while somebody who I didn’t work at camp with, but who has worked at one of those camps independently. I love that. It makes me so so happy.
Have any of those people or the former kids who went to the camp, have they asked or challenged you? Gabe, I thought I was your friend. You were such a great counselor. Was that all just for show?
Yeah. So it’s funny, we’re adding — it’s funny you say that, Sean, you’re like reading my mind. We’ve added some lines about the campers in the show, Jake and Austin. We’ve added some lines about, hey, Austin, what do you think of me doing the show? And we’ve added his reaction into the show. Because you’re exactly right, it is really funny. What do these kids think of me doing this? Those are some of the biggest laughs, like 70 minutes in, just like giving their perspective on what I do, is really fun.
So you mentioned earlier about having done the Edinburgh Fringe twice. The first time felt like it almost didn’t even count, because you had no reviews and no audiences. How much did that surprise you? Solely because you had lived there and your actual first time onstage came in that city. So I would have thought oh, well since you started there, you know what the Fringe is. You know what you’re in for. And yet you still had that initial rookie experience.
I think there’s no way to avoid the rookie experience, Sean, if I’m being honest. There’s just so much to learn. It’s so different. Like I knew the city a little bit, but you just like have to eat it for the most part. I was also pretty new to comedy when I did it in 2019. I’d only really been doing it in the US for about three years. So I was working out the show at open mics, which is no way to put together a show. Now I get to work it out at New York Comedy Club or wherever, but back then, I booked my own shows. So that was a part of it was a disaster. And then the other part, which is I’m really still learning now, is like the PR piece. When I did it the first time I had no PR and one of the reasons I think even if I had great PR, wouldn’t have helped, because I didn’t really know what the show was yet. It takes a couple years to know, this is the show this is the thesis and once you have that, then you can kind of market it. But before then, I could have lived there my whole life, and really not known what I was in for. Truly. You really have to get there because after a week of shows that first time I was like, Oh, I wish I could start this over. Because I would know exactly what to do in a way that you don’t know until you try it.
Right. That first year, I know you said you spent a month with Colt Cabana.
Yes, I lived with him. He was my roommate.
So what was that element of it like because wasn’t he like, furiously promoting?
Yes, he was a Fringe veteran, which was so cool. I’m actually wearing his sweatshirt right now. Yeah, so I lived with him and a bunch of other American comics, including Sam Morrison, who does the show before mine at SoHo. And the thing about Colt, his show it’s not like a solo show in the sense that like Fleabag is a solo show. He does an hour of comedy where they watch bad wrestling and they riff and it’s really fun. But his promotion is a little different. His is more like, Oh my fans are gonna come people who like wrestling. You could go every night if you wanted. Like he’s over there as a professional to try to make money and I’m here like, you know, 27-year-old artist guy trying to like figure out how to do art. We were kind of coming at it from different places, but he did have really good advice in terms of like he was really adventurous with what he would see. So I would go with him and see all types of shows. Weird British robot comedy. We saw good stuff, we saw bad stuff. So his influence on me was not in the producing of the show, because our shows are different but in the how to appreciate the Fringe and why he goes every year when he does not have to because he’s one of the people that can actually make money doing it.
So what was your second Fringe experience like?
My second fringe, I lived with Anthony DeVito and Casey Balsham and they both had their own shows. Both great shows, love them both. I had done the show 14 times in the three weeks before the Fringe so I had worked out a lot of it, in that 50-minute version — now it’s closer to 75 minutes — but in the 50-minute version, I really worked it out over the summer. And you know what’s funny, until the last weekend of the Fringe, I had better audiences and much better reaction to it. People were excited about it but I didn’t have a review until the final Thursday of the Fringe with five shows left.
So she saw it on a Thursday, it came out Friday morning and Sunday, no one showed up. So it didn’t matter in the key aftermath of the Fringe, but that four-star review in The Scotsman — which is still some of the nicest things anyone’s ever written about me — ended up helping me get the SoHo Playhouse for two weeks which turned into three weeks which turned into an additional six weeks. And so it’s really hard to say, like, some people were like ‘oh Gabe really made it at the Fringe.’ If you had seen me there, you would not be like this guy’s killing it. I did the Free Festival. I did the show basically on a two-by-four. There’s no ushers, the pre-show music was my iPhone. I would start the show by unplugging the music and hitting record on my iPhone. It’s funny to hear what people say. Where somebody was like, ‘I can’t believe you came from the Fringe!’ I’m like came from the Fringe is so strong — like that one really great review that kind of changed my life. But yeah, I mean, it’s a slog, and it’s really hard. When I was talking to Anthony about it, like Anthony got to tour the country, or like do the show around the country, he did it at Moontower. He could do it at different venues because he has credits. He’s like an established, really strong New York comedian. Same with Casey. Casey’s got 50,000 Instagram followers, she can take it places. And Fringe is not right for everyone. And everyone kind of has different problems and my dream with this show, and we need a little bit of luck. We need a couple more things to come through, which we’re hopeful that will come through, just in terms of like press or whatever, but my dream is to be able to tour it around the United States, so I don’t have to keep going back there. I’d love to be able to do it in Pittsburgh. And then Boston, and then you know, wherever. The Fringe kind of like a gauntlet.I’m sure you’ve talked to people who’ve done it before, but it’s really, it’s difficult.
