When I called him Thursday afternoon, Alex English would have been on summer vacation, but instead he was packing his bags for a late-night flight back to London after two stand-up sets in New York City, where he’s scheduled to perform at Top Secret Comedy Club that weekend. When you’re a working comedian, your work never ends.
After signing up News & EL In the 2021 Writers Room (Season 47), English showed an uncanny knack for the kind of humor that hits you in all the right places (all the more impressive considering he had zero prior sketch experience). News & EL) During his short but remarkable tenure, he delighted audiences with “Hot Girl Hospital,” “Nice Jail,” and the instantly iconic “Lisa from Temecula,” which he said was inspired while on vacation in his hometown of Detroit.
English says his humor comes from analog experiences, not social media. “I talk to people, I talk to my family. I read the newspapers, I read a lot of books,” he says. “I like seeing people. I’m an old man.”
English is part of a new generation of exciting and excitingly queer comedians, including humorists like John Early, Bowen Yang, Sam Jay, and Joel Kim Booster. What they’re trying to achieve isn’t the viral moment that English says so many new comedians crave, but a shared understanding of life’s absurdity. In fact, English is adamant that social media has ruined not just the art of comedy, but our relationships with it. So I asked him to explain how we got here, and how we can turn it around.
Jason Parham: What scares you about the state of comedy right now?
Alex English: I was on a plane the other day. Another passenger was watching a clip on his phone, and I was like, “Oh, I know that guy.” And seven seconds into the clip, he just scrolled away. I’m sure that was the time the cartoonist was setting up the clip or talking to the audience. That was scary. I was like, “I don’t want anyone to do that to me. I don’t want anyone to scroll away from me.” You know? And because everyone does it, it’s so saturated. There’s nothing unique about the clips I watch. I’m not criticizing people for doing it. I just feel like I have to do it.
Be fair.
Long gone are the days of going to a club, performing, having someone in the industry see you, and hoping to get your work on a platform that will shine. Instead, the business now is whether you can burn stuff on the internet or talk to the audience and get 500,000 followers. When it comes to crowd work, I’m here to work. The audience isn’t here to work. They’re here to laugh. I don’t understand the obsession with that. When I’m on stage, I don’t really care about the audience. “Are you guys dating?” Who cares? There’s no unique story there. And they’re not paying for it.
Whose fault is it?
I realized that Instagram and TikTok, especially since the pandemic, all about comedy, has really screwed up a lot of the audience. It’s changed the perception of what comedy, especially stand-up, is. I did a show a couple months ago that went really well. After the show, a woman came up to me. She was sitting in the front. She said, “Oh my gosh, I thought you were going to talk to us tonight. I thought you were going to make fun of us.” I said, “Is that what stand-up is like now?” There’s an expectation from the audience now because of what they’re consuming online.
