-
-
Ad Space
(728 x 90)
Published on 7/4/08
Sign up today!
Sarah King has had run-ins with many of Chicago’s more, shall we say, eccentric performance artists. During a mini-tour of 15 spoken-word open mikes, the 28-year-old comedian stumbled upon a veritable treasure trove of inspiration in the form of artistic hypocrisy—like an adamantly vegetarian beat poet who justified her choice in leather attire by claiming she owned the clothes before going grass.
“The minute I started going to poetry open mikes, I couldn’t wait to parody them,” she says. “[The people who perform and attend] take themselves so seriously. I just wanna be like, ‘Hey, you’re not so thought-provoking.’ ”
King recycled what she learned by observing and performing a few spoof pieces of her own (which both delighted and offended the regular open-mike audience) and then created Mama Truth’s Open Mic for Open Souls. Each week, Mama Truth (King) and cohost Aretha Franklin (the deadpan, tin-whistling Julia Renner) turn the Playground Theater into a mockery of poetry open mikes. King and Renner do over-the-top performance pieces like “Ring Finger,” a rhythmic poem that has King snapping her fingers, spouting metaphorical dribble and climbing over the first row of seats. Pre-chosen guests drop in week-to-week and are given total freedom. (And we do mean total—last time we attended two girls did a scene featuring talking genitalia.) King’s Mama Truth is a comedic juggernaut—once she gets going, there’s nary a comic misstep that can stop her from delivering her catch phrases: “Think about it” and “Live your life.” At the same time, we weren’t quite sure what to make of the show as a whole.
“The audience sometimes doesn’t know how to take [Mama Truth],” King says, “but if I decide to stare at them, or make them uncomfortable, or sit on stage and not talk for five minutes, I will.”
This last comment speaks volumes about King’s overall artistic philosophy. A Texan born-and-raised, King got into comedy under unfortunate circumstances. While her mom battled cancer and her dad suffered from a heart attack, King, the youngest of six kids, provided the comic relief to “lighten the load” as she puts it. She dreamed of coming to Chicago and studying comedy after college, but she needed a steady job to convince her parents that it was a smart decision. Enter the Jerry Springer Show, where she spent two years rising through the ranks from PA to associate producer. (For those of you who still don’t know, King claims that most of the show’s guests and scenarios aren’t real.)
After she left Springer, King had time to thoroughly explore the city’s combined sketch and improv scene. She bounced among the various theaters before finding herself at home with the Annoyance style: “Once you know the rules, please break them,” as she describes it. King has been a stand-out in her last two sketch shows with the Uptown-based theater—the Annoyance Christmas Pageant and Dr. Amazing, Your Country Needs You (playing Sunday 10)—but when it comes to growing as an artist, her heart’s set on personal work like Mama Truth.
“If you take a chance with something you wrote, you can’t blame the moment or the ensemble if it offends or isn’t funny,” she says. “The comedians I admired growing up never played it safe.”—Steve Heisler
The mike is hot for truth Monday 11.
Comment