Youtube tommy tiernan toxic optimism8/12/2023 That you say the first thing that comes into your head. “As long as the show stays slightly out of control, then there’s hope for it.” Out-of-control is another quality he prizes highly, hymning “a sense of the outlaw in standup. The joy with Derry Girls is to have become a team player. But then you hear yourself”, he says, and lets the chakras fizzle into silence. “I could say: it’s an opportunity for communion, for myself and the audience to open a chakra that doesn’t normally get opened. Nor does he shrink from ascribing sacred qualities to the audience-performer encounter. Something has to happen when the performer stands in front of the crowd.” That something is hard to pin down – but “the fact that I can’t define it makes going on stage every night interesting to me,” says Tiernan. But “if the show is entirely decided by me in solitude, I might as well write it down and post it to the audience. Yes, Tiernan has written plenty of new material, a process he recently described as “hellish”. It’s about keeping open the possibility that something surprising might happen in the moment. 'The world needs to get more Irish': original drama from Ireland - video He’s studying other practitioners of improvised performance: the dreaded phrase “I’ve been listening to a lot of jazz” is uttered, but so too, is a hymn to Michael McIntyre’s spirit of fun. He’s trying to make standup feel unlike work. For his new show Tomfoolery, Tiernan has devised strategies to keep himself fresh on stage. That means 40% of the time, you’re walking off sensing the audience have been slightly bored or disappointed.”īut finding a way to be spontaneous, or to stake out a space for play, remains a priority for the man from County Meath (where he went to school with fellow comic Dylan Moran – they later won the 19 Perrier comedy awards respectively). “In terms of quality, they had a hit rate of 50 or 60%. But it was too much, he says now, for himself, and for audiences. That is one of the real tests of a comic, your ability to be funny in the moment.” Tiernan took this interest to the extreme some years back, touring a wholly improvised standup show. “I’ve always been attracted to people such as David Letterman, who can be funny in conversation, and who don’t have to repeat the same thing the next night. Spontaneity, too – an important quality to Tiernan. Small wonder he might wish to import those qualities of calmness and responsiveness into his live act. Even when he’s rubbing you up the wrong way – he sometimes does – you can’t deny Tiernan is the real electrifying deal. The Irish accent helps, with a side order of lyrical Celtic mysticism (“Did you ever listen to a field? At night?”) most notably in 2014 show Stray Sod. In recent shows, wild of beard and eye, he’s styled himself more as a philosopher-priest than mere jokes man – now roaring, now whispering, delivering observational comedy about our lives and loves as it might be inscribed at the altar of some druidic temple. Nor would you expect him to from his comedy, which hurls itself at the everyday (God, sex and family are signature themes) with a fierce purpose. It is not a hilarious conversation this father-of-five does not come across as a frivolous man. Ahead of his new UK tour, Tiernan couldn’t sound further from complacency, as he chews over every questionI pitch down the phone line, and frets – from the perspective of a 50-year-old maestro – at the process and point of standup. ‘The older you get,” asks Tommy Tiernan, “do you get lazy, and complacent? Or do you get more joyfully reckless? And how do you stay challenged?” Such are the questions you ask yourself when contemplating a quarter of a century as a standup – or at least, you do if you’re Tiernan, a titan of Irish comedy now enjoying newfound prominence thanks to his role as Da Gerry in the sitcom Derry Girls and his acclaimed RTÉ chatshow.
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