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[0:00] ♪ Musical number: "When Lightning Strikes" — performed by Unknown artist ♪

[0:25] Jeryl Brunner: Hi, this is Jeryl Brunner, and you're listening to When Lightning Strikes, where we talk about the tingly mic drop moments that led you to becoming an artist.

[0:38] Alex Edelman: Alex Edelman is a comedian and writer whose Orthodox Jewish upbringing has helped inspire his critically and commercially lauded work for the stage and screen.

[0:50] He is known for his TV writing and solo stage shows. In fact, all three of his shows have been hits on London's West End and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. His current solo show, Just for Us, is playing at the Cherry Lane Theater in New York City.

[1:11] Jeryl Brunner: Congratulations on your extraordinary show, Just for Us. For people who might not know what the show is, or if somebody were to ask you, what is this show about, what would you say?

[1:26] Alex Edelman: Um, it's a show about um identity and empathy and the limits of our uh and the limits of those things and the constraints of those things, but uh more broadly it's about a Jew who goes to a meeting of white nationalists in Queens. So yeah, that's that's exactly or more specifically, I guess I'd say. That's what it's about. And um, there's so much of you and your family embedded in the show, and it's heart-wrenching at times. It's hilarious. Um when did you get the inspiration to write about it?

[2:09] Alex Edelman: Do you know honestly? I was writing on a TV show in uh uh Los Angeles, and the show was um it was it was a fun show with great people, but I was just sort of starting to get burnt out. And then when the show ended, I said to my agent, let me take like a break for a couple of weeks, and let me just try to find some let me just go and do a whole bunch of weird stuff. So I did a whole bunch of weird stuff. This is end of 2017, beginning of 2018, and I went to that thing and I did a bunch of other things around that time, 2017, 2018. And then at the beginning of 2018, I was in London. I have a residency there at this place called the Soho Theatre, where uh it's the best, it's the best, best, best theater in the world, I think.

Uh it's a place where people incubate and run uh solo comedy shows. And uh and I just kind of I got on stage. This is end of January 2018, and something just started to sort of take shape, and that was the show. So that was, I guess beginning of 2018.

[3:25] Jeryl Brunner: Is it okay to give away what prompted the story or sure go ahead.

[3:32] Alex Edelman: Well, yeah, well, or maybe you should tell you saw this tweet from a white nationalist, and oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you're brave. I keep track of uh I keep track of I I like to look at the worst people on the internet. I'm always constantly searching for the worst, you know, worst political opinions, worst worst opinions in general. And so this this was up there. This is one of them. And I got really I sort of went down the rabbit hole and started looking at these guys on various platforms, trying to follow them on various platforms and obviously almost always keeping very quiet. And I saw this uh tweet from someone on the list in the tweet said, Hey, if you're curious about your whiteness or something like that, come to this address. And I uh ended up going to the address, and that's that would sort of the impetus for the show.

[4:31] Jeryl Brunner: I just think of your bravery to go. I don't want to give away too much because the storytelling is just absolutely brilliant, and it's exciting to um experience it as you tell it. But I think of the courage it took to go to an apartment building, a private apartment building.

[4:57] Alex Edelman: It's a specific kind of curiosity that will make you go. But I've also gone to a lot of places that aren't in the... I went, I've gone to conferences on nuclear Iran. I've gone to, you know, I've taken flyers from people on the subway trying to get you to go to these radical churches, and I've sat there in those churches, then listened to them say some stuff that wouldn't be exactly considered politically appropriate. Like I think what's interesting, you know, like it's important for people to be clear-eyed about what's at the very fringes of good taste and polite society without, you know, without being like, oh, I, you know, without dismissing it out of hand and trying to... by dismissing it out of hand, I'm not saying that we should be like welcoming white nationalists into anything, but I am saying it's important to know what the most egregious citizens are saying to each other on a regular basis. So that's why the show is, you know, that's what's at the center of the show, I guess.

[6:03] Jeryl Brunner: And I love how open-minded you are. I mean, that's a beautiful thing. I was just thinking more of that, uh, of your safety, you know, of going to a private address in an...

