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Want to know how to make a comedian laugh hysterically? Ask them how they’d like to be remembered. The guffaws that spout from professional standup comic Jackie Kashian go on several seconds longer than is comfortable for the question-asker. Same for Maria Bamford, who replies, “Ha ha! I will not be remembered! But I’m glad to be here!”
Don’t comics believe their dedicated work making us laugh on topics both personal and universal is worthy of a little salute? After all, both performers have been going onstage with a microphone for 35 years. Let’s think about that for a second.
Maria Bamford is the more recognizable face of the two. She started doing standup in the coffeehouses and alternative clubs of L.A. in the early ‘90s and has been called out as a favorite comedian of Stephen Colbert, Judd Apatow and Patton Oswalt. She’s done loads of TV, including her own Netflix series Lady Dynamite, standup specials, and a role as recovering meth addict DeBrie Bardeaux on Arrested Development.
Bamford’s memoir Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere will be published in September and deals with her own experience with mental health issues. She’s worked extensively as a mental health advocate and was the recipient of the International OCD Foundation’s Illumination Award, among other accolades.
Onstage, Bamford’s head runs on many gears, with lots of commas and quotation marks and a whirligig of ideas. Her skill at doing voices is stunning and startling, and her impression of her Midwestern mother should have its own wing in the Comedy Hall of Fame. You’ll laugh—lots—but you may leave her show hoping she goes home and has some soup.
Kashian grabs your attention like “your favorite aunt or someone who is about to call the cops” flush with well-articulated ideas and pinpoint verbal accuracy. She’s been doing standup since “forever....I opened for Hester Prynne in the 1600s.” She hosts two podcasts, The Dork Forest and The Jackie and Laurie Show with fellow comic Laurie Kilmartin. Her brilliant bit about L.A. people and their pets is worthy of repeated viewings just for her impression of a cat getting an eye exam. She’ll talk about her video game developer husband, dork culture, her Wisconsin family, and gender issues with equal amounts of excitability and knifelike delivery.
The longtime pals perform at Helium this week. Before the shows, Bamford is likely to meet in a coffeehouse with a fan from Twitter and go over her set. Kashian will do no such thing, however, and will hit Powell’s “for whatever new T-shirt they’re rocking,” adding: “I ask myself a question that Maria asks herself before all shows, ‘What do I want to achieve from this set?’ It’s usually to work on a particular new bit or, if I’m twitchy for some reason, to make sure I have fun.”
And after the show? “I like to go back to the room and play a game or read a book—Lords of Waterdeep, a mystery-sci-fi-romance novel—and call my fella.” She’s also excited that comic book writer Kelly Sue DeConnick lives in Portland.
After a few decades of performing in nearly every city with a Chuckle Hut, Kashian is a road warrior. From their L.A. homes for a spell before heading out again—after Kashian tells about “an absurd experience” of flushing the keys to her rental car in a movie theater restroom in Milwaukee a day earlier—both comics say they still get stage fright after all these years.
“Yes! Always!” responds Bamford, who will talk about her stage fright onstage and declare, “I did not want to do this show tonight.”
“I used to not ever get stage fright because I didn’t have any shows that mattered,” Kashian says. “It was always, ‘We will pay you $250.’ And then I got my first TV set. And then I got, you know, to be sort of bigger deal. And then there’s somebody’s in the audience you should care about. And so if the stakes get raised, I do still get stage fright. And I have to remind myself it can’t matter. When I get freaked out like that, I tell myself it will be over in 15 to 70 minutes.”
Is there still a thrill to doing standup comedy after a few decades? Bamford admits, “Touring, as when traveling when there are lots of shows in a row, can get to the joblike state, but it’s usually fun.”
As for Kashian at this point, she says: “When I started doing standup, it was like what I assume falling into a vat of heroin would be for a heroin addict. And the ability to just keep swimming in this bed of heroin is a delight. So it doesn’t get more fun. But if you let it, it can make you mad that you aren’t further along, like more people don’t know you. And that’s what I tell myself. Because the real victory is that I still get to do it. And I do still love it.”
SEE IT: Maria Bamford and Jackie Kashian perform at Helium Comedy Club, 1510 SE 9th Ave., 503-583-8464, portland.heliumcomedy.com. 7:30 pm Thursday, 7 and 9:30 pm Friday, 6 and 8:30 pm Saturday, June 22-24. $27-$44. 21+.