Comedian Paul Mecurio To Give Audience A Voice With “Permission To Speak” At Maryland Hall

“My stuff is good and it’s funny and whatever, but I don’t know if people are recounting my jokes three weeks afterward. But they’re recounting these stories to each other and that means that we’ve hit on something. It means that something special might be going on beyond just making people laugh.”

Paul Mecurio shared that feedback about his interactive and unscripted comedy experience, “Permission To Speak,” which is coming to Maryland Hall on November 23 at 8:00pm.

The Emmy and Peabody Award winner is a performer on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and has also appeared on “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart. Mecurio is also a commentator on news and sports outlets including CNN, MSNBC, “CBS Sunday Morning,” Fox News, HLN and ESPN.

Mecurio was working on Wall Street when he decided to switch paths and do comedy full-time, ultimately meeting Jay Leno.

His Maryland Hall show is being brought to Annapolis with help from Rams Head On Stage, which hosted Mecurio last year. Get tickets here.

Mecurio spoke to Voice editor Zach Sparks about “Permission To Speak.” The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

You were just in Milwaukee. So far, it seems like you are gathering interesting stories from people?

It’s been incredible. They never let me down. The show involves my own jokes and stories, but really the audience’s lives are just like your life and my life and everybody, we’ve got stories, and wherever we go, we’re continually pleasantly surprised or blown away by the kind of stories that we get.

One guy was upset with his girlfriend because he taught her how to shoplift because that’s how he likes to make money, but she didn’t listen to him and she shoplifted at CVS and got arrested and he was mad at her because she wasted shoplifting at CVS when she should have been shoplifting at other stores. It’s literally cliché, but it’s sort of like, it’s stuff you wouldn’t even think to write if you were a writer in a writers’ room or a comedy show or a film, and you’d be like, “Ah, nobody is going to believe that. That’s too crazy. No one would do that.”

Or there was the woman who, I said to her, “What’s your name?” And she said, “Nydia.” And I said, “Lydia with an L?” She goes, “No, Nydia with an N.” And I said, “Oh, that’s a unique name. How’d you get the name?” and she said, “Well my father got my mother pregnant with me, you know, married at the time, but was having an affair with a woman named Nydia and he named me after the woman he was having an affair with,” and people just go, “Oh, my God.”

I get asked, “Are these people plants or are these stories made up?” and the answer is no. I don’t even know who I’m going to talk to until I go out there and start the show. I just randomly pick people. And it’s been incredible. Absolutely incredible.

For some people, I guess it’s like therapy onstage.

You totally, totally hit it on the head. Every show, people say to me it’s like this cool therapy show that is fun, and they say, “I’m so glad I got that off my chest,” or “I’ve been wanting to say that my whole life,” or “Thank you, thank you for letting me have the opportunity” and they can even come onstage, or do it from their seat or not talk at all if they don’t want to, but usually almost everybody does.

And what I find, after the show, is somebody says, “Oh, I wish you’d have picked me to talk to,” and they turn into children who want to be part of the game, in a way. And no one gets picked on. It’s not roasting; it’s just talking to people. I think they do know it’s a safe space where you can say whatever you want, it’s not there (for anyone) to make fun or judge.

That’s the other thing. People like that it’s not judgmental because we are so judgmental these days, especially with social media, and we’re sort of divisive because of politics. I know people are welcoming that this is just a cool space to hang out in and just have some fun and not judge and tell stories and not worry about if you are going to say something and someone is going to attack you and be offended or whatever.

It's bringing people together and connecting people through these stories. People are relating to each other’s stories and talking to each other after the show and saying, “Aw, you grew up in Annapolis? I grew up in Annapolis.” Or, “You went to this high school? I went to that high school.” And so, they’re having a real human moment with each other after the show, which has been really rewarding for us and my director, Frank Oz, who is very excited about the show and got involved because he feels like we need a show like this now that brings people together through stories and laughter as opposed to dividing people.

Some people would recognize Frank as the voice of Yoda, but why was he such a perfect partner to direct “Permission To Speak?”

