Kyle Mazer:

Woohoo!

Danielle Krage:

Today I have Kyle Mazer with me, a playwright, composer and stand-up comic, who amongst other fun projects has created The SS Cancelled, self-described by Kyle as a twisted comedic musical, which is super fun. But before we dig into your process, Kyle, for creating that amazing musical,is there anything else that people should know about your connections to creating comedy?

Kyle Mazer:

Uh, sure. Yeah. Well, first, thank you for having me. Hello. I’m so excited to be here. Um, I think in terms of my comedy career it really technically started when I was 17. There was this bar in my hometown. I’m from a small town in Melbourne, New Jersey. There was a bar called Scotty’s that had like a comedy class and my mom signed me up because I wasn’t doing anything that summer. And instantly I fell in love with the art form, with being able to be on stage like this. But I say career in quotes because since I was a kid, it’s where so much of my inspiration came from and still comes from and everything that I write, both dramatic and comedic, and everything that is dramatic has some comedy to it… so as much as it’s a career, it’s definitely a lifestyle of just being fun, being silly, and then taking the best of it and putting it on the page is how I like to operate. So yeah, I think that’s a fitting intro to who I am and what I’m trying to do.

Danielle Krage:

Amazing. And how does music fit into that? Composing?

Kyle Mazer:

Definitely. So yeah, music came honestly first. It’s really funny when I look back at like my trajectory because as you can see from my shirt and my posters, I very much have an athlete background. My sister was the performer. She fell in love with theater when she was like three and I’d go to all of her shows and I’d always sit in the audience and then go back to baseball practice or whatever. But I started taking piano lessons when I was five because my parents wanted us to play instruments, and we tried the violin, because I saw the Fiddler on the Roof and was like, that’s cool, I want to be on the roof. And then couldn’t do the violin because I needed structure and the piano has like, you play the key, it sounds the same every time. And I just, I obsessed over the piano from when I was a kid to still. And at first it was playing like the classical, it was on the page and very kind of early on, my teacher would yell at me a lot for playing the notes that weren’t on the page. I just loved to like play and feel myself through music. I feel like it is such a different language that you can speak when you’re playing that I loved. And kind of in a way, like everything just kind of came together as I started writing little songs that I thought were silly and writing jokes and I was like, hey, what if you kind of do both a little bit and then you have silly songs and that’s it kind of all wrapped together really cleanly and still does and how I can use both to like benefit the other.

Danielle Krage:

I love that. And I definitely get this playful sense from you already, which is awesome. So I’d love to take The SS Canceled as a bit of an example, which is your comedy musical, and I was lucky enough to watch, I will put the link in the show notes too. I’d love to know what about that premise really interested you and what made you think, oh, this has really good grounds for being comedic too.

Kyle Mazer:

Sure. So I think kind of similarly to how like my piano and my love for like live action in terms of being an athlete, and like getting that high pressure situation and comedy all came together… Another huge interest I’ve always had has been in history. I loved history all growing up. And I think as anyone can see, there are a lot of problems with the way our at least modern mainstream history like either whitewashes or ignores a lot of facts, and I think we’re in any really cool age where people are starting to reckon with the history that we have laid out, the textbook that either covers the heroes inaccurately, and I think it’s really important to rewrite this.

And I was thinking of funny ways to do it. It’s so funny because in everything else I’ve written, I know the exact moment of the spark of like, oh, there’s the idea. I think The SS Cancelled, I will often say, is one of the best ideas I’ve ever had for those who haven’t watched it yet. And I encourage you to watch it. I’m not gonna plug myself any further. It’s a ship that carries people who have been post-mortem cancelled from heaven to hell because they can’t stay in heaven because they’ve been cancelled. And so someone has to get them down to hell. And it’s this ship, The SS Cancelled, which I thought was just so funny. And I couldn’t let go of this idea.

At first, it was just a joke. Most of the stuff I do is a joke to make fun of my sister. My first musical was a joke to make fun of my sister. This was a joke that I was like, my sister will hate. And then it turned out she wanted to work on it with me. It’s such a strange kind of combination of like my love for history and, and rewriting the textbook and, and trying to like work in this…. We hear so much about cancel culture and white men getting so angry at cancel culture and we wanted to take a nuanced approach to like, if cancel culture is a thing that’s going to be here to stay, how can we operate within those premises? Which led to a really fun exploration of like, how can we make these historical figures terrible, but also still make a show that’s really… You’re kind of half rooting for these characters, but not enough that you want them to survive because they’re still cancelled. And so it was just so many fun, comedic balances and political tones to play with, just combining so many of my interests into this really goofy ship show. And I love a good sea shanty, so I had to throw those in there as well.

Danielle Krage:

Amazing. And I’d love to know for people like myself that don’t have experience of creating a musical, but that love comedy, what are some of the specific challenges do you think that musical comedy throws up? Because if I was thinking about that premise immediately, I can think… Ooh, if I was doing a short story, that would be fun. Or Ooh, if I was doing a book, that would be fun. But if you were like, now make it a musical, I would have literally a blank page. So what, what are some of the specific challenges that throws up? Do you think?

