Comedians are more than happy to dive into depression
Illness is no joke, but sharing is therapeutic, they say.
MINNEAPOLIS — Comrade Tripp was finally escaping his sister’s basement and moving into his own Uptown apartment, one with plenty of windows and independence. He was less than thrilled.
“I don’t want any light,” he said in a mumble that suggested his dog just died. “As soon as I get there, the building will probably crumble.”
The Eeyore-like disposition isn’t just part of Tripp’s personality. It’s also his act.
The 31-year-old entertainer is one of dozens of young Twin Cities comics getting big laughs onstage for discussing depression, anxiety and other mental health issues. They’re mirroring a national trend in which a new generation of stand-ups are exploring topics their predecessors were raised to avoid, like seeing a therapist and harboring suicidal thoughts.
“I don’t drink coffee. I don’t go to bars. I don’t really hang out with people outside of comedy,” said Tripp, barely touching the hot chocolate he had ordered at Sovereign Grounds in Minneapolis. “It’s good to get out of the house and talk to anybody. For some of us, comedy is therapy.”
Tripp and his peers owe a debt of gratitude to fellow Minnesotan Maria Bamford, a pioneer in exploring tricky territory. The Duluth native has been sharing her struggles with bipolar disorder and nervous breakdowns for more than 15 years. Her autobiographical sitcom, “Lady Dynamite,” which premiered on Netflix in 2016, featured a character who moved back to Minnesota after spending time in a psychiatric ward.
“You have to have empathy for people and for yourself,” she told the Star Tribune last year, right before the publication of her book, “Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere.” “If you’re not into talking about it, pull out. Abandon ship. But don’t tell somebody, ‘I don’t want to hear you ever again talk about being depressed.’ We have to be able to talk about suicide in order to have any level of prevention.’”
Another veteran at the forefront of the movement is Gary Gulman, who used his 2019 HBO special, “The Great Depresh,” to share how mental health issues had forced him to cancel gigs and try electroshock therapy.
The special earned rave reviews and elevated him to the A List. But he confronted skeptics when developing the material. He recalled being in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where the club owner insisted on showing him
comment cards after the performance.
No shame in sharing “One person had written in capital letters, ‘Don’t talk about depression,’” Gulman said recently backstage before a show at St. Paul’s Fitzgerald Theater. “It didn’t throw me off, because I had just been in a meet-and-greet and half the people there thanked me for being open about it.”
But Gulman, 53, had to wrestle with his own apprehensions. He grew up in an era when emotional disorders were a taboo topic. In college, he’d sneak into his therapist’s office.
But the deeper he got into the comedy world, the less shame he felt.
“I don’t know if comedians are any more likely to have mental health issues than the general public, but they are 1,000 times more likely to talk about it with strangers,” he said while nibbling pineapple in the green room. “For a long time, it was one of those things you don’t talk about in public, and that gets comedians excited. ‘Let’s go in that direction. Let’s make people uncomfortable.’”
Brian Regan, 65, started getting onstage in the early ‘80s. But it’s only on recent tours that he’s done material on how he suspects he might have an obsessive-compulsive disorder.
“When I first started out, I was poking fun at the world out there,” said the Miamiborn Regan, who is one of Jerry Seinfeld’s favorite stand-ups. “Now my act is more introspective. A lot of today’s comedians are more comfortable talking about themselves. I think that’s a good thing.”
Rob Ryan had been doing stand-up for nearly a decade before the native New Yorker felt adept enough to build his act around his dysfunctional family, which included an alcoholic mother and a brother who killed himself after severe depression.
“When you’re first starting out, you’re a baby. You just have to learn to construct the most basic guy-walksinto-a-bar joke,” said Ryan, who took his one-man show, “Mascot,” to New York City last year. “Part of the reason I was excited to tackle more difficult topics is that I knew I had the tools to be funny now.”
But today’s younger comedians aren’t waiting to dive into the deep end. Taylor Tomlinson, Matt Rife and Pete Davidson all rocketed to the top in their 20s by openly talking about crippling battles with the blues.
In one of her recent stand-up specials, Tomlinson, who hosts CBS’ “After Midnight,” talked about how one of her best friends responded when she told him she was bipolar.
‘And he goes, ‘Yeah, your mental illness was kind of like your middle name. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew that you had one,’” she said.
Of humor and hurt
At the Disco Death Comedy Show, a monthly showcase in an Uptown record store, many of the featured comics are in their 20s or early 30s. On any given night, roughly half of them will bring up mental health.
“I had to stop drinking while taking antidepressants recently,” said Tia Hannes, 25, during her recent set there. “Don’t take away the one thing that makes me happy!”
Host Pearl Rose believes being upfront is a way to connect with audiences.
“We are wanting to take private experiences and make them public, shared experiences,” she said after a show. “I go through it. You might have been here, too. Sometimes things are so heavy, all you can really do is laugh about it.”
Listening to comics be so open can be comforting to audience members struggling with their own disorders and demons.
Chinmoy Gulrajani, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Minnesota, calls humor a mature defense mechanism, which means it’s a healthy way to process difficult subjects.
“The audience is able to connect with them and see that celebrities can also suffer from the same symptoms,” he said. “When a dialogue is created, a subject is no longer hush-hush. It’s something people aren’t ashamed to discuss.”
But Gulrajani warns that comics need to be careful.
“If someone onstage is talking about a trauma you’ve gone through, it might revive distressed feelings, he said. “If they trivialize it, you could take offense.”
Tripp has had his fair share of negative reactions.
One night, during a routine on his grandmother dying in hospice care, an audience member stood up and insisted that he stop. On Facebook, someone who had only heard about his kind of comedy from others told him that he was disgusting. “I was more upset that he wasn’t at the show,” Tripp said.
Tripp hasn’t had any problems with attracting fans. Last March, he started posting clips from his act. In one of the first, he talked about how you need more than lemons to make lemonade.
“There are other ingredients necessary,” he said from the stage at Comedy Corner Underground in Minneapolis. “Life hasn’t given me sugar or water. I’m just sucking on the lemons all day.”
The 15-second bit has more than 4.6 million views on Tiktok.
Tripp, who co-hosts the Uproar Comedy Open Mic at Minneapolis’ Bryant-lake Bowl Theater on Mondays, had modest aspirations. Now, he’s focused on booking enough gigs to cover the rent at his new pad — and feeling a little less alone.
“If they laugh, it feels great,” he said. “If they don’t laugh, at least they’re as sad as me.”