Michael Bird is Letting Go of Shame

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Welcome to another episode of the Comedic Pursuits podcast. I got to sit down with an incredibly interesting guy who’s lived a million comedy lives. I’m talking, of course, about Michael Bird. He currently lives in New York City, but he does his show, Bird and Friends Cosmic Unity, all over the country and internationally.

Highlights from my interview with Michael Bird

He recently hit his hundredth show, which is incredible, especially since he’s only been doing it for a little under two years. We’ll talk about his show, his comedy training in Chicago, Austin, DC, and UCB, his time with WIT ensemble Commonwealth, and his house team at The PIT in New York City.

Without further ado, Michael Bird.

Some of Michael’s answers have been edited for clarity. To hear his full responses, listen to his podcast episode.

What are some of your first memories of comedy?

When I was in kindergarten, my teacher was reading Jack and the Beanstalk to us. She wanted people to act out the story while she was reading, and she chose me to play Jack. I crushed it. While she was reading, we basically had to improvise the things that were happening in the story.

There was one part where the giant came, and I was hiding from him in the oven. I pretended to go to sleep, and I started snoring. When I did that, the entire kindergarten class started laughing, and I felt this burst of joy in that laughter because it was what I wanted to happen. I was trying to be funny, and it worked. I was like, “This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.”

What was your college improv experience like?

I went to college at UT Austin and ended up auditioning for a new improv group on campus called Giggle Pants. The group started as three guys who did ComedySportz, short-form improv, with each other in high school. It was all dudes, and it got super raunchy all the time. I was like, “Is this what I have to do to be funny?” I was not doing well, and I thought they were going to kick me out.

I think I Googled “how to get good at improv,” and this book, The Second City Almanac of Improvisation, popped up. I finished it in a weekend, and it changed everything. I felt like every chapter was full of golden improv advice.

I went to the next rehearsal, and I was charged. We played a short-form game, and I came in hard with a relationship. I made one of the guys my girlfriend who I was breaking up with, and I got into it. Everyone was like, “Where the fuck is this coming from?”

That was all from the Second City Almanac. It explained all the basics of improv, which I didn’t know, and that was how I learned to do improv. It was a combination of teaching myself and rehearsing twice a week and just doing it a lot.

I also started taking classes around the city. The long-form scene in Austin was blowing up. There were people from New York and Chicago and LA all moving to Austin who had done improv because it was a place to be. By the time I left Austin, there were five long-form improv theatres there. They were all pretty great, and I trained at all of them. I took so many classes. All the money I’d saved was spent on improv classes.

Michael Bird reaching on stage — Michael Bird throwing money at improv

I started bringing my long-form training back to the team. After two years, I’d learned so much and had gotten so much better at improv that I somehow became the most natural choice to lead Giggle Pants. When I started directing the group, that shot me to a whole new level of thinking about improv. I was learning from these masters, teaching it twice a week, and leading a group.

Giggle Pants became really successful, and to this day they play for huge crowds. It’s become a big thing. When I first joined, they were one semester in. They were brand new and just a group of bros. By the time I left, it was diverse and probably more women than men. I learned so much from that team.

How did you end up doing improv in DC?

I graduated and moved to DC in 2009. I knew I was going to move to either Chicago or DC—Chicago for improv, DC because I was offered a job at the Government Accountability Office. So I had to decide if I was going to take the big boy job or go to Chicago.

I ended up choosing DC because I interned with the Government Accountability Office, and I found WIT. Somebody told me to look them up, and I saw one of their improv shows. So I decided I should go to DC because I could get a good-paying job but also do improv. I thought I’d try it out for a couple years, and if I didn’t like it, I’d move to Chicago.

I ended up staying in DC for five and a half years. I got lucky and got onto a house team at WIT with these great players, pretty much right when I moved here. At the time, the team was called Jinx, but it later became Commonwealth. That was my first time being on a house team where I was consistently performing for a live, paying audience. It tripped me out a little bit that they were paying. I felt like I had to kill it. I’d never thought about improv as a product before. I was just doing short-form with Giggle Pants and having fun with it.

Michael Bird stretching in improv — Michael Bird just having fun with it

The other intimidating thing was that Jinx had been around for a few years already. I definitely questioned myself because I’d just moved to DC and didn’t know anybody. I was an outsider, and they were really taking a chance with me. It was very similar to my first few months on Giggle Pants. I had to find my confidence. But once I found it, I hit my groove. I realized I was contributing just as much as they were in shows.

We later changed our name from Jinx to Commonwealth because we eventually became a completely new team. Jules Duffy and I were the only original members at some point, so we decided to rebrand. The bar we were in when we were trying to think of names was called Commonwealth. I don’t care about improv team names, and I said something like, “How about we just call it Commonwealth?” I expected them to shit on it, but everyone got really excited. So that became our name, and I was just happy to talk about anything else.

Why did you decide to move to New York?

I moved to New York City in 2014 because I’d always wanted to move to either Chicago, LA, or New York. Chicago was the Mecca. I felt like it was where I had to go to get better at improv. Every time I went to do an intensive there, it solidified that fact. I’d just come back inspired.

But then I took comedy out of the equation and asked myself which city I’d want to live in if I didn’t do comedy. Because I might not do comedy for the rest of my life, and I wanted to figure out where I wanted to be. New York just barely beat out Chicago. I love Chicago. Chicago is a dope place to live and be. There’s so much to do. But New York just had the energy that I loved. So that’s why I chose New York.

I moved when I was 29. I felt like I had to get there before 30. I got a job, first and foremost, in accounting and auditing. Then I used that job to move up to New York.

What was your experience in New York like?

