Performer Mike Birbiglia on Comedy, Broadway, and Over-Chlorinated Pools

KQED's Forum

KQED

News Commentary, News, Politics

4.2 • 727 Ratings

🗓️ 13 December 2021

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Comedian and storyteller Mike Birbiglia has been called “the king of the one-man show." His first solo piece “Sleepwalk with Me", all about his life as a stand-up comic, was a hit off-Broadway and spawned a book and feature film. And he made it all the way to Broadway with 2019’s award-winning “The New One” in which he riffed on his fear of fatherhood. In January he’ll bring his latest “The Old Man and the Pool” to Berkeley Rep. We’ll talk to Birbiglia about the show and why his confessional style, which he describes as “a hybrid of comedy and emotionality” seems to resonate with audiences. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:32.2	From KQReedie in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal.
0:49.0	Mike Barbiglia is a virtuosic storyteller, part stand-up comedian, part one-man show specialist.
0:55.0	Berbiglia has created his own genre of performance.
0:58.3	His latest work is a coming of middle-age story, as he reckons with the ways that his body
1:02.8	fails him, and he fails it.
1:05.0	He's bringing it to the Berkeley rep for 20 shows in case you need a good laugh about diabetes
1:09.1	and high school wrestling, alongside
1:11.1	meditations on the nature of death and families like Barbigli's own that don't say, I love you.
1:16.6	And then we'll check in on places around the bay where sea level rise could hit toxic
1:20.8	waste sites, spreading environmental damage across vulnerable communities.
1:24.9	That's all next after this news.
1:40.8	Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Mike Barbiglia has come a long way from telling jokes on college campuses to confuse sophomores raising money for lupus.
1:45.2	He's put out two Netflix specials, two feature films, a couple of books, a child, and a podcast, working it out.
	...

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