"My Girlfriends Boyfriend," a comic solo show written by and starring Mike Birbiglia, is at the Barrow Street Theater. BIRBIGLIA: And the kids look at their parents like, oh, you did that? One of Birbiglias major challenges in developing new shows has been keeping his observations fresh for long-standing fans while catching up the new arrivals. I was opening for him, in central Pennsylvania at a theater, and it was all these superfans and they were just shouting like, BANANA!, or whatever joke they wanted to hear. Lets see what hes really got. If it works, I'm tying myself up and I'm putting myself in a tank of water because, basically, I have to get out of it. Christoph Waltz, I didnt see it last night, but Django blew my mind. I have always enjoyed Birbiglia, but My Girlfriend's Boyfriend truly blew my mind. SHAPIRO: And every time you crossed the line, did you feel like, oh, God, I'm actually a terrible person. BIRBIGLIA: At a certain point, they hand you this monkey. They said they liked Sleepwalk better. You feel a little silly because you want to point out to people that this is not -- this isn't the solution. She's lucky, she has the best lines in the show. 28. SHAPIRO: Was - were you confident that you had something new to say about parenting, that you could come to it from an angle that had not been approached a hundred times? Shop. I have the body of someone who's just about to start P90X and then doesn't. Tell that person, your life isn't that interesting! Its not clear in Mike Birbiglias My Girlfriends Boyfriend whether Mr. Birbiglia is still leaping out of hotel windows while sleepwalking. I recently shot a short film with one of the other actors, the great actor J. Jay Saunders and we didn't even know each other before, and ended up sharing a car ride four hours back from Western Mass, so we had a lot of time to talk. BIRBIGLIA: No, I have - no, when I would cross the line, I would usually walk it back with an audience. These people not only don't have kids - most of them; they don't even know anyone who has kids. I'm going to buy a [expletive] couch. You ever get in a fight with your girlfriend that's so bad that afterwards you don't know where you are or what year it is? The struggle to find his place after his family went from we to three is the backbone of his last solo stage show-turned-Netflix special, which is now an expanded memoir of the same name, The New One: Painfully True Stories From a Reluctant Dad.. That show is incredible. Sos its about the existential dread of being alive.. BIRBIGLIA: I want to figure out - and so then that's when I came up with the metaphor that opens the show, which is I - it's sort of a - the opening is sort of a love letter to my couch BIRBIGLIA: And my relationship with my couch through my 20s. Neither of those people came up. And in a way applause is the kind of the enemy of the comedian. All rights reserved. This is when we're going to bring in a set designer. Which it could have slipped into very easily. fungus and Andy Capp's Fries be damned. Mike Birbiglia works on stage blocking in preparation for a month of performances at the Steppenwolf Theater, Wednesday, April 27, 2022. . But there's really no time to ponder such aesthetic distinctions during Birbiglia's performance, because you're too busy howling. For now, the comedian is focusing on some of the clubs who have yet to meet their goal with new shows and ensuring the money raised goes straight to the workers. The comedian Mike Birbiglia has checked a lot of big items off his bucket list. We could do whatever we wanted. THR: See, most directors demand to be the stars. Stein collaborated on the memoir, contributing her side of the story . And she said no! BIRBIGLIA: I think that's right, yeah. That would be crazy. Hope Stein, whose verse is sprinkled liberally throughout his memoir, "The New One." . The first Fathers Day was in Washington state in 1910, inspired by a twice-widowed Civil War veteran who raised six of his 14 children alone after their mother died in childbirth. It premieres at SXSW. and they'll fucking applaud. Has he now gone on and become domesticated? BIRBIGLIA: I'm really - right? For more than a decade, his performances have found oxygen in the crawlspace between stand-up and the oft-maligned one-man show, with a bit of old-time radio storytelling thrown in. Second of all and MOST IMPORTANTLY tomorrow were back on my Instagram Live 330pm EST with Melissa Villaseor (@melissavcomedy) from SNL! Although Im really looking forward to his Much Ado About Nothing. SHAPIRO: I mean, do you think you're an outlier, or do you think this is kind of more common than we let on? But yeah, usually her memories, I think, were more interesting than mine, they were more