More than just laughter

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

Dedication to their craft, a love of performing and great talent. Pretty much describes all of the comedians presently traveling across Canada on the Capital One Just for Laughs Comedy Tour ’13: The Comedy Rat Pack Edition. They arrive in British Columbia next week.

Among the funnymen on their way here are two members of the Los Angeles Jewish community, Orny Adams and Ben Seidman.

Adams hails from the Boston area. On the day of his interview with the Independent, his parents had just arrived in Toronto to see his show.

“I have a very, very funny family, that everybody loves to laugh and have a good time,” he said about the household in which he grew up. “I just remember there was always laughter at the table and in my family, to the point of tears.”

Adams said that his parents are more religious than he is. “To me,” he said, “Judaism has always been more about the culture. I just really relate to the culture.” That being said, Adams fasts on Yom Kippur, and doesn’t perform. Passover is his favorite Jewish holiday, “and Thanksgiving is mandatory. I have to go home for Thanksgiving. Those are my three holidays,” he said.

Obtaining a degree in philosophy and political science from Emory University in Atlanta, Adams had planned to go to law school. Then he took a trip to Italy. “I fell in love with the arts, and fell in love with a tempo of life that was a lot less, you know, ‘American,’” Adams told the Independent. “I grew up in a country that came with a dream. How many countries come with a dream? So it’s my birthright that I can follow my dream and be successful, and it’s so false and it’s so misleading and it’s so damaging. I was lucky enough to have a view of the world where people were pursuing what they wanted to pursue and art was revered and respected, and [that had] downtime.” Nonetheless, the necessity of earning a living means that such a lifestyle remains a dream for Adams. And, he admitted, “I couldn’t live in another country for too long. I’d lose my mind.”

Adams eventually moved to New York, and has been in Los Angeles for 12 years now. He splits his time between stand-up, and acting on Teen Wolf, where he plays the character of Coach Bobby Finstock. “The duality of my career is very pleasing,” he shared, “and I’m very fortunate that I get to do both because it’s a release, and it also adds balance.”

Teen Wolf creator Jeff Davis had seen Adams in the documentary Comedian and, though “not a huge fan” of Adams from that film, he decided to see one of Adams’ shows. He’d never laughed that hard, and so cast Adams in the program.

Seidman also impressed “the right people.”

Born and raised in Milwaukee, Seidman was brought up “in a mildly religious household. My family was Reconstructionist and I went to a Jewish school, so I did learn Hebrew growing up in school. Then I learned some Spanish in high school and then I learned some Sign Language in college. I forgot all of them promptly, they all blended together, and so now I can only talk to deaf, Jewish, Hispanic people, which, of course, there’s three of them.”

His parents were always supportive, and they valued humor, he said. “From an early age, they appreciated my interest in theatre, which is really what got me started. I did plays and I ended up graduating from college with a theatre degree.” Seidman still intends to become an actor: “I figured there were two things about performance that I really loved and, because they’re both kind of crazy, I decided to follow one dream. The other one, I feel, will come back into my life if the time is right.”

His foray into magic began with reading books about it as a kid; he got a job at a magic shop when he was about 16. There, he “had access to thousands of tricks and books, and videos of performers. That was my library, and it gave me a chance to just suck up all of that knowledge.... Eventually, when I moved out to Las Vegas, I did so with the intention of meeting some of these really fantastic underground sleight-of-hand artists, and studying with them.”

In Vegas, Seidman became the only resident magician that Mandalay Bay has ever had. He explained that he got the job because “the right people” happened to see him perform. The position entailed close-up magic and sleight-of-hand shows at a couple of Mandalay’s clubs, as well as private parties and other events. With the recession in 2008, however, Seidman, had to head to the road, “performing at all sorts of events in various cities, and traveling all of the time.”

About a year ago, Seidman was approached by the Travel Channel, which was making two street-magic specials, called Magic Outlaws, with Seidman, Chris Korn and David Minkin as the “outlaws.”

Seidman took the opportunity to move to Los Angeles. He has no desire to become a real-life outlaw, however, though his pickpocketing and illusionist abilities make that life a feasible option for him. “I love entertaining people. I love making people feel amazement, and making people laugh. I live for that feeling ... and so, anything beyond that, I’m not interested,” he said.

