Life, Death, & Comedy: An Interview with Chris Grace

In his show Sardines: A Comedy About Death, Chris Grace dares to tackle a story of

loss and grief with great humor. A familiar face from his TV, Film and Standup

Appearances

Grace is a familiar face to audiences for his role as Jerry on Superstore, his special on

Dropout streaming service Chris Grace: As Scarlett Johansson, and for stand-up and

improv performances from New York City to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. His solo

performance influences include - Daniel kitson , Stewart Lee, Jordan Brookes, Hannah

Gadsby, Kate Berlant, Tig Notaro, Rory Scovel, Diana Morgan aka Philomena Cunk,

Jerrod Carmichael, and Josh Johnson. Born in Columbus, MS and raised in Houston, TX to

an artist mother and a nuclear engineer father, Grace and his four siblings were among

the very few people of Asian descent in their community.

Wendy-Lane Bailey: How did growing up in the south affect the way you approach

your comedy/writing?

Chis Grace: It was definitely a way of always feeling like an outsider. There’s like a

strong feeling of family, belonging, camaraderie and networking, but there are also

people excluded from that. I felt like I was on the outside of that . It’s an interesting

feeling growing up in the south where those community elements are very prevalent but

you’re often not invited.

WLB: You’ve done TV, film, theatre, Improv and stand up; what particularly draws

you to solo performance?

CG: A lot of it is influenced by going to the Edinburgh Fringe, which is a hotbed of solo

performance, and seeing all different kinds of solo performance. In Edinburgh they have

a very inclusive umbrella as to what they consider, not just solo performance, but what

they consider standup. My show is still considered stand-up comedy in Edinburgh. The

UK’s vision of what stand-up is is much broader. If you’re a solo performer and it’s

comedic they’re like “it’s pretty much stand-up”. Which is a really freeing way to look at

it. Like Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette, which was considered this ground breaking

revolutionary solo show. I love that show. It sits very squarely in the festival tradition of

solo performance.

I’m prepping an hour of stand-up for Edinburgh this year and inevitably some theatrical

elements are creeping into the show just cause I feel like I want them there. Why do I

have to keep those forms out just because someone else says this is stand-up or this is

solo performance. The form should be as varied as there are performers.

WLB: Sardines has the subtitle A Comedy About Death, and a lot of serious

issues are raised within the piece. How do you approach making a show about

death funny?

CG: My process so far has been that I write the bones of the show in a straight forward

way and the funny stuff gets added later in the telling. When I do a workshop there’ll be

a four minute space where there’s no laughs and because I come from an improv and

standup background I’ll improvise something to say in the moment. I’d say probably

about a third of the “jokes”in the show are something that I said spontaneously on a

given night and decided to keep.I don’t have a ton of precalculation about “I’m going to

do this funny bit, and this funny bit and this funny bit.” If we were to sit down at a café

and I told you this story I’d probably make it funny just because that’s my personality. I’d

probably lighten the mood. I think some of it grows out of that instinct.

WLB: How do you feel that the humor helps us process those deeper emotions

the show brings up?

CG: On a practical level I think it lets people watch the show longer. They tolerate the

story longer because there’s more relief of tension as it goes on. It can be a little bit

tedious to hear a bunch of sad stories in a row. Someone said to me three days ago,

that they appreciated feeling like I’ve probably gone through at my age more of this stuff

than other people have. They felt like they were hearing from someone who made it out

the other side and hasn’t been totally destroyed by it. And I think the ability to keep your

sense of humor about these things is a demonstration of that.

WLB: The show is performed on a stark, bare stage; only you and a stool. You ask

the audience to imagine certain slides coming from an imaginary projector. How

did this conceit come about and what effect does it have on the storytelling?

CG: It came from a reaction to my previous show which had a lot of tech in it. If I went

somewhere with the last show the tech rehearsal could take eight hours. I wanted to

jettison all of that.

But also, I’ve been fatigued by the amount of slides I’ve seen in solo performances.