Kyle Mazer:

Well, I think there are challenges and benefits to musical comedy, always. And you’ll hear it like my one of my comedic mentors who is an old comedy manager who was my boss at one point named Barry Katz would call any musical comics a hack because you’re relying on… you have this like instead of just standing at the microphone and saying the story you have these little like bells to keep people at least bobbing their heads if they don’t think your words are that funny. So to me, the idea of writing The SS Cancelled as a short story is more terrifying because every word has that much more weight. When you can throw in a lot of really comedic songs like The SS Cancelled has that are so light in tone and so ridiculous, the premise is so much lighter than it is. When I just talk about the show out loud and I’m like, yeah, and then Andrew Jackson is going to come out and sing this song about how he wishes white men were better. Like you’re like, whoa, but then you hear the little like cutesy little melody and it’s like, okay, I can kind of get behind this because the tone is so much lighter.

I think I’m very lucky that like the the tone of the songs often, like it takes a while to get to the right tone sometimes, but when I find it, I know I have this like very light tone that can be juxtaposed with a pretty heavier concept or just like a scarier thing to talk about,  than it is to have this really light, goosey tone and sing about it. I think one of the worst songs in our show, worst meaning like the content wise called He’s the Worst, where my sister kind of just had her little tirade against white men that she hated in history, like the music sounds like a Mario Kart theme song track. And so it’s so goofy. And so these lyrics that are like, if you read them as a poem, you’re like, oh my God, why did anyone write this?… Come off so much funnier and so enjoyable because you have that levity extra element to your medium to get across this like very contrasting tone that only makes everything that much more funny, I think which is where a lot of it came from

Danielle Krage:

Yeah, that makes such sense now you say it. The opportunity to play with contrast. Now you’re intriguing me. I’m like, Ooh, that does sound fun. That sounds like a fun game….thinking where that contrast would come in. And I’d love to know what other – because I think about tone a lot when I’m writing and I’ve got my own sort of self-made up vocabulary for how I explain it in my head for what I’m shooting for – when you’re thinking about the kind of musical like SS Cancelled, what’s some of the vocabulary that you have for how you describe what tone you’re going for potentially, then convey that to other people like the performers.

Kyle Mazer:

Yeah, so what’s cool about The SS Cancelled is it’s like, it’s very much, as much as it is about this ship, it’s bookended by this like this high school world, very anxious drama love story of these two high schoolers trying to like admit they’re in love with each other, but also like too afraid to show their true feelings because we live in this age where if you show too much and you screw up, you’re going to be vulnerable and can risk being cancelled, as happens to our protagonist. And so like this very like anxious, very tight tone that opens and closes the show, allows the ship to be very zany, very freeing, were often words that we used of like, you, cos what’s really fun about how we cast the show was all the people who played these awful white men were the furthest things we could get from these white men. We were like, what would, who would Charles Davenport, the father of eugenics, hate to see play Charles Davenport? Who would like Alfred Hitchcock, this like awful abuser of women throughout all the film industry, hate to see play him? And so we’d like kind of miscast these very intentionally giving these actors the freedom to just like take as many awful liberties and say the grossest and vilest things they could to make these jokes land even further. And it was, I think zany and freeing what we were going for the most. We definitely like, we knew the whole time that this ship could come across a little controversial if you’re not on board right away. Like my sister, no pun intended. My sister was…Sorry….Awful.

My sister was always much more anxious than I was about the tone. And I think where we landed was like, if we are having so much fun on stage that the audience is like… well, I kind of just like, I’m enjoying this because it’s fun. Like the content aside, they’re having such a good time…. I want to have a good time with them was what we encouraged our cast to do endlessly. If you are having so much fun, then the audience will get on board with you that time, intention, faster because I think it’ll be just… we don’t want to take ourselves too seriously. We know that this show is a joke. We need it to be a joke and so keeping that zany, freeing-like feeling at the front was something we stressed endlessly in the development process.

Danielle Krage:

Yeah, you definitely succeeded in that. Now you say those words, it’s like, yeah, that’s absolutely the words for how it felt aboard the ship. And also, I love the miscasting, and like you say, the enjoyment in that.

Kyle Mazer:

It’s so silly. It has to be so silly.

Danielle Krage:

Like, for example, the teacher character, if I was in a school running a workshop and saw that teacher, I’d be horrified. But in the musical, the actor is having so much fun with it. It’s like one of my favorite characters. It’s so delightful how awful he is.

Kyle Mazer:

So what I love about him, he’s one of my good friends, we met in like a composing class back in college. And the first time we did like a Zoom workshop reading of this show, it was me and my sister sitting at our living room piano, the same place, like 18 years earlier, she and I had put on a two-man production of Fiddler on the Roof. That was where I fell in love with the whole Fiddler concept. But like we were back at the exact same piano, so it was a very nice full circle moment for us. And we put on, we did this show over Zoom for our friends because it was the height of the pandemic. And I always knew I wanted him to be the teacher and Columbus and hearing him sit there and be like, I wanna play Christopher Columbus. I wanna play this teacher. It was like such a great moment because he brought so much fun to that character in such a crazy man, that character he has to play. But it was so like just liberating for him to get to go up there and say all these things that he like would get canceled for saying if he was trying to do it in real life, which is like the magic of theater.