[6:17] Alex Edelman: They were they were like bears, though. They were more afraid of me than I was of them. And this isn't in the show, but at some point someone goes, Are you are you a cop? You have to tell us if you're a cop. And I'm like, no, I'm not a cop, but like it was they were terrified that there was someone in their apartment. I actually do um, and also there are the show is is art not journalism. So I don't want to, but the reason I say that is because like some woman was like, one of the people there was like, you're trespassing. You're trespassing right now. And I was like, oh shit, am I trespassing? Like, am I, you know, am I the one who's gonna be in trouble here? You know? Like, um that that is uh, I don't think I if if any if she wants to press charges now, it seems kind of silly. But uh, but if she wants to be like, hey, excuse me, I was I was, you know, I'm a white nationalist, and this guy trespassed in my apartment at a meeting of other white nationalists. Um, you know.

[7:18] Alex Edelman: Well, they tweeted out the meeting. When did you know that this was the fodder for a show? I know Nora Ephron used to say, everything is copy, but did you leave or were you in the moment there where you thought, oh God.

[7:34] Alex Edelman: Well, I knew I knew there was I knew as I was being kicked out that this was a story I was gonna tell friends, but it wasn't until I told a couple of friends. Um I told a couple of friends. I told my friend Morgan, I told my friend Nick, I told my friend Chloe, I told my friend Danny, and I think three of those four people went, you should probably do material about this, you know. Um and and I think it took me a minute. Uh I think it took me a minute to sort of get it all together and make myself uh it took me a minute to get it together and make myself aware that this was like because telling a story to your friends, like making the I think a big trick to doing a solo show is making it feel like you're talking to an audience in the way that you would talk to your friends.

But honestly, the craftsmanship of talking to your friends is huge. Like, or sorry, the on the craftsmanship of telling a story for an audience is huge because you want to caveat things, you want to buttress things, you want momentum, you want to make a side seem intentional. Like everything is, you know, everything is is what it uh sorry, everything needs to be carefully calibrated when you're putting together a solo show. So, or putting together even like a bit of uh of like trench and stand up. So I sorry, this is a longer answer than this is a longer answer than it needs to be. But I knew it was gonna be a story immediately for friends, but it took talking to those friends to realize that it was a story for the stage.

[9:24] Jeryl Brunner: What do you mean when you say I love that everything needs to be calibrated? Can you tell me more about that?

[9:29] Alex Edelman: My favorite stand-up is a Pelies a particular point of view, but it welcomes people from every point of view to understand that. But but that takes a lot of careful, and I need you to see the banality, and also like there was one person in that room, and I don't like I don't say this explicitly on stage, but I sort of communicate the guy whose name in the show is Wit, right? Like there was someone in that room who was very funny to me. Like, like he had little ticks and habits and energies that made me like that made me go like, oh, I would laugh at this person with this, you know. And so, like, you know, I want to I want to communicate that, but I don't want an audience to be like, oh, look at a cuddly picture of white nationalists.

And so the way to do that, the secret to every the secret to like both sides in everything is to present it within a personal perspective, right? Like this show is not a referendum on white nationalism. This show is not a treatise on anti-Semitism. The show is not an insistence that the world is a certain way, or that quote unquote these people are a certain way. This is just a story based on something that happened to me told in a fashion that I think is resonant, right? Like told and emphasize, and by the by the way, I'm not not making choices. I'm choosing to emphasize certain things. I'm choosing to leave out certain things. I've changed some details for my safety and the safety, like because frankly, I don't want these people ever re-entering my life.

Um, and I have nightmares about them uh doing so. But uh, but yeah, making trying to trying to uh make it accessible, and also the show is both specifically Jewish, like if you if you are Jewish, you have you have a think an access to this show, but also if you love Jews or are curious about Judaism, or when I say I'm like I'm serious, like if people have at any point, you know, had uh sympathy or empathy or enjoyed something Jewish, then I think they access a show in a certain way. And if you don't know Jews at all, you access a show in a certain way, and that's and that needs to, you know, and the show needs to be for people across that spectrum. So that's what I mean by calibrating it. Sorry, Jeryl, that's a really long answer.

[12:17] Jeryl Brunner: No, no, it's a smart editor, and you really you really fall in love with your family as well, yeah, and and who they are and the kind of humans they are to embrace others, a lot of the tribe. I'd love to know what's your lightning strikes moment. When did you know you had to be an artist or the moments in your life that set you on this path?

[12:42] Alex Edelman: Mel Brooks. Uh-huh. You know, my grandmother and my grandfather playing the 2000-Year-Old Man for me was special. Um my parents, I've never talked about this actually, but my parents took me to see a production of Spamalot in Boston.

