Last time comedian Mike Birbiglia was on The Sound of Young America, he talked about developing the narratives in his work, and leaving behind the joke-joke-joke repetitions that are standard in standup comedy. He recently premiered his first theatrical performance, "Sleepwalk with Me," at the Bleeker Street Theater off-Broadway, to rave reviews. It chronicles his struggles with sleepwalking, and in a long-term romantic relationship.

If you enjoyed this show, try these:
Mike Birbiglia (May, 2008)
Andy Daly
Janeane Garofalo

Culture Clash are a San Francisco-born, LA-bred revolutionary comedy theater group. They formed in the Bay Area when I was a kid, in my neighborhood, The Mission. One of them worked at La Raza Graphics, down the street from my house. One was in grad school with my mom at SF State. They even had a series on FOX, briefly, back when FOX's outrageousness wasn't confined to outrageous awfulness. Their hilarious, insightful agitprop is one of the best things you can see on a stage.

CC are performing their signature show, Culture Clash in AmeriCCa, at USC Thursday night, and you can get tickets for just ten bucks. I'm going to be in Las Vegas for The Comedy Festival, but if you're in SoCal, this is a night not to be missed.

Location: USC's Bovard Auditorium
Date & Showtime: Thursday November 20, 2008 @ 7:00 PM
Ticket Price: $20 General Public
(213)740-2167
www.usc.edu/spectrum
SPECIAL NOTE: Mention "Culture Clash Fan" over the phone and get the ticket at half price!

The show is documentary sketch comedy. Over the past ten years or so, the group has taken residence at theater groups around the country. Wherever they are, they interview people in all walks of life about their communities, and put together evenings of comedy theater based on those interviews. This show is a sort of greatest hits of those shows. I've seen it twice and can recommend it heartily. It's sweet, incisive and really, really funny.

BIG NEWS.

Two of TSOYA's top pals have solo shows running in New York, and if you miss them, YOU'RE A FOOL.

Our pal Mike Birbiglia has his first solo stage show, called Sleepwalk with Me, running at the Bleeker Theater. Mike has always been fantastically hilarious as a standup, but this show is also receiving acclaim for its emotional depth. WE VOUCH FOR MIKE. If that's not good enough for you, listen to Mike on TAL and TRY not to laugh uncontrollably. FURTHERMORE: you can get discount tickets with this link.

ADDITIONALLY: our pal Mike Daisey (above) has his new solo performance, If You See Something, Say Something, running at the Public Theater. It's about the resonances of the cold war in contemporary America, and in Mike's own life. If it's like his other work, it's fantastic. The Times certainly seems to have enjoyed it. So have others. Tickets are available here. Mike has generously offered TSOYA fans a big ticket discount -- $35 tix can be had with the code SSMKTG. It is offered with the proviso that tickets are selling out fast and that code might stop working at some point.

OK, New York: GET OUT THERE.

Here's the details:

LIMITED ENGAGEMENT
Starts May 16th--Six Weeks Only
Fridays and Saturdays @ 7:30pm,
Sundays @ 7:00pm
BARROW STREET THEATRE
27 Barrow Street @ 7th Ave. South
Tickets: telecharge.com or 212.239.6200

I'm not going to reprint all of Mike's rave reviews, so let's go with a favorite, from the New York Times: "A sardonic rebuke to the corporate types who hold American theater hostage and a powerful sense of the wonder of theater. The entire room was quietly rapt...a remarkable performer."

And guess what?

Mike's extended a special offer for MaxFunsters... use this direct link to the online box office, and use the code MDHTFA and you can get twenty dollar tickets to the show. That's a hell of a price. And you can call 212-947-8844, use the same code, and get the same sweet sweet deal.

(Above photo: Mike at TSOYA Live, shot by Anya Garrett)

The third in our series of podcasts from our January live show at SF Sketchfest.

Danny Hoch is a multiple Obie award-winning playwright and actor, and the founder of the Hip-Hop Theater Festival. His newest show, "Takin Over," is currently in its premiere run at Berkeley Rep in Berkeley, California. The show examines the gentrification of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, using character monologues from a variety of community members. It is way, way better than that lame description makes it sound. Hoch talked about being a native New Yorker, how he feels when he's looking at the organic produce in Whole Foods, and how all the women he meets in New York seem to have come to the city from somewhere else to "find themselves."

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Also from our Live in San Francisco show:
Merlin Mann
Bucky Sinister

I was lucky enough to have actor and writer Danny Hoch on my live show in San Francisco. It won't be podcast until tommorow, but it's in the top ten of all-time TSOYA interviews, at least for me. His newest show, "Takin' Over," deals with gentrification in Brooklyn, and is currently running at Berkeley Rep in the long-since gentrified Berkeley, California.

There's precious little of the new show available online, but his last major one man show, "Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop" was made into a film. The movie was financed by Rawkus Records, who were planning to use the film as promotion for an accompanying soundtrack album. Unfortunately, the label folded before the album could be released, and the film was thrown into limbo.

Eventually Danny and his associates managed to get the movie into DVD release, and thank goodness they did. Like Luis Valdez' "Zoot Suit," the film lives in the liminalities between staged performance and real life. Each character monologue is seen performed live in a theater, in public, in a prison and in the fictional world of the piece. The technique balances the needs of the show with the needs of the piece's inherent theatricality beautifully. It's one of my favorite films of all time. I cry several times every time I watch it. And laugh a lot, too.

Above, I've pasted a scene from the film, in which Hoch portrays a street vendor and hip-hop afficionado in Cuba. Unlike pretty much any other hip-hop art concerning Cuba I've ever seen, it's insightful, balanced and humane, not just Castroist agitprop. Of course, those qualities are typical of Hoch's work. Indeed, perhaps the most sympathetic character in "Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop" is a prison guard, the frontline soldier of the prison industrial complex.

Anyway, enjoy the above, check out the interview tommorow, make plans to see Danny's show if you're in the Yay Area, and cop that disc if you're elsewhere.

We continue our journey into The Sound of Young America's vast audio archive with this program from The Sound of Young America Clasics.

Ricky Jay is an artist, actor and author. He is an expert on the history of magic, oddball and unusual entertainment. He can throw a playing card into the rind of a watermelon from ten paces – impressive!

“Not A Genuine Black Man” is the longest running solo show in San Francisco history. Brian Copeland, writer and star of the one man comedy show, spills the beans on what the show is all about.

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Here's a little comic pallette cleanser after three weeks of hefty shows. Bryan Coffee performs "Shrimp," from his one man show The Weekly Armenian.

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This, I believe, is what is known in the business as "a hoot and a half."

Also: Orson on Winston Churchill, on a cockatoo and on La Grande Illusion.

Cynthia Hopkins is a singer, songwriter and multi-media theatrical performer. The New York Times wrote of her most recent show, Must Don't Whip Um: "a triumph of disciplined thinking, narrative fluidity and musical accomplishment. Ms. Hopkins' voice is both so delicate and emotionally forceful - part Natalie Merchant, part Madeline Peryroux - that it leaves you wondering why she has ever bothered to do anything else but deploy it." Special thanks to WNYC this week for sharing their studios with us.

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Our intersititial music is provided by Dan Wally

You might also enjoy these past interview programs:
They Might Be Giants
Hip-Hop Heads with Danny Hoch and Sway & Tech
Moustaches, Etc with Andy Daly and Richard Montoya of Culture Clash