Danielle Krage:

That’s lovely. And it’s so pleasing that you’ve got all this sort of freeness and things being liberating when your theme is kind of censorship and cancellation, that’s again, such a fun game. I love that.

Kyle Mazer:

I know, it’s such a weird element of the show, but when the white men walk out and I was, cause I was sitting at the piano, I played the piano for our production. So my back was to the audience and I could see some of their faces, like their reflections in the piano. But for the most part, it was just like, you just have to feel it. And as a performer for now seven, eight years, and like an athlete for long before that, you get very used to like the feeling of a crowd and eyes on you at all time. And I could feel just how much everyone was so excited to laugh at this awful stuff. Because usually when a white man gets on stage and starts talking about cancel culture, all the audience is like, ooh, can we laugh at this? Can we not laugh at this? Am I complicit if I laugh at this? And so there’s always that kind of tension. There was no tension in that theater. Everyone was just like, we have the green light to laugh at these awful jokes that we otherwise probably shouldn’t be laughing at because of the context and the world we set up, which was so cool to experience. I could feel people enjoying this, almost as a guilty pleasure kind of feeling. Just something I could sense this like I can’t believe we get to see this awfulness and as we go into rewrites we’re like how can we make it more awful, that people can laugh even more, which has been really really a strange like social experiment but really fun for us.

Danielle Krage:

Wonderful, I love that. So you mentioned rewrites, I’d love to ask you about that, the process of making a show like this, or if you want to apply it to other projects of yours, that’s also fine. But what kind of methods do you have that work for you for how to kind of iteratively make it better? Like how do you know when you’re making it funnier? What kind of is your go-to when things aren’t working? Or you want to punch them up?

Kyle Mazer:

It’s easier. Yeah, so I mean, I am a relentless first drafter. I will push myself through everything. I do everything I can to, like, fend off writer’s block or anything by just getting something down, because I know I’m a better editor than I am a writer oftentimes. And so I just, like, get everything down and then you can start looking at it. And there’s, there are a lot of different rules people I think that’s actually a Cambridge Footlights rule. So for those across the pond, shout out to The Footlights. But they do like a joke every three lines. You hear stand-ups say like it has to be a laugh every 10 seconds. I’m not that strict about that, like there’s not a line, there’s not a laugh here. But every line that can be in a show can be funnier, I think is definitely a way of just looking at things holistically. Like you can probably make that a little funnier. We have now, we’re on our fifth draft of The SS Cancelled, but the music hasn’t changed much, which kind of goes back to my point before about like tone of music versus like the specificity of words. It’s harder to get those words right, those book scenes in the middle of the songs. And in all the projects I work on, I like to write with the door closed, kind of do it on my own, and then bring it to as many people as I can.

I have my own group of writers who I work with, who I know will just make things funnier if I talk to them about it. Like, wouldn’t this be funnier if we did that? The cast was super helpful in both casts. Because we also did it at Yale. We did it at my college before we graduated. And the girl playing Eli Whitney was like, what if I played this as like a queer Southern bell? And like never was that anywhere in the script, but now it is. Because people can come in and see things that you don’t see and just make it funnier. It’s really about being open to suggestions. I think a lot of the time it’s not being too tied to lines for the sake of the overall project. I often.. in my sister’s writing pair, I take things too far and she has to take us back, which is probably pretty good because otherwise it would just, like, I would go off the rails with some of the jokes that I put forward. But yeah, I think I, there’s so many different ways to catch people off guard and to misdirect people and to…but there, there is a limit where like you are at this point of risking story for how funny it is.

And so you find this balance and need to be willing to constantly go back and rewrite things and retry things. I got great advice the first time we did the show, someone was like, keep all the songs, rewrite the entire book, just delete it and see what happens if you delete everything and then come to the middle with the original and this. And we did something relatively similar. We wrote a lot of the individual jokes. And then like it’s also, as a stand up, like every live performance you do, you tinker a little bit on the lines to make the delivery a little funnier. You are like, OK, that joke landed pretty well. But if I added a few more words of setup or a little more of a specific answer… specificity is often the answer of just like be a little more specific and a little tighter at the same time. If you can somehow make it more specific and shorter at the same time, you can usually get people to laugh faster, which is great. And yeah, I think there are so many different ways to go at it. You just have to be like endlessly willing to know you can make it better, not ever be like this is the final…. This is as good as it will ever get because that’s probably never going to be the case.

Danielle Krage:

Yeah, that’s really good advice around specificity. I always have trouble with that word, specificity and brevity. Yeah, that’s perfect advice.

And you’ve mentioned collaboration a few times. What do you think helps you now collaborate so successfully and on multiple, multiple projects that you’re currently working on, that you just didn’t know when you started?