I only went to Edinburgh for my first time as a journalist last August, and I could only afford to stay there for the first week of the Fringe. I felt like even just seeing 45 shows in a week — that exhausted me, but also I realized after the fact once I got back to New York City — I’d barely scratched the surface of what was happening.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
There were still hundreds of comedy shows like yours that I hadn’t gotten around to seeing.
Of course, yeah. I mean, you could spend your whole life at one of those Fringes and sometimes you see something that’ll like change your perspective. And sometimes you see something where it’s like, no one should ever see this. This is the biggest piece of trash ever.
I apologize for not seeing your show.
No, that’s OK.
But I’m also comforted to know that one critic can change your life.
That’s true! No, I mean, it really did help. And now we have like a whole press packet because people keep coming. We’re hoping that like the dam can burst a little bit, because my director Greg, worked with Hasan Minhaj. Pre-Daily Show they were working on Homecoming King. And so by the time he got on The Daily Show, then the press really started to roll and he was like 10 seconds on Good Morning America, like really changed his trajectory. So I’m like waiting. Not waiting. I have an amazing group of people that I work with on the show. So we need that like one dam to break for these next couple of weeks. And we think it’s about to, but until it does — you know, when you do the show seven weeks Off-Broadway everyone in your life comes. And then eventually you just need strangers to come.
It’s like the privileged prestigious version of the bringer show.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
I want to touch on, just briefly, two things you mentioned earlier in this conversation. One is Mike Birbiglia, because I know that you’re a big fan of his and the fact that Jason Zinoman compared you to him, meant something to you. But then you also talked about realizing that comedians are actually talking about the things onstage that they’re thinking about offstage. Because as a critic, I’ve sometimes gotten into heated debates with people, especially people whose onstage material is somewhat conservative, and they want to say, no, no, that’s just a joke. And I want to say, well, but you’re saying that because you’re thinking about it all the time. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be talking about it.
So sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that’s a real thing. And that’s not to say that like if you’re gruff onstage, you’ll be gruff offstage. I think everyone who knows Anthony Jeselnik is like, Oh my God, he’s the sweetest man in the world. And like, he’s so good to his openers, like he’s not evil. But I do think like when he’s alone in his room, and reads a like a dark headline about a baby dying, I think there’s a part of him that’s like, the world is chaos lol. So I do think there’s an element to that. And I do think people should be slightly more responsible for their jokes, you know, which is not to say — there’s a Holocaust joke in my show. There’s an Anne Frank joke. It’s about musical theater. When you have a sweet coming of age show, you’ve got to slip into some dark jokes. But I do think, I am responsible for that joke. If somebody were really upset by it, I’d be like, I guess I understand. I would take responsibility for it. I wouldn’t be like, you’re wrong, you know, no one should ever feel that way? And in terms of Birbiglia, I mean, when I saw My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend, it was 2012 or 2013, and my life changed. I was like, oh, I want to do that right now. And I was dating somebody at the time who was like, ‘You’re so impulsive,’ and I was like, no, no, you don’t understand. This changed me. I couldn’t believe it. The story of his life and it’s so silly and you’re with him the whole way. Not only did I love it. I was like, I could do that. That feels like the kind of storyteller I am. The way I tell stories to my friends. The way I want to talk about my own life, like it really like messed me up, and I hand to God started writing about it that day on the bus back to college, like writing my version of that. The library story in the show is from what I was writing down. So it really really changed my life. And structurally, my show is most similar to My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend.
The way I feel about structure is like you should let story dictate what the structure is going to be. But My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend proved to me that I could do it that way. That and Homecoming King I’ve printed out and marked up. I have files and research. I care about these things a lot. And so Mike Birbigla has been a huge influence on me. And we’re doing a talkback on Wednesday with Catherine Burns, the artistic director of The Moth. She was like, oh, yeah, maybe I’ll invite Mike and I was like, You don’t understand what that would mean be. Like. I’m in touch with his brother a little bit and like we’ve invited him, invited his team, and it hasn’t happened yet. And so I’m hopeful that that might happen, because as much as Sondheim is important to me, Sondheim didn’t write personal one-man solo shows and Birbiglia has and he’s kind of like the most important one in my life and his work means a lot to me, and I consider myself to be a little bit of an expert on his career.
I guess that would be the ultimate way to end that show about friendship is if you could Mike to be your friend, right?
That would be bananas. I did get invited to the premiere of his Broadway show. And so that was why I was like, maybe he doesn’t know I exist, but we’ve never had a conversation. And so I’m hoping. That’s really what I want. It’s not that I’m clout chasing. I just think we would have a really good conversation.
Gabe, I consider this a really great conversation.
Thanks Sean!
Thank you for fitting me into your increasingly busy world. I appreciate it. And it’s also good to know that, as you alluded to earlier, you already have the next show on the horizon.
Believe me, I’m trying keep my head above water with this one.
So as opposed to the spin-off movie there is life after Solo.
Do you believe in life after Solo? Right now, I don’t. But listen Sean, I really appreciate you having me on. Every little piece of press really helps. And we’re really hopeful that these last three weeks can be really great. One, so I can just like pay all my people, but two, because I really believe in this show, and it’s gotten so much better and more complicated since you’ve seen it, and so you’re invited anytime. And yeah, I really appreciate it, man.
Thanks! Maybe I’ll make it to the same show as Birbiglia.
That would be fun.
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