I signed up for classes at Magnet and started in level 1. Ira Glass was in my class because he wanted to get better at improv. He ended up loving me. Nobody knew I had 10 years of experience, including Ira, so everyone just thought I was a natural.

We had our graduation show and went out for drinks afterward. I was talking to his wife at the time, and said something like, “I don’t know if Ira would want to form a practice group.” And she said, “Oh, he’d love to form a practice group with you, specifically.” Because I guess every time would come back from class, he’d be like, “Bird did this! And Bird did that!”

So I ended up emailing him and I asking if he wanted to start a practice group. Five days passed, and I hadn’t heard anything, so I figured that was a no. But then he emailed me, and we formed a practice group for about six months.

Then I got onto a house team at Reckless Theater, my first official house team in New York. The team was called Too Big of a Dog, and I was on it for a year and a half. Our coach let us do whatever we wanted. I’m very freeform when I play, and he encouraged it. I learned more about editing and messing with form and not playing within the rigid confines of a Harold or whatever. Every show we did was a new format that we created in the moment. A lot of mechanics that I now use for Bird and Friends, I got from that experience. It was a really fertile learning experience for me.

How did Bird and Friends Cosmic Unity start?

I was on a duo called Clown Boy with my good friend, Tom Achilles, but Tom eventually wanted to focus more on stand-up. For one of our last shows, the host asked, “Would it be cool if I told the audience that they can jump into your show at any time?”

During that show, I just lit up. I thought it was amazing, and it was all I wanted to do. I asked Tom if it’d be cool to keep doing the show with audience involvement, and it eventually became Bird and Friends. I started doing the show by myself in 2017.

Playing with people I’ve never played with before puts me in a state of presence because I don’t know how that person plays or thinks. I’m asking people to come onstage, so I have to embrace the experience, welcome everything that happens with an open heart, and say yes to it. I hope that keeping that open perspective inspires other people to jump in and be part of that.

Whenever someone jumps on, I really quickly adapt to the energy they’re bringing and try to figure out how comfortable they are. When people jump on, they’re pretty confident in the sense that they know it’s not serious. We’re just playing around, and there are no stakes. At least, that’s how I play, and hopefully when people jump on, they realize that’s what it’s all about.

I try to do the show once a week in one of the bars around New York. Every couple months, I host a really big show at The PIT or another big theater. Then I do festivals. But wherever it is, I try to do the show at least once or twice a week.

My bucket list goal is to get to a point where people reach out to me, ask me to do my show, and say that they’ll pay for everything. That would be the ultimate dream, to not have to pay any of my own money for flights or hotels. But to get to that level, you have to really grind and work hard. I’d say I’m in that grind phase.

Michael Bird at SteelStacks Improv Comedy Festival — Michael Bird grinding at SteelStacks Improv Comedy Festival

What’s been your biggest aha moment in comedy?

My current aha moment is that it doesn’t matter. Whether you go on stage and kill it or whether you go on stage and bomb, it doesn’t matter either way. What matters is that you go on stage and just do it. You do it, and you leave it on stage when you’re done.

If I have a show where I think I can do something better, I’ll make a note to myself and then let it go. I can just do it next time. There’s no need to beat myself up or try to note myself anymore. Because, again, it doesn’t matter.

Just do it, have fun with it, then let it go.

What’s been your biggest comedy failure, and how did you overcome it?

The comedy failure I can most recently remember was when I was doing my practice group with Ira Glass. He told me to let him know when I had shows, and I wanted to invite him to something that was uniquely mine. When I started doing Bird and Friends Cosmic Unity, I thought that was the perfect show to invite him to. He ended up being free and he said he’d come.

That night, my show was supposed to be from 7:00–8:00. The guy who was on before me was running long. Then there was a show after mine that started at 8:00. I finally told the guy before me that he needed to end the show, but by that time it was 7:15.

I had three teams opening for me. And they all had bad sets, for whatever reason, so the audience was pretty dead, energy-wise. I was doing my best to host the show and keep it positive, but it was tough.

By the time I hit the stage to do Bird and Friends Cosmic Unity, I only had eight minutes to do the show. I started getting hyper and trying to get people to jump in. People were doing it, but it wasn’t working because the energy up to that point was pretty dead.

My entire show was a flop. It was the worst improv show I ever had, and it was definitely the worst Bird and Friends. After the show, I talked to Ira, and he asked, “So when are you performing with your house teams? I’m sure those are better, right?” But in my mind, I was like, “This is what I wanted you to see, and this is what I know can be good.”

I remember feeling like I’d let him down. After the show, I felt embarrassed, and I felt like maybe Bird and Friends was not a show I should do. But then I remembered all the things that happened that were out of my control, like only having eight minutes to do the show, the guy starting late, the other guy who wouldn’t give me more time, the opening groups who weren’t clicking with the audience, etc.

So after that, I just told myself it didn’t matter. I was going to have bad shows, but I was going to keep doing it. So I did it again the next week, and it went great.

I think the way I got over that failure was to go through that feeling of shame but then let go. That show is just a mirage in my mind now. I can revisit it if I want and let it give me shame, or I can revisit it and say, “That’s the worst show I ever had. That means that’s rock bottom. That means I can’t do anything worse than that. And if I do anything worse than that, I know it’s gonna be okay. I can bounce back.”

That was the failure that rocked me a little bit. It humbled me, for sure. But I feel like I’ve come back stronger as a result.

Where can we find you online?

You can follow Bird and Friends Cosmic Unity on Facebook or friend me. You can also follow me on Instagram.

Michael Bird at District Improv Festival — Michael Bird is so psyched that you listened to his podcast episode

Thanks for tuning in!

Come back next week for our interview with WIT communications director Dan Miller.