[13:01] Jeryl Brunner: Where you grew up, right?

[13:03] Alex Edelman: Yeah, and I just laughed and laughed and laughed. And also Alan's Wibell and Billy Crystal are written a solo show called 700 Sundays.

[13:14] Jeryl Brunner: Yes.

[13:15] Alex Edelman: And it just I have never, you know, the cliché people go, I laughed and I cried. There is a moment in 700 Sundays that I can still remember. It's like a bell in my head. Um, where Billy Crystal says something about his father, and it's um and I laughed and I cried at the same time. I was hysterically laughing and sobbing. And uh Billy Crystal, mostly people know him as like, you know, a guy who does family comedies now or but like his skill, so undeniable in that moment, that show. I think I was 16, and I waited for Billy Crystal at the stage door afterwards, which I'm embarrassed to say. And he came out and I had a baseball. They were selling these 700 Sundays baseballs. And I would, I think I lost it, which is so devastating. If anyone knows Billy Crystal, but I want him to get me a signed 700 Sundays baseball because it was um, but it had a really profound impact on me that show.

[14:32] Alex Edelman: And even by the way, the cast of Spam a Lot um in Boston. I waited, I so they my parents took me, and then I went down there a separate night on my own. I think I'm 16 still or 17, and I waited for them outside the stage door, and I asked if I could see the sets from the back. And these nice performers took me in and they showed me how they did the nights. Because there's a thing where the night uh gets disemboweled, basically, and it's beautifully done and really funny. And they showed me how they do it, and it was just a really nice touring cast. So I think those shows were great. And my first Broadway show, um, I saw a bunch of Broadway shows. My parents would occasionally take me to town.

I saw The Wedding Singer with Stephen Lynch, which wasn't very good, but um, but there were great parts of it. Um I saw shows like All My Sons uh with Katie uh Holmes, which was I thought very good. Um, and the first thing I saw in New York was uh in the heights when I came here for college. So I so that sort of I I mean, like all these things made me love the solo show format or made me love theater, but comedy there was for stand-up comedy, there were there were a bunch of great comics in Boston, and there was a CD by a guy named Brian Regan, whose work I've always loved and uh and Brian is sort of a friend what's crazy is that some of these people are friends of mine now you know like it's like some of those folks are you know you know the first show that I saw that truly truly hooked me and made me want to be part of like the community once I was in caught because like I saw in the heights when I got to NYU is this is this too tangenti or is this like you know it's great with Lynn Manuel was he in it at that point he was he was it was awesome it was really great but that felt like a pipe dream I saw a show called Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson which was which was Alex Timbers Alex Timbers Michael Friedman I think was the composer rest in peace um Ben Walker who was a stand-up I saw it because this guy Ben was a stand-up and then they were like you know Ben's on Broadway in this show.

[16:52] Alex Edelman: So I went to go see the show and it actually it cost a fortune to get in. But uh Broadway shows were were almost always very inaccessible uh for me because they were so expensive. But um but Bloody was so good and I saw Ben and I went Ben can I come to this again and he's like yeah what do you mean? And I was like you know I think I might want to see it again. He's like yeah Alex people see Broadway shows like more than once sometimes and I was like okay so I saw the show I think like three times I really loved Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson I wrote like a long paper on it for a class in college. And like, you know, so there, so the lightning uh the idea of a lightning strike moment is for me, it's not been uh, you know, it's like as Hemingway says about going bankrupt.

It's one of those things that happen very gradually and then all at once, right? Like uh, like I uh the and also I was a there were moments when I got to England and I spent my last semester of NYU at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. And I saw these solo shows at the Soho Theater and fell into this community who supported me as I started to build my own solo shows, like Phoebe Wallerbridge, who does Fleabag was a huge huge help to me early on. This is before she was a I slept on Phoebe's mom's couch for a while when I was putting things together, and Phoebe is like Phoebe's a big part of I met my director Adam Brace. This is a bit name-droppy, but I met my director at Phoebe's birthday party in 2013.

And Adam and I have been collaborating since 2014, and and he's the director on this show. In fact, I was literally just reading Adam's play, They Drink It in the Congo. Um, which was so like I've had I've had really great luck in terms of my lightning strikes. The the I I have I have and I've I've not been let down by any of those people in terms of meeting them. They've all been extremely kind. And even Lynn, who I've only crack crossed paths with, you know, in passing once or twice, and I always try to be cool. Um he's been really nice, and and yeah, it's it's a great, great set of community.