Kyle Mazer:

Oh man, it’s funny because my first experience with collaboration was so bad. Like the first musical I wrote, I had a really kind of terrible experience of like, I wasn’t getting heard. It was a project that I brought these four people on with and then they kind of took it and ran with it. And I was really like, ah, I guess this is what happens if you let other people work on your work. But then I realized like, no, that’s not the answer. It’s just finding, A, the right people to work on, people you want to have fun with, and want to be joking with and feel very relaxed around so you can say like, no, that’s stupid. What a terrible idea. Which is great when you’re working with your sister, because no matter how much Carly and I fight, we have to come to the dinner table that evening. And so like we have to reconcile somewhere, which is just great for that like trust and collaboration and like everyone being on the same page to make it the best it can be not worried too much about like me getting my stuff across, you getting your stuff across. It’s we are all getting somewhere together. I learned a ton from that first experience and still try not to like kind of push myself down someone’s throat just because I think I’m right… Usually I’m not right… being able to say I’m wrong, being able to say no, you’re funnier or that line is funnier because it’s not a competition. Like being an athlete first and now an entertainer, like there it is a competition. There are stats that say I won and you lost. In theater, in comedy and entertainment…. There is just… people who want to see it. And so it doesn’t matter who brought that or why it’s there as long as like you’re you’re happy working together and enjoying it.

I always say like you stop the minute it’s no longer fun, when it’s no longer something you want to be doing. That’s when you have a problem. As long as you’re enjoying it, even if you’re not winning all your battles, you’re not getting your words across the page. Like you’re still going to be working on this really cool thing. And every bad idea that you might have rejected probably led someone to the good idea that you’re going to end up using. Which I’ve learned the hard way and the easy way when it’s just like, oh, I’m so glad we took a chance on that joke because it worked. Just this willingness to always be like, oh, you have an idea, let’s hear your idea. Making a really open collaborative space is something I think a lot about. And I try my best to always encourage everyone to share from the beginning. Just… we’re all friends here, we’re all working toward the same goal. Because if we’re not, like no one’s going to be having fun, or get their better ideas across if you’re like a tyrant. That’s just so not the point of why you create art.

No genius was ever created in a vacuum. And so that is, I think, all the things I think about when it comes to collaboration of just letting like, letting the nature of collaboration benefit you, not hurt you, because it can hurt you if you take it the wrong way. But it can so benefit you if you’re willing to hear everyone and hear more voices. You almost always create something better when more people come into the room and add perspective to a project that you think you understand completely. Because eventually the whole world is going to see it. And that’s kind of a collaborative experience when like the art is me doing it and you enjoying it. Like if a tree falls in the forest, it doesn’t have a… and no one’s there to hear it. If a show goes up and there’s no audience there to see it, then it’s not really like a show. You need the audience. You need to be working with them. And so being able to be working with people from the start will only make that long road to a sellout crowd easier, I think.

Danielle Krage:

That’s lovely. I love that. And you’ve mentioned being an athlete a couple of times. Is there anything about that training, or that culture, that you think has been super helpful when you think about comedy and musicals and writing plays and all the creative things you do?

Kyle Mazer:

I mean everything. Like you’re… I think one of the first times I think I put up a show and I was feeling those same like pregame butterflies that I used to feel. I was a pitcher. I was a baseball pitcher. Like that was my height of a thing to do. And what I love about pitching is like everyone is staring at you as the pitcher taking on this batter and you are going up there saying, I’m going to give it my all. I have done my training and my preparation to give you my all. And the batter si saying, I have done my training, I am going to give you my all, one of us is gonna win. And it might not be up to you. It might be like a crazy kind of luck play.

What’s cool about entertainment and theater is you’re playing offense against no one. Like you can do all your training and all your preparation and it’s going to, that’s it. Like there’s no variable of another team coming in who just happens to be better than you. Like if you put in your time and your training and your prep and you’re thorough, then you’re going to have success because there’s no one there to battle against you. And I think having that battle instinct first, and now it’s like, okay, now all I have to do is get to the position where I’m at my best, and that guarantees that I will have done well, has been such a rewarding kind of mind shift. Because of having that athlete background, you learn that it’s all about the prep and the training. The game is just the payoff of all the hard work you did before that.

And then you take it one step further, and like a team sport, which is everything I played in, because I don’t really like individual sports. You get used to relying on others, on working together, on relying on friends and not friends alike. If you don’t like the people on your team, to like put everything aside for the big moments and that’s just such an important life skill when you are in the arts and playing against no one. I always say like we’re playing against no one let’s get ourselves in the best position we can be so that like no one can beat us because there’s no one there to beat us.

And that’s just such a great mindset for me to get in when I’m thinking about the show. Just like, how can I do the extra step, go the extra miles, like one more rehearsal, are all my props in line, is everything here, go over it again, be more thorough, just because you can only get yourself further with everything you do. And that training mindset is so, it’s the training mindset and the collaborative team effort that has been so impactful for me every day still as I do anything. really because of where I started.

Danielle Krage:

Yeah, I totally agree with you. I’m super fascinated. I’m not.. I’ll preface this by saying I am not a good sports player…. I never excelled at anything to do with sports at school. I literally scored what was a very minor win in rounders, which is like a weird game that’s kind of like basketball, kind of like cricket… up in the air. See, I don’t even know how to describe it. But I got like a default win by missing the ball so many times in a row that actually it counted for our team. So that’s my only sporting victory.

Kyle Mazer:

It’s like shooting the moon.