Which is funny because I might do another show with slides in it. I feel that sometimes it feels a little inert. I don’t prefer to see solo shows where the moment that we’re living

in is actually in the past and we’re sort of relating like “here’s an artifact, look at this

artifact, look at this anecdotal story and here’s evidence of the artifact. Let’s regard the

evidence of what happened”.

Slides can actually contribute a little bit of distance to the audience. Let’s say you tell a

horrible story about your uncle dying in a skydiving accident, and then you show a photo

of the uncle. It lets me go “Oh, that happened to that guy and it happened to you.” It

lets me sit back and go “Good thing that didn’t happen to me. Anyway, let’s keep

watching the story.” It puts me in an observational place that, at least for this show, I did

not find was the right dynamic. Maybe there’s some other show where it’s the perfect

connection of energy. But I do find that slides sometimes have me sitting back a little bit.

WLB: You speak of leaving certain things out of the play in regards to your father

and brother. You say ,“It’s hard to fit full human beings into a show”. What was

your process for deciding what to leave out and what do you want us to take

away from these people we meet through you?

CG: It’s interesting because I probably could have done a solo show about each

individual person. In a really sort of harsh practical way there is a way to look at the

show where their presence is more functional for me to talk to you. On a certain level it’s

more about me and on another level it’s more about what you’re taking away from it. Me

piling in more biographical details about each of them doesn’t make the show’s

message to you specifically more effective. There are things that got pared out of the

script. You hang a bunch of stuff on the bones of the show and then some of it just falls

off because it’s not driving us forward to the next point we want to make. Also, if you do

stuff at Edinburgh fringe it has to be fifty five minutes or shorter. I don’t feel like the

show needs to be longer than it is. There’s definitely an artificiality in terms of talking

about people in the show. In fact in the show I don’t say much at all about anybody’s

personalities. I don’t really establish much about like their specific dynamics with me.

The interesting thing that’s been happening because the slides are imagined is that

people have been sort of substituting their own versions of those people into the show.

Which was not super by design. A friend of mine told me that after he saw the workshop

two years ago, when I said imagine my brother is that he just thought about his own

brother. That’s something I learned through making the show.

WLB: I think there’s always two versions of a show. The version you put on paper

and then the version you put on its feet where the partnership with the audience

comes in and you find things you didn’t know were there.

CG: There’s the version of the show that’s what’s in the script but the version of the

show that people take away is the sort of show that people construct in their head as a

response to my actions. Then the real show that lasts is the next day, the show that’s in

their head and the feeling it created. That is an interesting alchemy. I don’t think any

creator can really articulate exactly what they did to create a certain moment in

somebody’s mind. You’re just sort of guessing and then hopefully as you get more

experience you get hunches about what will work or what won’t work. You can’t ever

really know until you put it up on it’s feet.

WLB: Would you agree that leaving space for the audience’s imagination helps to

create a strong bond with them?

CG: This is not a show where you can sit back and watch a bunch of stuff. If you’re not

participating mentally you’ll probably get lost and not really understand what’s

happening. I want to lean forward to them. I’m pretty much directly addressing them the

whole time. That comes from my stand up instinct, that there’s no fourth wall. In a way

the show is fancy stand up.

WLB: There is a section of the piece where you talk about how your father did not

want you to be an actor. Did he ever see your work?

CG: He saw me do some plays in college but I don’t think I ever went out of my way to

show him. The funny thing is that by the time I had moved out to Los Angeles and he

told me to quit acting, I had already booked things. My very first audition in Los Angeles I

booked a Nike commercial, the very first audition my commercial agents sent me to. My

commercial agents were like “this guy’s a gold mine and then I didn’t book anything else

for like two years. But when I booked that my father said “So, that was luck right?” The

sad thing is he was probably right but it’s still not a nice thing to say. It’s funny because I

had already booked some commercials and a couple of TV spots and he still thought I

should quit acting.

WLB: Did you feel like he never really knew you?