[19:19] Jeryl Brunner: What when you got to NYU, did you I know you said it was so gradual, your path, but did you enter NYU as a as any kind of performing arts what or writing or what was your major in NYU?

[19:34] Alex Edelman: I was an international relations major. Politics. I was not international relations and philosophy. There was very little. I also have a sort of antiquated, not antiquated, but I have a bit of a rigid, closed-minded view about theater or sorry, about college, which is that I truly believe that people should go to college for educations, not jobs, which is very like highfalutin, but I wound up uh being an English literature major with a creative writing minor. So uh, but I I got a great education at NYU and I had the best professors. I had folks like Jaron Strauss and Jonathan uh Leetham and Nathan Englender who have all had their own uh theatrical moments in the sun. Zadie Smith was one of my professors, Susan Orlean, Megan O'Rourke. Um I took I took classes from from just the best people, Brian Waterman, who's uh who came to see my show the other day, which was so cool. Like I've had I've had really good luck and really great joyful moments.

[20:40] Jeryl Brunner: Um how yeah, I know you said you you took your last semester in London and had that incredible moment, the Soho Theater, but how did you go from being this NYU student, you know, and seeing lots of theater to getting into stand up? How did that happen?

[20:56] Alex Edelman: I was a stand up first. I was, I mean, frankly, I was more much more of a comedian. Theater was a pipe dream for me. Like it just was one of those things where it was my taste, and so is stand-up, but it took me until my early 20s to try to put the two together, you know, like I wanted to always be a stand-up with a little more theatricality, right? Like I was a little bit uh uh a little bit left of center with some of my interests, a little bit queer, a little bit like you know, a little bit Jewish, a little bit thoughtful, but I loved the hard, cold punchlines of stand-up comedy. And I still do like my show, like my show truly is a stand-up comedy show. Like the show has got, it's just all of the bits are very personal.

But you know, before this run, my last warm-up for the run was at a comedy club in Cleveland called Hilarities. Like this show works in the idea for this show is that it can work in any space. Like I've done it in dentist offices, comedy clubs, the highest brow theaters. I did it in the courtyard of a contemporary art museum in North Adams, Massachusetts at Mass Mocha. Like these the the show is I always love the stand-up comic idea that you can put yourself in a briefcase and just travel and and eat that way. And so theater is a wonderful luxury for me. But ultimately, the show is me, right? The show is one person. I've always been I've always found that really appealing, which is the the litheness of a of a stand-up comedy uh approach.

The necessary minimalism of stand up comedy really appeals to me. Like my set deck, they said to me, you want to you should have a set for your show. And I said, I don't want it. I I'm a stand-up comic. I was like, it should just be me. I was I, you know, it should be me in a microphone. But then, you know, I saw the wisdom and sort of, and by the way, this probably is one of those things where I need to slowly edge out of my comfort zone in in a way and and start putting sets together and you know make things slightly more ornate, but um but uh I mean the show does have set decoration, but you'll probably notice it. The set decoration is all I don't want to ruin it for people who see the show.

It's weird that this is a detailed circumspect about, but the set decoration is all various implements that are used for stand-up. There's you know, the stools and the microphone, and like those things are the show is supposed to work with for stand-up comedy in a stand-up comedy aesthetic. Like I'm very proud of it having elements of stand-up comedy in it.

[23:48] Jeryl Brunner: When I'm just curious, when when did you first start doing stand-up? Was that in Boston or at NYU that you started right started doing your stand-up?

[24:00] Alex Edelman: I started in Boston. Um in high school. I started in rollerblading the open mics in high school, and then um rollerblading? I was roller, I know, I know. I would roller blade.

[24:20] Alex Edelman: What during open mics? Wait, rolling blade, rollerblading dura open mics or no, no, I would rollerblade to music open mics in um I would rollerblade to music open mics in uh in in like Boston suburbs. I didn't realize that that comedian I thought that the only comedians allowed at comedy clubs were huge comedy acts. So I was like, oh God, you know, if I want to start stand-up comedy, I need to start at little open mics and music open mics. So I would go and I was the only and I was absolutely as I was terrible. I was so awful. I was as bad as you could possibly think I was, I was worse. I was like so I was so unspeakably uh I didn't really sort start to like put it together until college.

[25:10] Jeryl Brunner: When you say music, were you playing music or no?