About his talent, Seidman likened it to music, “where you might be born with a certain amount of inherent ability, where it just jives well with your body; some people are more musically inclined. I think it’s similar to that, but at the same time, it is really all about developing that, and it’s a lot of work.” He explained, “It takes a long time to develop a concept. What a lot of people in my industry do, myself included, is we’ll take an idea that might be even a century old and change it and develop it, so that it’s new and different because, in magic, there’s really only 10 effects that can happen. You can make something disappear, you can make it appear, you can make something float, you can read someone’s mind, you can tear something up and put it back together – there’s only like a handful of different things to violate reality in a way that is comprehensible to an audience. So, it’s about finding different ways to do that. When I’m creating something new, I’ll start with an idea and I’ll build on it ... I’ll try it, maybe it’ll be great, maybe it won’t. Sometimes, I’ll have an idea and I can put it on stage that night, and sometimes I’ll be developing something for three or four years before it ever actually sees an audience.”

The same goes for Adams. In his most recent comedy special, Third Amendment, he has a joke about the OnStar navigation system and one, not surprisingly, about the Third Amendment. “That is a bit that, out of the gate, wrote itself, and changed very little,” he explained about the former. “Whereas you take a bit like the Third Amendment, and you probably have 20 pages of notes on that, and different tags, and different angles, and you whittle it down to a one-minute bit.”

Adams is constantly working on new material. If he weren’t, he said, “I’d be bored. And you asked me about my energy on stage, or the level of passion – it’s only because I still believe in that stuff, and I can only do it if I believe in it. Otherwise, I have to move on. I remember ... Bob Dylan talking about [how] people would want him to sing songs but he wasn’t connected to them anymore. I would think, it’s just a song, just sing it, but now I get it. To be true as an artist, Bob Dylan knew, if he sang those songs without his heart being there, then that [the heart] doesn’t come through. What makes Bob Dylan great is that it comes through.”

Watching Adams perform, it is apparent that he not only puts his heart into it, but his whole self.

“When I’m done with a weekend at a club and I’ve done five or six shows, I’m ready to collapse. It takes a lot and that’s why, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve involved exercise, yoga, nutrition, meditation – all to get to that place where I can deliver that hour, but when I’m done, I’m done, I’m spent. I leave it all out on the stage.”

Adams said about his on-stage personality, “The minute I find my voice, it’s over. You’ve got to continue to grow as a person. My show tonight better be better than my show last night. Or, get out of the business, it isn’t for me. It’s about evolving. And I think that your stand-up comedy – or whatever you pursue in life – should reflect your growth in your personal life.”

Seidman has similar drive. “My goal is to get better. It always has been and always will be,” he said. “I want to create things that have never been done before, and I want to expose people to good magic.... I would like for all of the people who have this preconceived notion that magic’s this dated silly thing that’s just for kids that adults can appreciate magic in a much deeper way than kids can. I want to bring that to more people, and comedy is a very big part of what I do and what I like and so I want to give people the impression that magic can be strong and powerful and interesting, but also fun, it’s funny.”

While Adams said that, because of the enormity of the problems in the world, he focuses “on smaller things, the micro, and [tries to] make that funny and absurd. You know, talking about ceiling fans and dishwashers, stuff like that,” his routines include bits highlighting injustice. “This is what I like about expressing myself through this art form is that you can do it,” he said about making people both laugh and think. “And comedy is an art form. It doesn’t get a lot of respect. People go to the Museum of Modern Art and stare at something on the wall for hours, and analyze the brush strokes and what the painter was thinking and what’s the mood, and the use of colors. That isn’t done with comedy, and I wish it was, at times, because there are a lot of great comedians out there that are pushing the conversation forward.”

Some of those comedians form the JFL tour. In Nanaimo (Nov. 20) and Surrey (Nov. 21), Adams and Seidman will perform with Darrin Rose and Godfrey. In their two shows at the Vogue Theatre (Nov. 22), Tom Papa will join the “rat pack” and, in Victoria (Nov. 23) and Kelowna (Nov. 24), Alonzo Bodden will take Godfrey’s place. For tickets: comedytour.hahaha.com.

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