CG: Yeah, for sure. It’s an interesting and unpleasant feeling to feel that it was

more like he wasn’t interested. It’s partly that and partly that he had a

preconceived notion how ridiculous it was for me to be an actor. His notions

about anything were impossible to disprove.

WLB: Your husband, Eric Michaud directed Sardines, but he also a major

character in the piece. Working with a loved one can be a difficult task,

especially if they are part of the story. Can you talk about your collaborative

process? Were there Ground rules going into it?

CG: There were no preset guidelines. There wasn’t much that was off limits.

We’ve worked together before. I’ve directed him in shows, and he directed my

last show. We have a very good relationship in terms of not have completely

overlapping creative tastes, which is good for me. If I make a show about just

what I’m interested in it’s maybe a little too niche. I’m a little too pretentious and

too niche. In the Scarlett Johansson show for example, combining both our

tastes puts us in a pretty good place to be successful with more people .

WLB: What do you feel solo theatre has to offer in this current moment?

What does it add to our conversation?

CG: Whenever I look at the rise of AI, I always think it’s going to be good for live

performance. Theatre is very ritualistic. We’re all in a room and you decide

“Hey, I have something to say to everyone else, I’m gonna stand on this side of the

room and everybody else sit over there. Now we’re going to create this thing we call

theatre where I share something with you directly.” It’s very primitive in a way but it will

become more and more valuable.

Obviously in terms of our economy, solo performance is very bookable. I have heard

from artistic directors around the country that they love bringing in solo shows because

they have a certain amount of budget to bring in a show and if the cast is 11 people it

just make the logistics way more difficult.

I also think that solo theatre is more nimble . You can spin up a solo show in like six

weeks and say something to people. If you’re doing a bigger project it’s harder if there‘s

more cooks in the kitchen. Our times are such that it might be helpful to have nimble

artists that can respond to this six month period. It grows out of my standup roots.

That’s what stand up is. The instincts of standup, which is to speak truth to power and

make people laugh in dark times. I think solo theatre can serve similar goals. I think

people should make solo shows because you learn a lot making them.

WLB: What do you have to say to artists embarking on a solo show?

CG: My first solo show, I booked a space for sixty dollars invited twelve people, ordered

pizza and asked “can I do a reading for you?” The total outlay was probably a hundred

dollars. For a lot of people, it’s important not to be precious about this material. Even

though the first solo show is often going to be “this is my biography”. This is my

“Postcards From the Edge”. The thing is, you’re gonna make more than one of these . I

think that’s a healthy way to think about it. Your fourth solo show is going to be better

than your first because you’ll know more about the craft. I have known people who have

sort of cooked up an idea for a show that they’ve lived with for five or more years

without every showing it the light of day. That’s not the best way to go. A real

dissonance I experienced when I wrote the first one was that I had thought about it for

several years and it’s just not as good as the version I had in my head. That’s just a

pain you have to go through. The anticipation of that pain can keep people from ever

starting their project.

Even if people get four friends together, and each writes twelve minutes and invites

people. You might do your twelve minutes and find you’re actually not all that interested

in the story. This thing that I’ve been like simmering on for five years when I said it out

loud I wasn’t all that excited to tell it. Or I procrastinated until the night before the

showcase I just wrote this thing down and there was a whole chunk in the middle where

I just improvised and people loved it . There are moments in solo performance where

your fingerprint as an artist is going to show up. The specific energy you have that no

one else has will show itself. One of your jobs as a solo performer is to show more of

that as you become more experienced. That’s your unique characteristic and it’s your

job to show that as much as possible. Somebody can say “I’m going to go see Wendy-

Lane because there’s something happening in her show that doesn’t happen in anyone

else’s shows”. My basic advice is to just get up and say the words in front of people.

Influences: Daniel kitson , Stuart lee, Jordan Brooks, Hannah Gadsby, Kate Borland, Tig

Notraro, Rory Scoville, Diana Morgan – Philomena Cunk, Gerard Carmichal, Josh

Johnson

The show is part of the New York Theatre Workshops In the Bricks Series running now

through June 14th .