Well, we really hit it off. I had him on my podcast called “Inside Out with Paul Mecurio” as a guest and we are both what I call process geeks. We like the process of creating and could talk about it endlessly, which is what we did on my podcast.

It just felt like we were kindred spirits, and so I was in the process of putting this up in New York on Broadway initially and I was telling him what I was up to and he said, “Sounds really interesting. Do you mind if I take a look at it?” He did and he was interested in being involved and I really wanted him to be involved because I was thinking I needed somebody with an objective eye to look at my performance and show, and he said the same thing to me initially: “How did you get those people to say those things?” And I said, “I don’t know. I just talk to them.” He goes, “Yeah, but why were they so willing to share these stories?” I’m like, “I don’t know,” and then watching it a few more times, he says, “I think I know why, because you are” – he calls me a mensch, which is a Yiddish term – and he goes, “because they know that you have a good heart and you’re not there to be mean. You just have this boundless curiosity, and you have the ability to be funny with it.”

He felt like this was something, given the tone and tenor of our society of divisiveness and tension and this and that, that this was something that was really needed and he wanted to get behind it. If you really look at his work, going back to creating the Muppets and even the movies he directs, he is a pure artist in the sense that he wants his work to have some meaning and have impact on people and so he sees that this show is not just funny and really entertaining, but has the added benefit of bringing people together, not in a schmaltzy kumbaya way, which we both hate that stuff, but letting people connect through shared experiences and stories.

I’ve been surprised by people’s wit from watching some of the clips, like the one with a doctor you interviewed.

That guy was hilarious. He was a sleep doctor. He wasn’t trying too hard to be funny, but he was clever. I have an opening monologue where I basically describe what the show is and what we’re going to do, and in it, I say that everybody has a story and some people need to tell their story, some people want to tell their story, I say, or some people even need to tell their story. And I really do believe a lot of people feel unheard, and when they’re given that opportunity, they relish it. I have to tell you, like 30% of the time, people grab the microphone from me and just start talking. And then there was this guy, Travis. He had polio.

Yes, he lied about Vietnam.

Which was hilarious and the way he told it was perfect. He was a really good storyteller, and he didn’t do that for a living, and plus it was like that was another one, if you and I were writers for the late show or whatever comedy show and we came up with that, we’d probably say, “That’s too crazy. Nobody would think of that.” And he was like the star of the night.

So, you really hit it on the head. I continue to be amazed at what good storytellers people are, even people who are kind of quiet. They know how to deliver a funny line because I think they’re comfortable.

It’s definitely a testament to you guys as well because you have a short amount of time to break the ice and make people feel comfortable.

And like I said, some people can do it from your seat, and people aren’t shy about coming up. And then we have this beautiful set design by the set designer from “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and we have animation done by J.J. Sedelmaier who did “Beavis And Butt-Head” and the “Saturday Night Live” TV Funhouse movies, “Harvey Birdman,” etc. – and it’s a rear projection screen with this cool animation and digital mapping and these other really cool effects. So, it’s a filled theater show, and the set helps tell the show and the theme of, you know, we’re in our own silos, we’re kind of all in our own boxes, but if we take a minute and look around, we’ll see that we have more in common than we think.

I also want to let our readers know about your podcast, “Inside Out with Paul Mecurio.”

I am really proud of that. I like to do one-on-one interviews about process, and I am really proud of my guest list. I have had everybody from Bryan Cranston to Stephen Colbert to Neil deGrasse Tyson, Jon Meacham, Frank (Oz) and Paul McCartney, and we pretty much talk process with all these people.

A really great couple of interviews are with Bryan Cranston about acting and his latest show, “Your Honor,” and we talk astrophysics with Jon Meacham, a great historian, and there’s a lot of great detail about history, and so I just like the one-on-one longform interview. I feel like that became a lost art, like late-night shows like the one I work on, the guests are limited to six to seven minutes, and I was like, “I want to hear more,” but the format didn’t allow it, so that’s what inspired me to do this kind of podcast.