Marcus Monroe – Xperience Monthly Interview, by Rob Smittix

(Interview with Marcus Monroe.)

RRX: How are you?

MM: I’m doing well man. I just had a late night last night at The Comedy Cellar. So I’m just kind of starting my day at noon, which is kind of normal for me.

RRX: Well I’ve spent some time watching your videos online and I love your sense of humor.

MM:  I love posting my jokes as soon as I write them because I get so excited about it, and I want to share it with everybody. I’m building a fanbase and it’s been such a blessing to have that. I forget that fifteen years ago you had to rely on Conan, Leno or Letterman for a late-night spot. Now viral video is just as good if not better, it’s crazy.

RRX: Everything has switched upside down.

MM: Everything’s backwards. Some people are having a really tough time adjusting to that because some are like: no man I’m saving my act for the stage but otherwise people aren’t going to know who you are. People aren’t going to buy a ticket to see you, if they don’t know what you’re going to do when you get up on stage. If all they see you do is crowd-work in your videos… I post a fair amount of crowd-work but I also post material because I want people to know that I can write a joke and I can be weird in front of people.

RRX: And you’re a juggler!

MM: True, yeah, yeah. I started juggling when I was nine. I don’t know if it was before the pandemic or during it, but my manager was like, “why don’t we move forward without you juggling?” I’m like “woah, what?” He’s like “yeah man, just do comedy.” I said, “juggling is all I know, it’s my bread and butter.” He said, “I think you’ve got this. You’re funny without the juggling.” It took about two or three years before I was comfortable on stage without a trunk of props. There has been an adjustment, but it’s been very fun to do that. I think it’s every juggler’s dream to go on stage without a bunch of props and just do comedy. At least for most comedy jugglers, that’s what the goal is. Even if they don’t say it out loud but most people never do. A lot of people come to my shows now with juggling props, with the hopes that I juggle.

RRX: Understandably.

MM: I did this show in Chicago and this kid brought six juggling clubs in hopes that we would juggle together. I mentioned on stage I used to juggle, and this guy was like, “let’s juggle together!” I was like alright, so I brought this guy up on stage, a stranger I did not know, and we juggled together. It was so much fun and everyone loved it. So I was thinking maybe I should juggle at the end of my shows. There’s a small chance that I might, I don’t know yet. It’s a possibility.

RRX: I mean I’m rooting for it.

MM: Oh okay. Maybe I’ll do it then. I have a pretty funny knife juggling routine that I did when I won the Andy Kaufman Award. That could be fun to do because it’s also very heavily comedy based. Which is obviously super important at a comedy club. You don’t want to see someone juggling to music, I mean how boring?

RRX: I mean from what I saw you’re fantastic at it. I can juggle three balls, which most people can’t do.

MM: That’s true most people can’t do it. That’s so funny you say that because last night at The Comedy Cellar I mentioned that I used juggle and some guy was like, “oh, yeah three or four? Can you juggle three or four balls?” I said “I can juggle seven!” Weird options. My options were three or four, I’m like “C’mon I’ve been juggling for almost 30 years. I better be able to juggle three or four.”

RRX: You would think. I was watching a video of you juggling and I couldn’t even count how many balls there were.

MM: The thing about social media is I found out about all of these other jugglers that I have never heard of. They’re insane, they’re just so good. There’s this one guy named Spencer (Androli) and he’s a beast, probably the best in the world right now. Part of me is happy because I’ve stopped training because there’s no way I could catch up with these guys. It’s much more rewarding for me to write a joke and for that joke to get a laugh than for me to practice a juggling trick and people are like, “oh, okay.” Reactions are so much better to comedy than they are to juggling tricks. If that makes sense.

RRX: I’m a performer, a vocalist in a band and I’ve thought about doing comedy but I’m not very good at punchline jokes. I also thought about this. Being in a band, if we hit a sour note or I get a lyric wrong, the audience will still applaud at the end, but I feel like in comedy if you start off and the audience just isn’t feeling it, I kind of blame the audience a little bit because it’s more of a give and take sort of thing.

MM: Right. One-Hundred percent. Part of it is… is the comic going on stage and just doing the act? Or is the comic going on stage, taking it in and having a conversation? To me that’s way more interesting. You can have a conversation with the audience and still do your material. People don’t want to be talked at. You’ve got to respect the audience enough to have a dialogue with them while still doing your jokes. I’m not saying to have a back-and-forth conversation but make it seem at least that there’s a reason behind what you are saying. Not that you’re saying it just because it’s in the act. You want people to really feel your perspective and your experiences through your words.

RRX: That makes sense.

MM: I think that’s important to keep in mind. If a show is not going well, sometimes I wonder, did I connect to anyone in the audience before I started or did I just get up on stage and like: here’s what’s weird about hats? I see people sometimes on stage at open mics or comedy clubs and they just do their act the way that they would practice it in their Livingroom. But you’ve got to breathe it in. If you hear a loud click or bang during your set, you want to acknowledge that. If you keep moving forward people will wonder, is this guy here? Is he alive with us or is this a recording? Because something crazy just happened and this guy didn’t even mention it.

RRX: I can see that, you make a good point. I respect that, maybe I’ll give an open mic a try sometime. But… you my friend are hilarious.