Early this afternoon I helped my friend, fellow comedian, Ryan Budds take some new headshots and promo photos. Ryan had the brilliant idea to shoot at crowded areas in the city using a mic stand and a mic not just as props, but as if he was doing stand up. I thought it would make for a great shoot and it certainly did.
What I didn't expect was that it would turn into some type of experiment. In the middle of shooting, I realized although Ryan clearly stood out, wearing a suit and talking into a mic on a stand, people really didn't pay any attention to him. They continued to listen to the music coming from their headphones and walk back to work, or to lunch, or to run errands. It was only when Ryan asked a woman if he could ask her questions did we see someone pay attention to what we were doing. As you can see in the picture below, she was happy to help. Other people wanted nothing to do with it when asked.
I felt that people ignored a comedian seemingly doing stand up outside in public because they were only focused on where they were going and didn't take the time to appreciate art. Maybe this is why it's so hard to get people out to a comedy show at times. It took the kindness of a ginger woman to open up and participate in the art. Some of the photos are included below.
Ryan stars in the webseries "Between Gigs" with fellow comedian Dale Zawada. They asked me to guest star in an episode and as you can see, the role came very natural to me:
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