detailed. BIRBIGLIA: And then once I did that, college kids got on board BIRBIGLIA: With this show that was about having a kid. Like, I won't say, like, I bombed, but I was like, this is not connecting the same way it's connecting with, like, people in their late 20s and middle age. He's been on TV and radio. I have to have redemption on the other side because I know my daughter, who's now 3 1/2, is eventually going to be 15, and she's going to hear this. SHAPIRO: Mike, thanks a lot for coming to the studio. This is when we're going to bring in a lighting designer. SHAPIRO: You talk about that moment in the show. He revisits the format in My Girlfriends Boyfriend, again starting with a traumatic event in this case, a car accident and wrapping it in nutty anecdotes and meandering detours but somehow never losing the audience or the arc. Having put to rest the notion that all good things are over, Birbiglia is hard at work killing the corollary fear that the good material has run out. SHAPIRO: Does it feel different? Mike Birbiglia was born on June 20, 1978, in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, USA. It's a little more mature. The Three Questions with Andy Richter Team Coco & Earwolf WTF with Marc Maron Podcast Marc Maron Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend . And last year, he checked a new item off the list - he made his Broadway debut with a one-man show called "The New One.". Let's get tickets. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. October 12, 2017 at 11:49 a.m. EDT. It really is a test of like, your will basically, of how little amount of money can you spend so that when you come out of this on the other side, can you be open? A quick march down Birbiglias hilarious Via Dolorosa: surviving bladder cancer at age 19; getting T-boned by a drunk driver; nearly dying after running through the second-story window of a La Quinta Inn in Walla Walla, Wash., in the grip of a sleep disorder. You know exactly where his story about riding a carnival Scrambler with a date and a stomach full of junk food is going, but the beauty is in the telling (which includes a convincing re-enactment of the actual Scrambling). But it was just such a touching thing, Thompson said. She's a writer, as well, so she's my closest confidante when it comes to all of my work. Its impossible to keep up with everything happening in New York City arts and culture, but here are some recommendations for events you shouldnt miss during the week ahead. And SHAPIRO: You mean saying things about a child that just made people kind of go (inhales sharply) BIRBIGLIA: And then I sort of - I've, you know - and that's - that's what - comedians, that's sort of the task of the comedian is you have to - you cross the line. BIRBIGLIA: And there's - I won't give it away, but there's some set design elements that sort of evoke that. I don't know why, I'm not a comparison guy either, but it seemed that just because you've gotten more experience with theater and have more life experience, it seemed to me, I don't know, more rich. When comedian Mike Birbiglia was in high school, he fell for a cool girl named Amanda. In another essay, Birbiglia recalls how President Obama became the first person to learn that he and his wife, poet J. , might make one wonder what the difference really is between a theatrical monologue . I mean, one is like, ha-ha, good one. The parents look at their kids like, see what we did? But maybe my memory is deceiving me and they are equally funny. By Mike Birbiglia Two years ago I'm in Los Angeles, and I'm at my friend Andy's house and we're watching TV. You get the hang of life. Was there anything in there that you had to cut because she wasn't comfortable with it? THR: So are you getting a lot more interest in doing films now that Sleepwalk With Me was well received? And don't get me wrong - I think one is funny. And it's like, well, that's out the window. When I handed in my book, a week later I called up and I was like, "Can I make some more changes?" Whether or not we stopped or put a hold on three to five marriages, that may be an exaggeration. She is one of the funniest people on the planet. Birbiglia is more concerned about curbing the pandemic. Those conversations led to "Tip Your Waitstaff," named for the common closing phrase used by stand-ups, where Birbiglia and other comedians like Mulaney, Wood and Sarah Silverman connect via Instagram, letting viewers inside their joke-writing process while imploring viewers to donate to GoFundMe pages set up for several clubs across the country. The two had previously met through a mutual friend, then Swift reached out to Birbiglia with her video script for "Anti-Hero." He thought the script was great; "so, count me in, Taylor Swift or . BIRBIGLIA: No. And then you have a child. Copyright 2018 NPR. I mean, I know that sounds crazy, but thats just a fact.. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Thanks for having me. And, of course, I told him that he didn't have to do that, that no matter who was scheduled to be here, the shows were going to be canceled, so the staff was going to be out of what they would have made that weekend anyway, Thompson told ABC News, saying he didnt want Birbiglia to feel he was personally responsible for the lost wages. I mean, I think I will continue to act as long as its helpful, as long as it makes it funnier or makes it better, but I feel like what Im doing is very specific voice-wise now, so I feel like Im in it, and it just doesnt take as much direction. Take Taylor Swift, who cast the 44-year-old as her entitled adult son in the " Anti-Hero" music video. I don't think its fair to make a baby wear a shirt with an attitude, like Born to Shop' that could not be their persona at all, stand-up comedian John Mulaney quipped, testing out a joke on delighted fellow comedian Mike Birbiglia and nearly 73,000 other viewers tuning into their And parenting seems to have some things in common with that. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. But its great for like, Lucy Alibars film [Beasts of the Southern Wild] got nominated for a bunch of stuff, and so its great for smaller films like theirs that maybe wouldnt have been seen by all of America, it gives it a second look, which I think is wonderful. Mike Birbiglia wants to apologize. When it comes to my daughter, I just feel so lucky I get to be her dad.. And you're like, that's the problem. The reason why Mike is able to do it so well is because hes a natural storyteller Mike takes you on a slow-building journey, full of switchbacks and flawless callbacks. Birbiglia: Exactly. BIRBIGLIA: Number one, I've never felt like there be more of me in the world. Birbiglia: Well Justin Timberlake is unbelievable. [Birbiglia] called me and, you know, expressed that he wanted to just simply send the staff $300 each on his own, said Jared Thompson, the owner of The Comedy Attic in Bloomington, Indiana, where Birbiglia was set to play. A $300-million (minimum) gondola to Dodger Stadium? Most of my staff watched it. The question is when we will be able to have a comedian who needs a sold-out show for us to be able to afford them -- like, how long will that be?. We continue to raise with jokes for comedy club staffs out of work across America! (link in bio to contribute!) That uncertainty is not lost on Birbiglia, who says he hopes to grow the program with sponsorship and create a consistent schedule to raise enough funds to really make a dent,'' and help the workers the best he can,while also offering no pun intended, virally positive content. I listened to it randomly on spotify at work one day and I have probably listened to it 15 times since then. (And for those who missed his previous theatrical hit, Sleep Walk With Me, a live concert recording of the show was released yesterday.). And then she'd tell me, and I'd be like, "Okay, I'll re-write that." That show's not running right now. His wariness of parenthood long predated The New One; as he recently told Wood Jr. it was the premise of the first autobiographical joke he ever wrote, at age 19: Im not gonna have kids until Im sure nothing else good can happen in my life. It was a go-to punchline for 20 years, but now, the joke will have to be retired. We were just picking out footage during the edit left and right and just dropping it in, going, What about this? MIKE BIRBIGLIA: By the way, I've never wanted to have a kid for seven specific reasons. Few people get as much mileage out of one story as Mike Birbiglia. SHAPIRO: How universal do you think this is? You are going out of business? He directed and starred in a successful movie, "Don't Think Twice." SHAPIRO: When I was watching the show, I wondered how much of the discomfort being a parent is connected to the sense that you've spent your whole life becoming good at the things an adult has to be good at, and then suddenly, there's a new thing that you're not at all good at and not at all prepared for, and it's kind of a sense of dislocation almost. Plus, Mike discusses how becoming a parent informed his latest show Mike Birbiglia: The New One. It's a page-turner, wise and wise-assed, the comic hit of the year. Birbiglias management team set up a Then . It was kind of building a consensus. While the money raised will help to make up for some of the wages lost as society has largely ground to a halt, the anxiety about when business as usual will return lives in Thompsons mind. What is different about it? Hope it helps!.