How to Create a One Woman Show, by Julia Sweeney
By Rebecca Gerstung
Julia Sweeney — comedian, story teller, writer, Grammy nominee (for the CD recording of her hit Broadway show God Said Ha!), Saturday Night Live alumni, and hometown honey (she lives in the Chicago burbs!) is debuting her new solo show on Second City’s e.t.c. stage this month. Sweeney spent the past four months workshopping Julia Sweeney: Older & Wider on an intimate training stage at Second City, giving the audience an up close view into her creative process. We asked Sweeney for advice on how to create a laugh-out-loud one woman show.
Women In Comedy: How do you originate a solo show?
Julia Sweeney: This show is different than any other show I’ve done, in some ways. (In many ways, I think people who’ve seen my previous shows will think it’s just like my other shows!) But the way I approached it was to try to think of disconnected observations that I thought were funny. I had been watching a lot of stand up comedy and I wanted to try to do that. I thought I had almost been doing that. I didn’t want to have a narrative arc or even any kind of narrative. I wanted to pause and be able to bring up some completely unrelated story. I wanted it to be funnier and more joke driven than my previous shows. In truth, I wanted it to pass as stand up. What I ended up with is a bit of a hybrid. Fortunately, stand up has veered more toward story telling in the last several years, so I think we’ve met in the middle. My show is half stand up and half story telling, I would say.
Women In Comedy: You workshopped your show at Second City’s Training Center. Tell us about that process.
Julia Sweeney: I did about 8 or 9 stories [in an hour] that I thought could work into something funny. I probably wrote down 5 or 6 beats per story. Then I did it. Some worked, others didn’t. Some, I got lost in the detail. I didn’t know what was important to know and what wasn’t. So the next week, I still did 8 or 9 stories, but I replaced half of them. I whittled things down. I stole jokes from myself (I tell a couple of little bits that I have told before in previous material) and I opened the spigot of my mind to look at things and see how they could be funny. It’s amazing how trite that analogy is, of a spigot, but how apt. It really does feel as if I’m turning on a faucet.
What’s important to know is that most stuff doesn’t work. Lots of things I think are hysterical do not end up being very funny. Or they end up being only mildly amusing, not actually funny enough for a show. Since my task with this show was to do “stand up” I didn’t want the stories or bits to connect. But it turned out that about half my show IS a narrative. I guess I couldn’t help myself. I began to track the funny stories about raising my daughter and they became a bigger story about letting a kid go. I think it probably takes me 25 shows to get 90 minutes of material that’s good. That’s what it took this time, anyway.
Women In Comedy: Why is the process of workshopping so important?
Julia Sweeney: There is nothing more important! I have always done it this way. And since I’m married to a scientist, I’ll use the analogy of a lab. The audience and the workshop performance are your lab. You are doing experiments and they are providing feedback. It’s as simple as that. I don’t know any other way to work. It’s what I love about comedy. With drama it’s much harder to know if something is working or not. But because humans make this audible response to what they find funny, you have immediate feedback. It’s great.
Women In Comedy: How can a performer find their inner show?
Julia Sweeney: All of us walk around talking to ourselves all the time. We’re spinning it our way. We’re telling it all to ourselves all the time. What do you most tell yourself? What do you obsess over? What is absurd to you? What bothers you the most about the world? What happened that was so unfair? And can you see the absurdity of it? Then I would try to string those ideas together into some type of “bit” or even a story.
Women In Comedy: How important is a director or a partner when creating a solo show?
Julia Sweeney: Well, I would say not that important. And I could also say, essential. For me, since I see my work as stand up and not monologue, it’s really my own judgement of what is working and what isn’t. I have had one good and one bad experience with directors trying to shape my monologue for the stage. The good one was very good and helped me find the narrative arcs. The bad one didn’t know what to do with me so she made me explain every single line to her for a week of rehearsal. She almost killed my show for me in my own head. I was so sick of it by the time we opened. Anyway, in that sense, I don’t think I’ll have a director again.
But in terms of a partner, I happened to be married to a very funny man. No one knows this. In fact, I didn’t really understand it until we had been married for a while. This is the first show I’ve ever done that I’ve had someone to bounce ideas off of, and get ideas from, throughout the whole process. He probably should be getting a writing credit. He has a different way of being funny too, and I think it complements my way of being funny. He’s straight up clever and I think of things that are emotional relationships. That’s pigeon-holing me too much, but in general that’s how we are different. I can’t imagine ever doing a comedy show without him there to help me along the way from here on out.
Women In Comedy: What makes a successful show?
Julia Sweeney: I’m not sure! I guess something that is well crafted, entertaining, and makes people feel good while simultaneously being (maybe) challenged to see some things differently.
Catch Julia’s show Julia Sweeney: Older and Wider April 24 to May 30th on The Second City’s e.t.c. stage.
