ARTS INTERVIEW: MELINDA HILL

The Accidental Bisexual and Other Stories

A while back, I wrote about Melinda Hill, a wonderful young comedienne I’d just seen. At that time, I wrote: “Melinda Hill is bringing the fun back to funny, the smart back to ‘smarty pants,’ and the ‘hyphen’ back to hyphenate because she genuinely wears the various hats hyphenates like to claim and very rarely deserve to wear.” She can now add the “monologist/storyteller” hat. And you can see her wear that hat and tell her stories at this one-time only performance: Wednesday, April 14^th at Comedy Central Stage, 8:00 p.m.

Melinda Hill explores love, loss and identity crisis in this evening of story-telling (this show will be recorded for a comedy album). This will be a wonderful evening of humor without any of those comic “wait for it” punchline gags. Some comedians string together a bunch of jokes they’ve created with very flimsy, if any at all, transitions, and expect us to follow their train of thought – or thoughtlessness. There were several generations of comedians who didn’t tell jokes but rather anecdotes. There are still some today, but the stories seem contrived and lack an honesty of a situation. Melinda is a storyteller in the old-fashioned sense. Melinda is beyond that. She’s a genuine monologist — a skilled monologist in the more literary sense. This is not “stand-up.” This is “sit down and listen” to 45 minutes of funny and sad stories — a very special evening. A comedian puts down the armor of an act and gets real for an hour!

When I heard about the evening, I asked Melinda why she would do this kind of a performance. It’s such a risk to be so vulnerable as a comedian. Her answer was very simple:

Melinda Hill: When a record company approached me to do a comedy album, I decided to record stories instead of stand-up. I studied fiction writing in college and, over the past few years, have had the opportunity to read stories at great shows like Sit N Spin, Tasty Words, Four Stories and a Cover, Word Play, Lit Up, and Literary Death Match. That gave me deadlines to write and amazing audiences which led to being published in LA Weekly Comedy Issue and Opium Magazine. I’m so inspired by the honesty and humor of the stories that I see at these shows, as well as by best-selling author friends of mine like Elna Baker, Mishna Wolff, Stephanie Wilder-Taylor, Maggie Rowe and Andersen Gabrych, who are putting really exciting, funny but sad work out into the world. I’m also a huge Sedaris and This American Life fan, of course. I did a show called Stories of a Girl Who Was in a Creed Video (directed by Tom Gianas) which spawned some stories that don’t exactly have a place in my stand-up so I thought this album would be the perfect place to put them as well.

Most of the stories happen very organically. I don’t set out to write them. Ridiculous things just continually happen around me, and when I tell friends and they have a big reaction, I know I’m on to something. If they’re bored and struggling to pay attention, then I know that story is useless. I hope, when people hear the stories, that they will laugh, cry, and pass them on to their friends, just like they do with their illegal substances and their under-pants that don’t fit anymore.

As I said, Melinda is a monologist in the most traditionally emblematic sense of the word, and it’s time for comedy to reestablish some of the lost tradition of its origins in theatre as a form of entertainment that makes the audience think, rather than a way to be passively entertained.