[25:13] Alex Edelman: I was doing stand-up at music open mics. People hated me. Gerald, this was a bad fit that I was that I that I would committed to. Like I was awful. I would torture these audiences with mediocre half-based stand-up for a long time. Like I was a bad comedian.

[25:32] Jeryl Brunner: So you started writing your material in high school.

[25:36] Alex Edelman: Oh yeah, you started writing material in high school.

[25:39] Jeryl Brunner: Yeah, and then you you went from there. And what about um UCB? How did that come into your life?

[25:44] Alex Edelman: Well, Citizens Brigade. You know, the funny thing is I never trained there. I just there was a group called Gentrify. The show called Gentrify, and it was run by um Mackenzie Condon, Darcy Cardin, who now Janet on the Good Place, Brendan Scott Jones, who's an extremely funny character actor, Justin Tyler, who's just hilarious uh podcaster actor, comic like seven rated of Alden Ford, like these are the funniest people I had ever met, and still are some of the funniest people I'd ever met. And I they had a show in in New York, and they would um throw me on this show. This is like 2014, 2015, and I built my solo, my first solo show, Millennial, which is what gave me a career at this little night uh every Friday night at UCB.

I'd go to shoal, and then afterwards I'd walk over to this place in UCB East in the East Village, and it was just the best place to do anything. I was so uh so lucky. I'm still so lucky. Oh my beast. I haven't thought about it. The beast. I missed the beast.

[27:01] Jeryl Brunner: The beast, the carpet, the blue car. But did you audition? How did you get it?

[27:06] Alex Edelman: I was doing stand-up. I was always a stand-up, but they let me do, but these guys just for some reason, I still don't know why. These guys were, and also I was like still trying to figure out how to like be not socially maladroit with people. Like I, you know, these guys were just really nice. They had endless patience for a young comedian, and I would just show up and they would throw me on almost every week. And like I'll never, I I'll I'll I'll always be so grateful to them. But no, it was the UCB scene was I fell into through stand-up. There were, and there were other stand-up shows, Lasers in the Jungle, which Dan Wilbur um was one of the hosts of, like, like the the UC, it was UCB stand-up that really um UCB The Pit, the Tank, those sort of like early 2010s uh stand-up venues, Luna Lounge, Lit Lounge, those places were where I started getting up and making some money and starting to earn a little bit of a name as a comic, but it was because of those used to be people who were like really nice to me who saw like a little something here or there.

[28:21] Alex Edelman: It's incredible. And how how did you get involved though with the Soho Theater? How did that happen? I know you said you were in England, and then how did you know to apply there? Or how did that happen?

[28:35] Alex Edelman: I didn't apply the, you know, my life, and maybe this is a bit of um my life has been characterized by um just showing up at places I wanted to be and never leaving.

[28:50] Alex Edelman: Uh and like that's what happened at the Soho Theater. I saw a bunch of shows there, I really liked it. I kept going. We started sitting in the cafe during the daytime and writing material, and everyone kind of thought I was like a little nuts. And then my first solo show did really well. Everyone's like, oh man, I guess he's not like super nuts. I guess there's something else going on there. And uh, and yeah, I mean, the so the Soho sort of just accepted me and let me stay. And it was it was a great, it was a great situation, and now I'm sort of a house. Uh now I'm sort of like a bit of that's a bit of my like hometown that that's sort of like a uh I'm sort of a hometown comedian there when I when I uh when I perform at the Soho. So I love it a lot, that place. It's so incredible. And your family is so your family is such a presence in this piece.

[29:51] Jeryl Brunner: What is their take on it?

[29:54] Alex Edelman: Oh, they love it. Yeah. What is it like when they see it? You know, my parents haven't had a chance to see it yet. Um, or they saw when they came to an early workshop in London at the Soho. And I think they knew that there was something there. My mom saw it in uh January of 2020 when I did as a one off, and she had a really good time and thought it was very good. My mom is really it's so funny. My mom is is very is is a very, very direct. She said to me, you know, I didn't like your second solo show. I've done three. This is my third. She went the first one, it was good, and this one's better than the first one. It's really, really good. But the second one I didn't like as much. And I was like, okay, you know, like my mom is that's the kind of person my mom is.

They're just like happy that I have make a living doing something that I love, which is truly I've also benefited tremendously from you know, their patience and willingness to send me to to do stuff, and and also this sort of like leeway that they gave me as a young kid to sort of rollerblade around Boston in you know the 2000s and just be in various, you know, spaces and put myself in.

