A Quote by Reggie Watts
Music is very similar to comedy: It's all about texture, timing, context, vocabulary, performance. When someone's onstage doing a solo, essentially it's the same thing as what a comedian does. They're in the moment. They're listening.
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I think a lot of the instincts you have doing comedy are really the same for doing drama, in that it's essentially about listening. The way I approach comedy, is you have to commit to everything as if it's a dramatic role, meaning you play it straight.
It took me a good eight to ten years to really formulate what I was doing onstage and start to get really personal with comedy. I always really had timing naturally, it was just about trying to figure out how that timing was going to work onstage.
Comedy and music are so similar because it's all about timing.
The thing with music education is that it is good at teaching technique, but not texture. You only learn about that from listening to music and experimenting on your own.
A person who is a comedian does comedy in real life, too. But then there are others, too, who are very good in real life, but can't perform in front of the camera. They get nervous. Nevertheless, an inborn comedian does comedy whether he is in films or not.
I get the greatest joy from just doing anything, being an actor. Doing music, and doing what I love to do. I don't make a huge distinction between comedy and drama. I think the whole point is just trying to be as honest, from moment to moment, as you can be. If you're honest about the material, and the material is ridiculous, then you're in a comedy.
When you're doing comedy on stage, it's great because you have the audience there and they're like another actor in the scene. You feed off of them, laugh. But in film when everyone's quiet, it's all about timing. But the key to that is to be authentic. Be in the moment, and if you play the moment truthfully, the humor will be there.
There's something about the rawness of the live thing, there's no rhythm guitars behind the solo, nothing other than what you hear the people playing at that moment. It's exciting, it's about the performance.
Tension is all about, 'Why is this taking so long?' The interesting thing about that is that it's also the tension of comedy. The tension of drama and comedy is similar, and that's why usually you can get a big laugh in a really tense moment because people need that release.
I've always felt that there's a lot of similarity between doing a comedy and doing a scary movie because jokes and scares are all about timing. If you give the punch line too early or too late, the joke falls flat. And it's the same with a scare.
I regard texture similar to the function of taste buds in our mouths. But in a visual form. Texture does create a specific flavour which affects our senses.
My solo music - I get up onstage, I improvise and it's my improvisation. When I get up onstage with Fred Frith and Mike Patton, then we're improvising together. Then it's not my music; it's our music.
I think a comedian has a more specific job. Whereas a musician can fall into different categories, you know, of making background music or doing a soundtrack or wanting to be in a band or writing the song, or writing your own songs. And then comedy is a very black and white thing. You want to make people happy.
Comedy and drama are different sides of the same coin. And the thing about comedy and drama is about likability. It's about character first. It's about story. And for me, it's about empathy, and I think the realer someone is, the further you can go either way with them.
Often if you are very, very close with someone, sometimes it does not read. In effect, your dynamic onstage is defused. You share too much onstage. There's sort of a blurring of behavior that doesn't read to the audience as chemistry.
Being a dancer I've got the idea that through discipline and hard work, you can develop the ability to be in a different dimension within seconds. You can be vomiting, you can detest who you are, detest the world, detest every single thing, and the next moment you are in the light and you glow. You forget everything, and you are just flying. When you're onstage, you are someone else. Beyoncé is very conscious of this. She said to me, "I'm another person when I'm onstage." And I said, "Oh yes, you are! You are an animal when you are onstage. You are a stage animal."
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