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Welcome to the Comedic Pursuits podcast. I’m your host, Seth Payne.
A lot of the podcast episodes I’ve recorded thus far are timeless, in a way. They’re people’s backstories and advice, so it’s okay if the episodes don’t come out until later because they’re still going to be relevant.
But some of the episodes I’ve recorded do pertain to more current events. Case in point, for today’s episode, I actually got to sit down with the trendsetting, limit-pushing, provocative Sam Bonar, who is currently diving into some really cool political stuff in DC. I figured his story was very timely considering the midterm elections are upon us, and the political climate right now is pretty intense.
I wanted to get this episode out before the beginning of November, so that’s what we’re doing. I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I did because I loved it. Without further ado, the Sam Bonar interview.
Highlights from my interview with Sam Bonar
Sam is an improviser and political activist in DC. Some of the questions and answers from his interview have been edited for clarity, but you can find the full interview by listening to the podcast episode.
What’s your performance background?
I started doing lots of theater in high school, and I was very much an actor-y, theater nerd kind of guy. I was president of the drama club for two years. I had all my fingers in everything, and I was in every play. I was the only one who had done theater for four years in high school.
One of my most notable theater moments from high school was getting the lead in The Music Man. I’d never had a real lead, but in my final year, the final play, I finally got a lead.
Every musical we’d done before had been the junior version, which is the easier version. They’d shorten the songs so they were less complicated. But for that play, we did the full version of The Music Man, which is really hard to do because it’s got all these long monologue songs.
My girlfriend and all of my friend group were involved in it somehow. That was definitely a theater crowning achievement in my life.
How did you get into improv?
I started doing improv at the beginning of college at the University of Chicago. I was tired of the stress of drama and having to go to practice every day. In high school drama, I was in practice four days a week, and it would have been even more than that in college.
The improv group I was in, Occam’s Razor, struggled for a while. We were the lesser group on campus. I’d actually auditioned for the other group, Off-Off Campus. It was more prestigious at the time because they were more involved with the theater department, and they practiced like a theater group. I think they were better my first two years, but my last two years, they stopped being as good. I also think Occam’s Razor found its groove, and I think we got a little harder on the fact that people couldn’t just come to practice whenever they wanted. We focused more on long-form improv. They even started doing some sketch the year after I left.
How did you get into improv in DC?
I moved to DC in 2013, and my friend, Michael Hendrix, who was in Occam’s Razor with me, was already working here. I kind of got a head start in the scene because I knew him. I auditioned for a couple of things, and I got this great opportunity to do Lore, which was WIT’s Fringe Festival show.
Michael and I started our duo, Big No No, and we also started Huggy Spreadems, which is now Huggy Smalls. We started that with Jared Smith and Nic Small, then we added a couple other folks. Michael and I started focusing more on duos, and we also got on Harold teams, so we left the group. But they kept going, which is great.
I didn’t go through the WIT program at all. I feel guilty about that sometimes. I think now a lot of people still go through the classes even if they’ve had improv experience. I think there’s a little more oversight and a little more standardized nature to WIT’s curriculum these days. They can’t really let people do that now, or at least it’s rare.
I took a lot of workshops, though, and I’ve taken some UCB classes while I’ve been here. I’ve definitely been trying to learn from lots of different people.
What’s your experience on Love Onion been like?
I got on Love Onion in the beginning of 2014. I was added in the second cycle, but I think the group formed around the summer of 2013. We became a house team in 2015. When Coonoor Behal left, she was the last original member.
It’s weird to be the old-timer in that way now, especially because I’m not the oldest person on the team. But it’s been fun to see Love Onion go through so many different transformations and changes and still feel really confident about it. Some people point back to a different era and say, “That was when we were really great.” But I think we’re really great now.
When did you start teaching and coaching?
I started teaching in 2015. I love teaching, and I think my personality is well suited to be a teacher. I like that you can be hard on people, in that you can call them out and get to the heart of a matter. I love that improv can be therapeutic because I was definitely a therapist in another life, and I like the analysis and fun play between what you’re going through and what your characters are going through.