[31:09] Jeryl Brunner: Well, they come off as yeah, they come off as real mensches in this in this piece, and maybe this is too lofty, but how is this experience doing the show changed you writing it?

[31:24] Alex Edelman: Um did you really do a deep dive into who you are and your family and their values? I think it's made me more um. I think it's calmed uh me down. I think I carried, you know, even all the way through, I guess through 2019, I carried a lot of insecurity with me. Not that I'm not still insecure, everyone's very insecure, but I think this was I think it was characterized by a frenetic energy in my 20s and in my 20s. I think it was characterized by sort of being like boo. And and I think this is sort of a more mature step. The show is my director Adam said that the show signifies my transition from little brother comedian to big brother comedian, which I think is a really good way of understanding my uh artistic arc.

I know that's that's a little high, that's a very, very pretentious thing and a little self-aggrandizing. But you know, when you're when when if you look at my early early work with you know, heavy air quotes, my early work is characterized by sort of like a puckish impish energy. And I think that that thing will never leave. Um, but I also think that this sort of is a little more authoritative and confident in a way that the early stuff uh uh wasn't. There will always be sort of a yin-yang, right? Of like of confident, and I mean, I'll always have like I think I I early on had the, you know, I think because I'd watched so much comedy and was just sort of emulating the comics that I loved, I sort of carried myself on stage a little more um like you know, solid than I was, which is good and bad.

And now I think I'm sort of grown into a little bit, so I'm not faking that quite as much but but yeah I'm I've been very lucky and uh and I think that this show has this show has has really resonated with people.

[33:40] Alex Edelman: I'm so thrilled that this show has resonated with people, it's coming for me at the right time in my my life as a comic. So uh yeah and how did Mike Barbiglia get on board?

[33:54] Alex Edelman: I mean I'm incredibly fucking love Mike, he's my comedy rabbi. Um in comics like Gary Goleman and Maria Bamford, and you know and uh this guy in Boston named Tony V were the comics that I most admired growing up. But I also like Mike I've always been a big fan of Mike, and then when he was doing the new one on Broadway, uh I got a DM invitation going, hey, if you want to come see Mike's show, he'd be happy to have you. Fucking please. And so I went to go see the show. I brought Ben Walker actually, as my uh my buddy and guest, and we had a good time and uh and really enjoyed it, and then afterwards uh, and then afterwards I said a quick hello, and then when he was in LA, I went to the show with my friend Ingrid.

Uh and after that show, I went drop by to say hi. And he went, I hear you have a good solo show. And I was like, uh, yeah, you know, it's this is 2019. He said, Yeah, you know, I'm just trying to make everything work. This is October, November 2019. And he said, Well, how about how can I see the show? And I said, I'll send you a tape. And he said, That doesn't work for me, actually. Um, how about I put it up for one night in New York and we see if it's any good? And maybe we can do something with it. And that was January of 2020. And then after that show, he said, Hey, uh, the show is good, but it needs some changes. And he recommended some changes that were very hard. And I knew that they were hard because my director Adam had recommended those same changes too, and they were too hard for me.

So I had a UK tour coming up, which was truncated by COVID. And I said, Okay, how about um I use this UK tour to try to implement those changes? And I slowly did, and the show got better. And then in March of 2020, he was like, Hey, you know, that June or July of 2020 thing that we were talking about, that's not happening now. And uh, and yeah, yeah. So we re called me in October of this year, or October, yeah, October of this year. And he went, it's happening December 1st. And I was like, what the fuck? I was like, for real, and he's like, Yeah, for real, we'll start getting it ready. You know, it's like, you know, like I, but I I panic booked all of these different shows and like Phoenix and Madison and you know, Cleveland and Bloomington, you know, like anywhere that would have me for anything, you know, anywhere that would have me. I went and did it and had just a blast.

[37:10] Jeryl Brunner: And here you are, you did it.

[37:12] Alex Edelman: Yeah. It's so great. And also it's a lot of fun because you know, we've gotten a couple, like it's a show that travels pretty easily. Like Rod I Brown Hill went, we'd like to put the show up. And I'm like, Yeah, like it's a show that I can roll out of bed and do with without, you know, I do a lot of homework before the show. My production coordinator, MC Mangum, who works on the show with me before every show, we write down a list of six things to remember um before the show, and they're always different. So the show is always changing every little bit by degrees. It's like this living organism. So it's this really fascinating um exercise where you watch the show. People who someone who saw the show in January of 2018, someone who sees it now will be like, oh my god, this is a different show. But obviously that'd be the case for anything four years later. But it's a you know the same story, but very different. So yeah.