Danielle Krage:

But that said, I take my hats off to athletes so much. I’m really fascinated by sports psychology and have read so many sports psychology books because I’ve found that one of the areas that’s most helpful for mindset. So I kind of suck them up, extract all the mindset work and then apply it to creativity. So I love that you actually have genuine experience of both. That’s awesome.

Kyle Mazer:

Oh, totally. I mean, especially like pitching to stand up was the most direct correlation for me of like when I was a pitcher and everyone’s eyes are on you and you have to deliver, like that is a moment that I craved growing up. I didn’t really realize I craved it until I was doing stand up and I was like, huh, I’m chasing that same feeling of like all eyes on me, all the pressure on this moment, like can you deliver? And it’s the same delivery, essentially. It’s like one is a pitching delivery where you’re trying to throw a strike, and one is a joke that you’re pitching into the audience to see if that’ll land. And like, you get that same like crack of the bat, you get that crack of the audience’s laughter. It was like, there are such crazy parallels. And it goes beyond that into the training and to the team effortness of it all that I think is like, it’s really cool to see those overlaps. And you do see a fair amount of like athletes turn into comics and they do well with the pressure at least, because they’re used to that and they’re trained for that. And now there’s no one to try and take it away from them, which is really cool.

Danielle Krage:

Yeah, amazing. And do you use music in your standup?

Kyle Mazer:

So I do and I don’t. I actually go back and forth on whether I should or shouldn’t. Kind of like I said, I had that old boss who was like, if you’re not planting your feet at the microphone and telling a joke, you’re not doing real stand-up. And I was like, ah, but I’m so much funnier when I do have a guitar. And I can sing up there and like the timing you can use and the way you can kind of lull everyone into this nice happy tone. I found it’s just, for me it’s more enjoyable. I can get kind of my voice across more. I still sometimes think I’m finding my voice as a stand up and I know I have a much stronger voice as like a songwriter and so I love when I can write little tiny songs and like play them on stage. I always have and I’ve found I’m doing, I do better when I do it so I think I’ll just have to put my like boss’s harpings into the back of my brain and focus on what I think is working for me. But yeah, I love to have music in my stand-up because like I said it’s like you can play with so many more elements which some people look at as like antithetical to the traditional art form and some people are like yeah that’s good that works it’s funny if it’s funny it works and so it works for me.

Danielle Krage:

Brilliant. And more broadly, because you do have that composer’s and musician’s ear as well as being a writer ann a standup, are there any ways when you think about the craft of comedy that you think about rhythm specifically? Because we throw around the phrase ‘comic timing’ a lot, and I think that has specific meanings within standup, but more broadly within musicals, within plays, like how do you think about rhythm and the potential it has to contribute to comedy?

Kyle Mazer:

Yeah, I mean, well, like the musical rhythm of things is everything. Like if you can get into that flow and it’s very cadenced, it helps an audience to know when to laugh. If you’re very clearly like set up punchline, set up punchline. Steve Martin is the only one I know who really well like just defeats timing and is just like relentlessly peppering you with jokes. But you’re then always on the edge of your seat and always laughing, which is kind of why he stopped doing stand-up because he was like…I can’t get them to stop laughing, which is a hilarious problem to have. If you get to that point in your career, you can abolish timing as well.

But for the rest of us, yeah, I’ve always seen it as like, if you think of a rubber band, and you’re like pulling it all the way and just like you that feeling of like, oh, it’s gonna snap at one point, it’s gonna snap at one point, but keeping the audience as suspenseful and as tight as you can. So that when it does snap, it really hits hard and really resonates is something that I like, that’s how I have always mentally envisioned that idea of timing. You need to build up that moment so it really does hit and often you need to do it when they’re least expecting it, not like right as someone might think it should come, but like either right after or right before.

I love to hold jokes as long as I can. Audiences do get bored of that occasionally but I think it’s still worth it because if the payoff is there the payoff is huge. But it is so musical to think about like just the cadences of when rests come in.  Mozart was like your rest is the most powerful note that you have because you can take that breather and everyone will hang on that breath. And so a lot of it comes from comfort. Like if you’re comfortable up there, you’ll have that timing. Being intentional about kind of pulling, like this is when I’m pulling back the rubber band, here’s the snap and here is kind of the one, that comes after. I think that’s how I have always envisioned it, and how it comes across on the page and hopefully on the stage.

Danielle Krage:

Brilliant. I’ve got a super specific sort of niche question to ask you, but I figure you’re a good person to ask. And if you don’t know the answer, no problem.

Kyle Mazer:

Go for it.

Danielle Krage:

Which is, there’s this thing that that I’ve experienced in comedy that I don’t have a word for, which is when there’s like a particular rhythm at play that’s just so delightful and pleasing that I almost don’t have the vocabulary to explain why and why it tickles me so much. Because I think in general, I’m quite a logical person. But for example, there’s a scene in Rick and Morty where he’s Pickle Rick. And there’s something that they do with the language there around Pickle Rick and repeating the words and the way that they play it, that I just find it absolutely hysterical and I can’t explain why. And recently there was a scene in Reboot where Johnny Knoxville’s character, that’s not his character name, but that’s the player who was playing it, was doing a scene where he was dubbing. And again, it was the rhythm that was happening between trying to dub the scene and how he was saying the words and mispronouncing the words and coming back for the words. Again, there’s just something about the rhythm of it that was just so delightful, it made me laugh. I don’t know if there’s a word for that or how anybody

would describe it. So I’m gonna ask you.

