Laugh off: Cosby vs. local up-and-comers

By Carrie White
Correspondent

Bill Cosby, 72, wants you to know at least one thing about his comedy act.

"I do my routine sitting in a chair. I have been sitting in that chair for at least 40 of my 47 years. I've been sitting all my career - it's not because I'm old!"

The number of years Cosby has been sitting in that chair is almost the same as the number of days that recent graduates of a local standup comedy class have been studying the art of cracking wise.

Yet those comedians will be his crosstown rivals Saturday night. Cosby will do two shows at the 2,500-seat Chrysler Hall in Norfolk. About a mile away, 11 graduates of the class at The Muse Writers Center, a nonprofit center in Norfolk that offers instruction in writing and the arts, will perform at The Boot.

"It'll be tough competition for him, of course!" said Greg Puzey, 43, one of the graduates.

As we talked with Cosby and some of the local students, however, it became clear that whether you are a professor emeritus of American comedy or a newbie taking the stage for the first time, the basics of standup comedy are the same.

PERFORMANCE ANXIETY

The Newbies

Kent Miller, 48, of Norfolk, whose day job is in the billing offices of Dominion Enterprises, said that before the few times he has performed, he has asked himself, "'Why the hell am I doing this?' About a minute before I go on, a voice screams inside of me and tells me to run!"

Puzey, an estate manager in Virginia Beach, described his first time performing in class: "I was petrified most of the time. I forgot everything. I threw up afterwards and don't remember anything of the drive home."

Failure, however, is inevitable, said each of the comics.

"You are going to bomb - that is a fact," Puzey said. He learned about the miserable feeling of being unfunny when he tried standup as a 25-year-old at a club in Utah and did really badly. "It was awful. I said I'd never do it again."

Instead, he just needed 20 years to get over it. "Now my goal is to go back to that club and get laughs."

Cosby

Cosby said his experience as an athlete helped him deal with pre-show jitters when he took up comedy. He won a track-and-field scholarship to Temple University and played fullback on the football team.

Even so, when he first began doing standup, he experienced doubts, beat himself down and told himself he wasn't funny. He wrote in his book "Cosbyology" about being so nervous that he did his 25-minute act in 12 unfunny minutes. He was ready to quit, but a club owner encouraged him to keep going.

Things get better with experience, he said. "I never get nervous now. It has changed - the feeling inside. You become smoother. You're not in such a rush. I'm a storyteller, and now it's about the magnificence of what you say - the truth of it."

COMEDY STARTS WITH WRITING

Cosby

When Cosby entered Temple, having dropped out of high school in 10th grade and served in the Navy, he learned the importance of writing. " The more I learned to write, the more I pushed myself. Education opened the door for me. When I started learning, then I started to think. I started to write with a No. 2 yellow pencil. I tried to sell my material, but they wouldn't buy it. They said, 'That's not funny,' so I kept revising and going back."

The Newbies

Olivia M. McGuire got her start from an essay called "Sexless in the Suburbs" that she wrote for another course at The Muse. Much of her standup routine springs from the essay.

Frank Kozusko, 63, who retired after 21 years as a naval officer and is a math professor at Hampton University, wrote poetry before he studied standup. "Poetry looks at something and describes it in a different way. It tries to evoke an emotion - which is what comedy does, too."

Miller carries a notebook in his pocket "so I can write down whatever happens on the bus, in the headlines, whatever."

The class's teacher, Ken Phillips, is a TV producer and writer and founder of The Comedy Zone, a national chain of clubs. "Good comedians are constantly writing and performing," he said. "It's all about how badly they want to succeed, how hard they want to work at their craft, how good a writer and rewriter they are."

CLASS CUT-UPS

Cosby

Although he began standup in his early 20s, Cosby can trace his career back to grade school. In fourth grade, when work was due, "I ignored it and turned the lights out on people. I had more dead relatives than anybody because I made them up as my reasons for not turning in papers. That's my humor. I just made up names and circumstances... but I had alternatives, too - dogs, rodent infestations. Two times I used an infestation of rodents."

The Newbies

Puzey said he was funny in school. "Of course, my humor wasn't appreciated then."

McGuire said she got into comedy because "classmates would tell me I was funny."

Kozusko waited a little longer, doing comedy skits on board his ship: "Like the characters Johnny Carson did with Ed McMahon interviewing - I had characters like Captain Neutron and Cranky Old Naval Officer."

LAUGHTER, THE BEST MEDICINE

The Newbies

Once that first laugh comes, the hard work and stress are worth it. All the newbies said getting laughs from a crowd was an indescribable feeling - Puzey called it "exhilarating," enough to wipe out the misery after his initial experience.

Phillips said, "When people laugh, it's a feeling you'll never forget - you feel that laughter."

Miller called the audience-performer relationship symbiotic. "If you're connecting, it's great."

Cosby

Cosby still enjoys that connection.

"I'd rather do a 2,400-seat hall than a 190-seat because it's wonderful performing and feeling it - and because if it only seats 190, that means there's a line around the block for the next show."

Cosby also said that the presence of large television screens helps him perform in large halls: "That's changed things - now I can do my faces, my pauses - and they can see. There's still a purity that I'm there and real."