[38:11] Jeryl Brunner: Are you comfortable sharing what the note was, what they said, what they said the change should be?

[38:18] Alex Edelman: What was it? I really love the fact that you know that my shows can pull in uh far-flung things, like uh like I love the disparate things that are in my show. Yes, but sometimes that love can be uh can have a drawback, which is that it's not as focused. And so they went, these bits are nice. They get really good laughs, but they're not focused, they're tangents. So how about you kill the tangents and you focus more on the show? And I was like, but I like my tangent. And they're like, yeah, but it doesn't belong in the show. And that's really hard to reckon with. That's really hard to um wrap your arms around. And they were right. I hate to admit that they were right, but they were right. And uh yeah, the show is better for it.

The show is there is a full 10 minutes of or 15 minutes almost of material that has come out of the show uh relative to its UK tour and people, and and this is just it's just a better show now. It's a shame I should have done it earlier, frankly.

[39:41] Alex Edelman: I'll kick myself for a while for not doing it. But you know, say lovey.

[39:47] Jeryl Brunner: Well, maybe you weren't ready, maybe you had to, you know, get to that place. But it sounds like you you just all these experiences, all these people came into your life. But was there any kind of trailing, or was it just existing in the world? Stand up. Stand up and exit. I've never taken a class.

[40:08] Alex Edelman: Wow. Um, but also like, you know, I've worked with I work with Adam Brace, who's this guy, the this director, or and he's a really smart, you know, the play that I'm reading of his right now, you know, he did it at the Alameda in 20. They did it at the Alameda in 2016 in London, and Seth Barish, who's Mike's director, worked with me for a couple of sessions. Gary Golman sat with me in a hotel room in Charlotte and watched the whole show and gave notes. Like, so I don't really have a and Danny Jollis, who's my like I have friends. Moses Storm, who's another young comic, came to see the show, like and gave notes. Like I've never taken a class, but I have always I've been going to school on this since I was 13.

[40:54] Alex Edelman: So it's a lifelong thing. And also I'd be really open to it. My friend Zach Zucker is an incredible clown, and you know, he was like, let me teach you clowning. And I was like, Yeah, man. Like, you know, anything that will add to the arsenal. So I'm very uh I'm not like, look at me, comedy's goodwill hunting over here, but like it's a uh it's just I've never taken a class, but I've been allowed to sit and watch you know, literally tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of performances from the best people and and get to learn from that. So it's it's it's not exactly like I hustled and and scrapped and did it all on my own. I just uh I just had people who were willing to let me uh watch and answer any question.

[41:49] Alex Edelman: Josh Harmon, who's one of my favorite playwrights.

[41:53] Jeryl Brunner: Oh, he's brilliant.

[41:54] Alex Edelman: Yeah, bad choose. Who I love came to an early version of this show, and uh, or not early version, he came early on in this run. But Josh has a brilliant Josh at the beginning of the pandemic, took some time with me to get on Zoom and talk about plays, and that had a big effect on remounting the show.

[42:19] Jeryl Brunner: So and Josh teaches playwriting at Columbia, so it's not like I've not taken any formal classes, but I've j I've had private tutoring from the best.

[42:30] Alex Edelman: It's amazing. Well, it's such a pleasure to connect, and thank you so much for sharing and congratulations.

[42:31] Alex Edelman: Thank you so much, Gerald. Thank you so much for coming to the show. Please, if you're listening to this, please do come see it because it's my best work so far.

[42:46] Jeryl Brunner: So yeah.

[42:47] Alex Edelman: It's just delicious.

[42:49] Jeryl Brunner: Thank you.

[42:50] Alex Edelman: Thanks.

[42:50] Jeryl Brunner: Have a great day.

[42:51] Alex Edelman: Thank you.

[42:52] Alex Edelman: It still happens every day when lightning strides the moment you know.

[42:58] Jeryl Brunner: The theme song was written by Tom McGovern.

[43:01] Jeryl Brunner: This episode was edited by Kyle Moore.

[43:04] Jeryl Brunner: And the talent was booked by Anna Strike.