Kyle Mazer:

Oh, it’s funny, because the first thing that came to my mind when you started talking about this, do you know the piano player Thelonious Monk?

Danielle Krage:

I’ve heard the name, but I wouldn’t be able to say that I know what that sounds like, but I have heard the name, yeah.

Kyle Mazer:

So he was kind of called this mad man of late jazz in the late 50s, early 60s. And what he like, he’s honestly, he’s Dave Chappelle’s biggest inspiration is what he says, which I found fascinating when I first put those two together because I loved them independently, never thought of them together. And he like, it’s really, he is tickling you, genuinely always misdirecting you, never landing where you expect him to be, but it’s in a way that always like, because I think comedy is everything that isn’t serious in a way, like very obvious statement, but you kind of know what I mean in the sense that like, comedy is what’s unexpected always, but it’s in a way that can, once it happens is like, oh, duh, it happened that way. I think when you can break from that, like that straight edge and just try anything that isn’t… because he never goes too far. He’s always so careful with how he like, is literally tickling the keys, but just like poking and prodding you kind of where you least expect it. I’m trying to think if there’s a word that sums it all up other than like literally like tickling is what comes to mind of just like because it’s this itch that you’re… it’s an irresistible like I have to laugh even though I might not want to I might try to like keep a straight face but it is just so funny because it just gets under your skin. It gets you where you’re not expecting it that like misdirection um There’s gotta be a word, I can pull out my thesaurus. But tickling is definitely like where I land and just like, oop, gotcha, like didn’t see that one coming. I’m playing with you a little bit, I’m not annoying you. Just tickling, just here.

Danielle Krage:

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I am super fascinated now by this link to Dave Chappelle as well. I’m now gonna have to go back and listen to Thelonious Monk. Because again, I think Dave Chappelle is brilliant. I know he can be seen as controversial, but also what skill he has.

Kyle Mazer:

He has this one of his more recent specials where he’s like, I’m getting so good at comedy that I pull punchlines out of a bowl and then go back around and write the setup. And then he tells you the punchline and still 10 minutes later in the bit, he lands that punchline and you’re like, how the heck did he do that? Where he told it to me, I was so distracted by his story because he was just taking me in all different directions. And then he got me right back there. It’s very, very jazzy in the way of like, here’s the head of – because the head is the melody – I’m gonna dive into a three-minute solo and then like it’s going to emerge perfectly into the head and you’re just gonna be sitting there Like how did you do that to me? Why was that so perfect and like that is so precise and so trained But it seems so effortless when they do it well, which is really cool and how that timing that seems so natural and so calm and like just roll out of  bed I can do this, for Dave Chappelle it might be… for most of us it’s not… and to be so intentional about those, like the smallest of moments, recording everything, listening back to it, thinking about how you can improve it a little bit, everything one step further, one step further, not 30 steps, because it’s so daunting to be like, I have to get from where I am to Dave Chappelle. But it’s like, I want to incorporate one more joke. I want to try one moment of silence and see if that lands is how you get there one step at a time. And then you get to those, those like high levels, because they’ve been doing it since they were like I know Dave Chappelle started at 15, Thelonious Monk was playing piano since he was like eight. And it’s so impactful. Like you learn. I love jazz. And like John Coltrane, one of the best saxophonists ever, who also has a lot of good comedic timing.

It is so funny how jazz and comedy are so linked, but he learned from Thelonious. Thelonious was like, slow down. Stop overwhelming everyone with how well you can play. We don’t care how well you can play if we don’t enjoy hearing you play it. And then like you hear the second half of John Coltrane’s career, how much more intentional he would be with his note placement and like when he would go on these ridiculous runs and when he would just play like, Beboobap! And you’re like, oh, that’s all I wanted right there was a Beboobop! I didn’t want your whole little thing! And, and like, total random tangent, but I do think it’s so important to see how they all connect, because all the arts and entertainment was going after that same feeling in you of like, keeping you hooked, really, just like keeping you going and whatever for positive, for negative, it’s that feeling of like, I want to know what’s next, give me the next page, give me the next note, give me the next joke. And so like if you can tap into that of just like how can I get there. It’s a really helpful way for me thinking about just like it isn’t some unapproachable thing as much as it’s like a lot of people have done it in so many different ways. Find your way of doing it that makes you the happiest and makes your audience the happiest. But you first, because we perform for ourselves not for others.

Danielle Krage:

Yeah, that’s so inspiring. And my brain is on fire now with this comparing it to jazz. Like I’m so excited to dig into this. So thank you. You’ve really opened my eyes thinking about that. That’s awesome.

Kyle Mazer:

I’m glad.

Danielle Krage:

So yeah, I’m going to jump to, um, what may seem like a different area now, but there may be some parallels. We will see…

Kyle Mazer:

Go for it!

