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I’ve had multiple people at this point say that they decided to get married based on [My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend]—which is amazing, because the whole show is an elaborate argument against —mike birbiglia marriage.
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ness can be a competitive sport. With the one-man shows, Birbiglia, the man without a crew, has found a way around the game. “It’s gonna sound pretentious, but I view it as the post-Seinfeld era of comedy where everybody sounds like Seinfeld, but they’re not as good as him. They’re doing observational, but you’re kind of like, ‘Who gives a shit? You’re not as good as Seinfeld.’ “And there was a period of time where people were just doing [Mitch] Hedberg impersonations essentially. You’d go to a comedy club in the Midwest, St. Louis or Chicago, and you go to an open mic or whatever and every person who comes on stage is doing Hedberg. And it’s like, well, Hedberg’s a genius, but the mimeographs of him are kind of boring. They do the affect, they have the kind of skewed-man delivery, but they don’t have the genius of the words.” Before he became a storytelling comedian, Birbiglia says he hardly distinguished himself from the pack. “I feel like I was doing some version of my own Hedberg, my own Seinfeld kind of thing, when I was on stage. My own Steven Wright, you know what I mean? And when I told a story for the first time, I was like, ‘Oh: I’m better at this. This, actually, is what I do. This is closer to what it’s like to hang out with me in real life.’ “And audiences were connecting,” he says. “It had just as many laughs as what I was doing before, but it was like a deeper connection with the audience, and I was just really charged up by that.”
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ometimes, maybe once a show, Mike Birbiglia does this
thing. He’ll be telling a story, a little scene from his past, and building the tension bit by bit. And he’ll get to some part where the Mike Birbiglia from the story is about to do something dumb or regrettable, and the Mike Birbiglia who’s telling the story pauses to let the audience murmur with anticipation, maybe even grumble lightly with disapproval. “I know,” he’ll say. “I’m in the future, also.” It’s more than a good line; it’s a brilliantly economical device. In just a few words, Birbiglia’s reminded the audience that what they’re feeling, what they’re judging him with, is hindsight, and it’s okay, because he’s doing it, too. This line works in stand-up and his one man shows. It’s not, “You might be a redneck,” but it does have a certain catchphrase cache to it. It’s well-timed and tested. Unlike some comedians, Birbiglia writes everything down. “The only thing I run into is the writing can’t keep up with the changes sometimes. Because I record every show. I transcribe every show. Sometimes you just can’t keep up with your homework. If you look in my laptop, it’s like 30 drafts of my show.” What he and Barrish strive for is simplicity over artifice. The best way to do it is to stay in control of the show. “Three years ago I did a sitcom pilot for CBS. It was the most boring depiction of my life that I could imagine,” he says. “Just by a hair, they didn’t pick it up for a series. And then they called me like two months 36
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later and were like, ‘We want to redevelop it for a midseason replacement.’ “At that point I was already working on Sleepwalk With Me and I was like, ‘Forget it—I want to do this thing that I care about.’ It was very eye-opening for me. No matter how much integrity you think you have, I think there is always some part of you that’s like, but money would solve a lot of problems. Sleepwalk With Me You know? And I think that I had that with Live is available now that sitcom. And I think had the sitcom gone from Comedy Central to air, I would have a lot more money than Records. I do right now, but I think I would be a lot unhappier. A lot more miserable than I am. I wouldn’t be proud of what I’m doing.” His current one-man show, My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend, doesn’t have the blood of Sleepwalk, but it’s got the guts. “I’ve had people, multiple people at this point, say that they decided to get married based on this show. Which is amazing because the whole show is an elaborate argument against marriage.” It is, but it’s also a hilariously awkward love story, and despite all the philosophical and intellectual issues the show raises to the contrary—as you can guess from the title, the elusiveness of monogamy is a recurring theme—Birbiglia eventually does give in and marry his wife, Jenny. It’s a real head vs. heart kind of battle to get there, though, and you’re surprised to leave the theater feeling good. “I think to have an optimistic ending in comedy is hard. Comedy is so much about, ‘I’m gonna really go dark,’” he says. “I try to, ultimately, go dark and bring people back.” My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend is at New York’s Barrow Street Theatre through May 15. More on Birbiglia at birbigs.com.