By Chris Woodard<\/p>\n
The theme for February\u2019s \u201cIn a Nutshell\u201d is \u201cthe people who made us,\u201d which the organizers describe as their simple way of saying \u201cfamily stories.\u201d On Feb. 27, they\u2019re inviting storytellers to The Sofia in Sacramento to explore the complicated defining moments that shape us into who we are.<\/p>\n
For stand-up comedian Joe Klocek, this means revisiting a chapter of his life he has never told on stage before, a story he teased as \u201ca story including a suicide attempt, five months in a juvenile mental health facility outside Chicago and a 12-year-old trying to prove to the state that he was sane.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ahead of his appearance<\/a>, Klocek spoke about vulnerability, absurdity and what it means to own a past that helped define him.<\/p>\n This month\u2019s theme is \u201cThe people who made us.\u201d Emotionally, where does this story come from for you?<\/p>\n Thank god you opened on an easy question. I mean, I\u2019ll be 100% honest with you, I am struggling a little bit to put this story into an easy-to-digest format for people. It\u2019s not a story that I\u2019ve ever told before, and it\u2019s pretty dramatic, and for a stand-up comic, it\u2019s outside my comfort zone.\u00a0<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think it\u2019s rebellious. I think for me, it\u2019s just getting clear on one of the moments that defined who I was and how I was going to interpret the world, how I was going to see authority. I mean, at the time, I did not see it as that \u2026 with the benefit of much hindsight it\u2019s really uncovering my past. I\u2019ve been having a difficult time remembering some of it, and some of that is a function of age, and I think some of that is my own soul kind of saying, \u201chey, maybe we don\u2019t need to go into this room.\u201d Maybe there\u2019s a reason we shut the door. So, I think it\u2019s more just about owning my past.<\/p>\n How are you making sense of it now, as an adult?<\/p>\n I mean, that is what I\u2019m trying to do. I\u2019m trying to make sense of it. I\u2019m trying to see all of the circumstances that happened. I mean, here\u2019s the thing: The story that I\u2019m telling is about me when I was 12. At that age, you really rely on other people to take care of you, and you really rely on the system to do what\u2019s right for you, when the people that are supposed to take care of you let you down and the whole thing is so absurd that I can\u2019t make sense of it. \u2026\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n One thing that I could say that might be kind of interesting is this story includes a suicide attempt, but that\u2019s not the story. This story includes five months in a juvenile mental health facility outside of Chicago, but that\u2019s not the story. You know, those are already stories of themselves, but the story I\u2019m really telling is: What do you do when you\u2019re 12, and you don\u2019t feel like you belong in a mental health facility? And what are the legal options that are available to you to get you out? That\u2019s the story, I\u2019m trying to prove to the state, \u201cHey! I\u2019m sane.\u201d<\/p>\n At 12, without the coping mechanisms you have now, how did you survive it? Was humor a way that you got through the experience?<\/p>\n I think at the time I had no ambition to be a stand-up comedian. I had no ambition to be any kind of performer at the time. It just was not something that seemed available to me. But I also did feel like I had a pretty clear understanding of what absurd circumstances were. I didn\u2019t know what Kafka was at the time, but now, I would look back on this and say, yeah, it\u2019s Kafka because I was literally battling to prove that I\u2019m not crazy, to get out of a place. And what really kept me there was that nobody knew what to do with me. No one knew where to put me. So I was stuck in a place for crazy people. I wasn\u2019t crazy, and nothing was going to happen until I forced the issue.\u00a0<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know if that was emotional coping, but no, I was not equipped for it. The way that I was getting by was telling myself: This is fucking nuts, you know?<\/p>\n How does preparing for a storytelling show differ from preparing for stand-up?<\/p>\n I love the storytelling show format, and I want to respect it, and I\u2019m not going in with, \u201cHey, I\u2019ve got these jokes,\u201d I\u2019m just going to have a longer form to tell them. The thing that really appeals to me about the stories is that I can be a complete human being with a full range of emotions. When I\u2019m doing stand-up, I\u2019m really only allowed by the audience to be funny or angry. That\u2019s it. You take these incredible moments in your life, and boil them down to just funny, and you\u2019re editing out all the other parts.\u00a0<\/p>\n So for me, it\u2019s not about looking for what\u2019s funny and working backwards. It\u2019s about respecting the story, and it\u2019s interesting to see people who are hardcore storytellers. They\u2019re always trying to make their story funnier, and then I think a lot of the stand-up comedians are like, well, I know how to make an audience laugh, now I want to make them feel. \u2026 For me, it\u2019s like, yeah, the laughs are there. They\u2019ll be organic. This is more about can I hang in the silent spaces? Can I be true to my emotions, and what was really happening? And if I can do that, then when the laughs come, the laughs are bigger than they are in a stand-up show.<\/p>\n You have described yourself as a \u201csquare peg in a round hole.\u201d What do you mean by that?<\/p>\n I just don\u2019t feel like I fit anywhere, which means that I can be anywhere. I feel like sometimes I can be on the street, and people will run into me and I\u2019m like, \u201cI\u2019m right here. Like, am I invisible?\u201d But for whatever reason, I\u2019m a chameleon to some degree, or I can just fade into the background.\u00a0<\/p>\n When I was younger, that used to make me feel like: Why is the world not seeing me? But now it\u2019s like, oh, I can observe, which is a great skill for a comedian to have. Then, when I\u2019m on stage, I\u2019m the center of attention and I get to report. I\u2019ve never felt like I really fit in anywhere. That is such a great skill to have as a stand-up comic, because once you\u2019re on stage, it\u2019s like, \u201coh, here\u2019s where I fit!\u201d And let me tell you about what I\u2019m seeing out there and how it feels, and then that ends up being universal, because nobody feels like they fit.<\/p>\n If 12-year-old Joe could see you now, what do you think he\u2019d feel?<\/p>\n Oh, man, I think he would be blown away. I think he\u2019d be ecstatic. I think he would just be like, \u201cWow!\u201d For years, I\u2019ve been working on this one-man show, where I get phone calls from a younger version of myself. I\u2019ve never quite been able to pull it off, but for a while, I was just obsessed with the idea of being able to reach back in time and tell my 12-year-old self, or younger versions of myself and say, \u201cHey, it\u2019s gonna work out. It\u2019s gonna be fucking painful and ridiculous and absurd, but you\u2019re gonna be okay in the long run.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n So, yeah, 12-year-old me seeing where I am now, seeing what I have now. I think 12-year-old me would just be like, \u201cOh my god, this is incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n This story was funded by the City of Sacramento\u2019s Arts and Creative Economy Journalism Grant to Solving Sacramento<\/a>. Following our journalism code of ethics and protocols, the city had no editorial influence over this story and no city official reviewed this story before it was published. Our partners include California Groundbreakers, CapRadio, Capitol Weekly, Hmong Daily News, Russian America Media, Sacramento Business Journal, Sacramento News & Review and Sacramento Observer. Sign up for our \u201cSac Art Pulse\u201d newsletter here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Chris Woodard The theme for February\u2019s \u201cIn a Nutshell\u201d is \u201cthe people who made us,\u201d which the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122],"class_list":{"0":"post-183131","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sacramento","8":"tag-sacramento","9":"tag-sacramento-headlines","10":"tag-sacramento-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}