Danielle Krage:

You are also a creative strategist in web three. And so, for those who are listening…

Kyle Mazer:

It still sounds funny when I say it…

Danielle Krage:

I know. So really, for those who are listening, just a little bit of insight into that. We’re not going to go super deep into what Web3 is and definitions, but in case there are people listening who are like, what are these words they are speaking? If you could give us a sense of how that role fits within your bigger creative picture, what’s exciting, what’s drawn you to it.

Kyle Mazer:

So for all listeners who are thinking about turning it off when you realize I’m a crypto boy,

Danielle Krage:

Hehehehe

Kyle Mazer:

I have been and still am in many ways a crypto skeptic. I think we’re in such early stages of this art form that we don’t really know what it means. I was actually, I was reading about it yesterday and someone said, I like to believe that if I was around when Gutenberg was coming up with the printing press, I would have dabbled in the printing press a little bit. And that’s all I see that we’re doing right now…we have this new way to track ownership to like produce and publish work that gives the rights to the artists as opposed to like the middlemen or the ticket masters of the world and that’s something I care about a lot, just being and working around so many artists. I live in New York City where you can’t really afford to be an artist and not do five other things.  And so hearing that there was this way that artists could directly get paid for their work and create communities around their work in these digital environments. Like the way the world is changing so fast with the internet and like how the fact that we can do this, we’re in two different countries and two different time zones, and we’re talking to one another. There is so much moving in the realm of like mass production, the ability for so many more people to get involved and not have to go through all these. And so in that sense, I love what web3 offers less as like the coin and more of like the technology of like I can have ownership of my work that you can’t steal from me because instead of having to go through the US government copyright service, I mint it, whatever that really means in the technical terms, I don’t totally know. But, um, the fact that like I can produce something, it can be mine, I can be getting like all of the benefits from it and you can enjoy it in full – to me, I was like, how can I not see what this means?

And I think a large part of my job is breaking away from these traditional moulds of, like, we’re making a short film or a feature film, and like, what kind of mediums and modes work best for this kind of collaborative environment where we can all be creating together and all getting the benefits from the joint experience experiences we might have within it. I’m still learning a lot about the the tech side of things because that will inform a lot of the creative side of things, but on the creative front it’s the same. Like you still need a great story, you still need an empathetic character with a want and a desire and a relatable way of telling that story. Like none of the heart of the story changes.

Story has been story for millennia. Like whether it was oral histories and hieroglyphics back in the ancient days, or like the beginning of the printing press, the first and foremost, like what I can buy a book? Like that’s a crazy concept. That’s kind of, but the book still had to be good. And so I think that’s where I land is like, how can we take this age-old form of storytelling of connecting with people and inspiring and dreaming through either the written word or the like drawn image and take that, that is never going to change. How can we incorporate that into this weird, potentially, hopefully not too sketchy technology that allows us to like benefit from it ourselves as opposed to the printing presses or the printing houses and the publishing companies and the like studios who are making all this stuff. How can we reap the rewards? Which I think is an important thing for just how I see my friends and colleagues like trying to figure out how to have these art careers. If there’s something like this that really allows us to reap the benefits and not go through so many steps and hoops, like, how can we not check it out, you know?

Danielle Krage:

Yeah, I totally agree with you. And part of the reason that I’m also really open to web3 is again it’s the chance to try things and a chance to really be collaborative. Like we’ve spoken quite a bit about collaboration today, and I’ve already been involved in a few projects where I’ve had the chance to work with people that I would never have met in cities or villages all over the world who’ve been able to bring their really specific skills and in ways that suited them, which I think is really fun and moves creativity forward.

Kyle Mazer:

Totally. I mean, just like the, like I said, like when you’re collaborating and you’re working with anyone, the more perspectives you can bring into a room, the better your thing, whatever you’re creating is probably going to be. Like right now you, or you used to probably be limited to like your friends and your neighbors who wouldn’t turn you away and like the mailman, whoever you can get your hands on. Now you can really reach a global community and get perspectives on things that you could never have gotten before, collaboratively with people on topics that either you shouldn’t have been broaching or couldn’t have been broaching because you just didn’t know how. And it just opens the door for so much more really fascinating perspective melding to come together, which I think is such a… especially in our day and age where it seems like everyone is so divided and polarized only on their own news feeds… If story is going to be the uniting thing that keeps us all coming back together because it’s something we can all share in…I want to be right in the centre of that. I know that for sure.

Danielle Krage:

Yeah, I agree with you 100%. Thank you, you’ve given us so many great insights today and I’ve got this list here of things I now want to go and check out. But before we wrap up, two things. One is, the first is I’d love to know..you’ve mentioned comedic mentors a few times. I wondered if there’s any advice that you’ve been given that has been super helpful, either from someone in person or from things that you’ve read but then absorbed and applied?

Kyle Mazer:

Ugh, there are so many, I don’t even know where to start. I’m trying to think of, like, the best few.  I think I’ll give- can I give three quickly?

Danielle Krage:

Yes, go for it. Extra value.