And I just like the feeling of people getting better. I’ve had people lately tell me, “Improv wasn’t working for me before, but something about your style is really clicking for me, and I feel like I’m getting it.” I also like teaching things that I think are often ignored, like object work and monoscene and more meta-structural improv.
Teaching is also a chance for me to work on the things that I really want to work on and help bring people into the fold to start thinking about those things when they’re not emphasized as much. Something that I really do think is missing in a lot of improvisers’ toolkits is using acting skills and being raw in a believable way. So I like doing that when I’m teaching people, trying to push people to get out of their jokey ways.
Can you talk about your stand-up character?
His name is Thick Boy. It’s a Reggie Watts-inspired act. I think Watts kind of started this art form, which I’m surprised more people aren’t emulating. But I love it. It’s my favorite kind of comedy. It’s unapologetically weird, but because it’s musical and because the music’s good and groovy, Watts can get away with anything he wants to do. He’s playful with his body, and he dances in a fun way, and he’s playful with songs and with the structure of things. It’s sort of stand-up, but it’s all improvised. It’s not really music because he rarely repeats songs. Mostly he’s just creating it on the spot.
That’s how my brain works. I’ll think of tunes like that, looping and grooving them over my in my head. I got a setup because I wanted to make that type of performance art. There are so many possibilities. I definitely have a different style, and I don’t think I can do what Watts can do. He’s an amazing beatboxer, and I’m a very average beatboxer. He’s an amazing singer, and I think I’m a good singer, but I’m not a great singer. I think I might be a slightly better rapper than he is.
What’s your involvement with comedic activism?
It’s kind of my life now. I quit my job to pursue comedic activism, which is not political comedy, though I think it could be related.
Political comedy is making fun of politics. Usually, it’s from afar, and all the infrastructure for that is in New York. I want to think about how to use comedy within politics as a tool, as part of the political conversation, and as a legitimate part of politics.
Trump, as much as he is a liar, seems authentic because he’s present. He says what’s there. And even if it’s racist, even if it’s a lie, people love it because he’s clearly just being their improviser, riffing on his own character. It’s compelling as fuck, and instead of trying to use that for justice and for good things, we resent it and say, “We just need things to go back to normal.”
But normal is when we let Obama get away with whatever he wanted because he was making better decisions, which is true. And normal would be Hillary Clinton being president and us, again, not paying any attention. Nothing would have gotten done, and everything would be gerrymandered for another decade. Now there’s a chance that might not be the case because there’s enough energy to change it.
I’m not saying that the benefits will outweigh the problems with the situation we’re in. In fact, I think that very much remains to be seen, and the Supreme Court—and courts in general—could invalidate all of that. But I want to set us up, and I want to inject some of the lightheartedness, the less self-seriousness, and the ethos of improv—which is not just being funny but being present, being a human, tapping in, using politics as a performance—into politics.
The thing I’m actively doing right now is empowering people to use comedy as a lobbying tactic. Right now, everyone’s involved in direct action in protest. But I’ve been frustrated by protests because it feels ineffective to me. But I think that protest can be more effective if you’re using comedy and actually interacting with people.
Plus, we’re here in DC. We have no voice in Congress. We’re completely screwed. Nobody wants to listen to us because we are not a state. But we’re here, so I think we should go to our neighbors in Congress and be silly and take advantage of the fact that we have this geographical advantage and can go to the Hill. We should be a presence there. It doesn’t have to be meetings, it doesn’t have to use money, it doesn’t have to be serious, it doesn’t have to be yelling at politicians.
It works, slowly, to talk to people. It’s not a magic pill, but that connection, these human interactions… we’re actually looking at someone and wanting to hear what they have to say and not just wanting to scream at them.
I think that’s how you effect change, talking to people. You can do that through political staff. You can do that with more lighthearted things or by mixing the lighthearted with the serious, which is really important to me. It’s what John Oliver does really well. He does these experiments and innovations on activism and protest by creating a religion and buying advertisements on Fox and Friends to educate. It’s aggressively playful and aggressively thoughtful and aggressively strategized. It’s more fully thought out than saying, “We just have to march.”
