What's So Funny? by David Sipress

Author:David Sipress [Sipress, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-01-25T00:00:00+00:00

Comedy

“Instead of a three-hour play with twenty performers, what about a single performer, alone on stage, telling jokes for thirty minutes?”

IT’S MY JUNIOR year at Horace Mann. I have just walked out onto the stage at the weekly all-school assembly. I am about to embark on my first and, as it happens, last attempt at stand-up comedy. In my right hand, cover facing out so everyone can see, is a copy of Moby Dick, required reading for every one of my fellow eleventh graders. There is a small table in the center of the stage, and on it sits a red rotary phone. I place Moby Dick down next to the phone. Then, I begin pacing around and around the table, growing more and more agitated, now and then stopping to glare at the phone; each time I stop, random nervous chuckles break out at various locations around the auditorium. Now I stand perfectly still, facing the audience, arms held stiffly at my sides, my fists clenched, eyes squeezed shut, my face a frozen, frustrated grimace. I wait. I can feel the audience’s anticipation, and this excites me no end. I feel powerful and in control, the way I felt in the days I sported a pair of six-guns, only better — I’m holding an entire auditorium of boys in the palm of my hand.

Finally, I think, finally . . . everyone is paying attention to me.

I make the wait last and last, drawing it out until I sense the time is just right, which is when I open my eyes, gaze up at the ceiling, then down at the phone, stamp my foot on the floor boards and scream . . .

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