Kyle Mazer:

Alright, I’ll boil it down to three. So, for one, I’ve mentioned him a few times, but my boss, Barry Katz, who is such a, like, has …one of the strongest eyes for comedy I’ve ever seen, what he always says is…make yourself undeniable, which sounds like kind of a little cliche, but the idea of just like if you want something, when you find your desire, you find your dream, you make it so that no one can take that away from you. Just like putting yourself in like… writing handwritten notes, going to the office, not to a point where it becomes like illegal or whatever, but like just endlessly putting yourself in the position to succeed to the point where no one can take that away from you, I think is such, amazing advice of just like I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. Well, how can I put myself in a position that like… what what are all the small things I can do to keep going? Which is great advice In the same vein, which is okay, sorry…. I have four. I’m sorry. I have four.

Danielle Krage:

It’s okay.

Kyle Mazer:

I have three more one comes from oh I think it was actually Jim Gaffigan said it on a podcast, but it really resonated with me, this idea of, he said… the opportunity of a lifetime comes around every six months, you just have to be in the right place for it at the right time. Which is this idea of like, it’s so hard in the arts to think like, oh, I’m never gonna get that break, I’m never gonna get that next step. And I think his reassurance of like, it’s always there, you just might not be ready for it yet, like depending on the work you have done, what you have in your samples, who is talking to you at the right time, there’s always going to be more chances. You didn’t miss it if you missed one. That like fail quickly mindset of like just keep going is super helpful.

The third comes from my mother because I love my mother very deeply and she is just so impactful in everything that I do. But whenever I get stressed about work or the unpredictability of the arts or whatever, the two things she always says is like, are you ready for tomorrow and control what you can control. If you have done that, if you have put yourself ready to get to tomorrow, then that’s all you can really ask for yourself. You can’t be thinking so far road that like you’re going to you’re gonna drive yourself crazy being like… how am I not getting a Lionsgate deal now like because that’s not tomorrow’s task. Tomorrow just get your script a little better. Get a few more cover letters out just so you can keep moving forward, controlling what you can control.

And then the last one comes from me because I’m a little bit of a narcissist and I think it’s fun to quote myself…but I try to be a very welcoming, enjoyable, like sympathetic person. But the one thing I don’t tolerate at all is people who want to be writers and want to be songwriters and want to be composers. Do it. Like if you want to write, write. If you want to compose, compose. I know you might have a day job. Like we all have day jobs, but if you can, if you want it that badly, you have to make the extra time and really put in the work. I write a thousand words every morning before I have breakfast. And that’s like how I start my day because that’s when I need to get my work in. And that’s like, that is the only way to like, if you know, no one is going to write it for you, maybe chat GPT, right? But like, don’t listen to them. Write it yourself. Just you have to… finding that like, way of turning the the desires and dreams into like the will to do it is such a crucial thing and just taking it one step at a time, not asking for a script today, but just your 250 words a day is going to make it’s going to be the difference. And it has been the difference for me. And it keeps me so grounded. And so that is my last piece of advice. If you want it, you have to do it. It’s the truth. And those are my mentorships. I hope those are helpful.

Danielle Krage:

They are. And I feel like we’ve got a nice collective around us giving us… the swift kick and a bit of tough love and a bit of compassion as well. We’ve got the full gamut, which I like, but no, in all seriousness, it is really, really good advice. And you can see the kind of athlete coming through in that too, and that really chimes with me. That’s also how I feel about creativity. I’m like, no, you have to do it. You have to break it down. You have to show up. You have to do those things, as well as have all the fun. Then you get all the fun too, but yeah…

Kyle Mazer:

Of course. Well, because if you are enjoying doing it, it isn’t work. Like, that’s why people do the arts, is to be laughing at your job all day. But you still have to do the job. Like, you still have to be doing the work and then the laughs and the rewards will come. But you have to do that dirty work that people don’t want to do when you just want to have the laughs and enjoyment. Like, that’s unfortunately not how it works. You got to put in the hard time to enjoy the good time.  I think it’s just great to realize that. Yeah.

Danielle Krage:

100%. Yeah, that’s great. I love that. So finally, where should people go if they want to find out more about you and your work? And of course, I will put these in the show notes too.

Kyle Mazer:

thesscancelled.com, to follow that show. We’re hopefully gonna go to Chicago in the fall for another round of development before we come back to New York or maybe to Edinburgh. So many plans for that show. You can follow me on Instagram at KMAZE19. And then if you join the Adimverse community, where I work as a creative strategist, we’re doing a lot of really fun cool and projects. I’ve met so many creators there with such big dreams and such different areas. I like getting to meet and work with more people. It’s one of my favorite parts of doing what I get to do. And so those are I guess the three best places to follow up on all things Kyle if you want to. I used to have a podcast but that died a slow pandemic death. Maybe it’ll reemerge one day. I don’t even know if it’s on Spotify anymore but look up Crackin’ Peanuts if it’s still

There you can hear like existential Kyle in the heart of the pandemic. But, um, we might have to

save that one for the archives.

Danielle Krage:

Amazing. Thank you so much for your time today, Kyle. I really appreciate it.

Kyle Mazer:

Thank you, this has been such an amazing, fun interview. I just, I love to talk about all the things that you do on your show and the people that you have on your show to be included as part of that group is like really a special honor. And so I’m just, I’m very grateful that we got to make this happen.

Danielle Krage:

Yeah, awesome. Thank you.

Kyle Mazer:

Of course.