With the marching, you have to think about what you actually want from that and how the marching actually does that. There are ways you can march that can accomplish certain things. But I know I feel really hopeless at marches because I think, “There’s so much energy here. There are so many people here, and we could be talking to people instead of just wishing that our chants sounded better or were more coordinated.” Marching feels better, and there’s power there in registering dissent. I’m not saying all that stuff’s useless. I just wish there were more options and more innovation than that. And that’s really what I quit my job to do.
I started a superhero squad called The Real Citizens United, and we’re literally cleaning up Congress by going in with portable vacuums and dusters and stuff. We go into offices, and we start bribing politicians with good deeds instead of with money (because we don’t have any money). There’s no money behind DC statehood or giving us more democracy or expanding our rights. But there is our physical presence, and we can be playful and treat them really nicely.
Our tactic is killing politicians with kindness and then dropping the ball at the end to say, “Hey so, you know, we did some nice things for you today. We’re really screwed without you guys. Can you please support us?”
Instead of yelling and crapping on people, we try to address a serious topic with fun. Some people on the Hill enjoy it, and some don’t. Some get it, and some don’t. But it’s always powerful, and it’s always fun and kind of silly and bizarre.
What issues are you focusing on now?
If we want to fix everything, which feels really overwhelming, I think the key I see to that is structural reforms. That means voting rights, voting standards, campaign finance reform, elections reform, and DC statehood.
Right now, we’re trying to get Democrats on board with DC statehood. We’re closer than we’ve ever been, to be honest, but we need to push lots of people outside of DC to understand how much it would impact everything. It would affect the Supreme Court, it would affect healthcare, it would affect immigration, it would affect guns. Everything would change.
It’s not that, all of the sudden, everything would be fixed. But I think, suddenly, there would be real competition and interest in politics if our politics mattered. I think it would really shift the dynamics.
Ranked choice voting is the elections reform I want people to think about more. Essentially, you wouldn’t have spoiler candidates anymore. You wouldn’t split the vote. Third parties could have a chance, and you could vote for them because you’re voting for them, and you’re also voting for the lesser of two evils. You don’t have to just cast your vote for the lesser of the two evils.
We’re thinking about the kinds of things that would be small little revolutions. They’re structural legislative revolutions that don’t throw everything away but change the game a little bit because the game is screwed. We’re totally screwed the way it’s set up right now. And I’m not just talking about Democrats or progressives. No one is happy with politics right now, and we need to think about how to actually get everyone represented.
How can people get involved?
These are public buildings, so you don’t need a meeting, you don’t need to dress in a suit, you don’t need a reason, you don’t need connections. You can just go there. You have to go through security, but as long as you’re not protesting, you’re allowed to do whatever you want. You can’t disrupt, but you can say, “Oh we’re lobbyists. We’re working class, superhero lobbyists, unpaid lobbyists.” Someone called us unemployed lobbyists recently.
If you want to know more about the work The Real Citizens United is doing, check out our website. You can sign up for our mailing list, or if you want to join Patreon to be a sidekick in the squad, it’s $3 a month. You can help support us and get more snacks for the congresspeople.
Where can we find you online?
I’m mostly on Twitter and Instagram. And as I mentioned, if you want to find out what I’m up to, go to The Real Citizens United and sign up for the mailing list. And see Love Onion and Thick Boy shows.
Thanks for tuning in!
Remember to vote in the upcoming election. Your voice matters!
To get into some housekeeping, I want to say thank you so much for all the feedback. It’s been amazing. It validates what Kelsie and I put a lot of time and effort into with this show and Comedic Pursuits in general. If you have any feedback—positive, negative, questions you think should be asked, articles you think should be written—let us know.
You can hit me up on my Facebook or Instagram, and you can reach Kelsie on Facebook and Instagram, as well. You can also reach Comedic Pursuits on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and, of course, the blog. You should be following all the Comedic Pursuits channels because we post a lot of good stuff. Plus, you can get updates about the podcast.
Also, the podcast is on a bunch of different platforms (you can find a list at the beginning and end of each post). So whatever platform you’re listening to the show on, give us a rate. Subscribe to us, write a review, all that stuff is so cool. We appreciate it. We like validation. It’s fun.
And if you like what you’re hearing, tune in next week to hear more DC comedy stories!
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