A Magical Philosopher

An Interview With Comedian Byron Broussard

Jeff Buck
Jeff Buck
Jul 10, 2017 · 4 min read

I’m not always sure what to make of comedian Byron Broussard. I’ve known him personally for 3–4 years now. Aside from sharing stages in New Orleans, we’ve also crammed ourselves into the back of cars together to do shows in places like Mandeville, Covington, Hammond, or Baton Rouge. His persona off stage isn’t much different from the one on stage. Byron can appear quiet but he is far from shy. He’s honestly an open book if you just shake his hand and start asking questions….and that’s what I did. Oh yeah, by the way, I know you can’t hear the audio of this interview but Byron chose to answer all my questions in a British accent.

When did you first start doing stand up comedy and why?
Three years ago, so that would be 2014. I got into it because it was an open mic thing and I was doing music at the time, but there weren’t any open mics for music people. But there were open mics for stand up…and I was like cool….stage time

When did you first start doing magic?
That was about two years ago. So I was doing stand-up for about a year before I got into magic.

Can you specify the type of magic? Because it’s not like “pull bunnies out of a hat magic”?
No, I like to call it Black Magic. But it’s not like “Black Magic” per say, it’s just black people magic. It’s just a cult-ure. It’s legitimately close to chaos magic, but chaos magic has a weird thing with pedophiles going on right now. So they’re bad publicity.

Cool. I’m not sure if I know anything about any of that.
Yeah it’s legitimate

Does the comedy and the magic ever merge?
All the time. I only do shit about my magical shit because that’s legitimately what I’m going through.

So the content is about magic. But is there magic in the comedy? Does that make sense?
It makes sense, but I don’t think there is magic in the comedy. I like to break it down to a level where people understand at least one level of what I’m saying. At least!

I think I can understand. Why is comedy important to you?
Comedy is important to me because I feel like that’s where philosophers went. At one point there were a bunch of philosophers and then they just disappeared. But i think what happened is that they just re-did their craft and worked into comedy, and that’s where are all the new philosophers. Comedians have the coolest perspectives on things.

So you would call yourself a modern day philosopher?
Yeah.

Agreed. Well as a philosopher, what’s the weirdest show you’ve ever done?
Probably that night that guy put a bag over his head and said he was going to try and kill himself.

Oh yeah! I was there that night, that was so weird!
Yes, and his friends were in the front row. His friends! HIS FRIENDS were like…”nah I’m not going to do anything”.

I remember, Kamari Stevens and I were like someone should stop him. He said offensive stuff before he started this bit but still someone should stop him.
You stopped him. I remember that you like ran up on stage and pulled the bag off and wouldn’t let him do it.

Ohhh man yeah. Alright that took a turn, let’s change the subject. Do you have any experience with sketch comedy?
I do not have any experience with it. But I’ve watched it a lot.

Well what do you think the similarities between stand-up and sketch comedy are?
I don’t know what I really like about sketches. I know I like stand-up because of the intent of the jokes, the way they get to it, and the punchlines, and so forth. I think with sketches I just like that they made it in general. It could be a bad sketch but I’m still impressed that they made it.

Nice, well we’re making some sketches together soon, so that will be impressive and fun. I feel like I should end this interview with a big and fun question, but I can’t think of one. How about I just ask you — how do you feel about this interview?
This interview went well.

You can see Byron Broussard showcased on July 14th at The New Movement for the show “Morphed”. Byron will perform 15 minutes of stand-up and then showcase sketches that he has spent 3 weeks preparing and writing in relation to those same jokes. The sketches will be brought to life by some of TNM’s top notch actors and co-written by Jeff Buck.

Tickets: $5 — Showtime at 10:30

Comedy Underground

Comedy from and about The New Movement, a comedy theater inNew Orleans

Jeff Buck

Written by

Jeff Buck

Comedian

Comedy Underground

Comedy from and about The New Movement, a comedy theater inNew Orleans

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