Paul Mecurio gives the audience ‘Permission to Speak’ at United Theatre

Comedian Paul Mecurio has an off-Broadway show coming to the United Theatre this Saturday. Mecurio was born and raised in Rhode Island and after a brief career on Wall Street as a lawyer and investment banker, he moved into comedy. Since then he’s been on “The Daily Show,” “The Colbert Report,” and he’s currently on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” as a performer. He’s won Emmy and Peabody awards, and he hosts a podcast called “Inside Out with Paul Mecurio.” Artscape Producer James Baumgartner spoke with Paul about his off-broadway show, “Permission to Speak,” where he picks random members of the audience to come up on stage, asks them questions, and everyone gets to hear their story.

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Transcript:

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Paul Mecurio: It’s actually born out of stand up. You know, there’s a thing in stand up called crowd work, right? Which is: you talk to somebody about their hat, but you don’t really care about their hat. You’re just talking about their hat because you have a perfectly written bit about a hat, and that drives me crazy when I hear people do that. It’s just, please just do the bit about the hat. You’re not kidding anybody. But beyond that, it started to become a conversation with people, and you start to realize — and you know, you interview people, and you do this for a living — it’s like, everybody has a story. It’s very cliche, but we, anybody over the age of six has a story. Something unique, something crazy, something “what?!” Whatever. And the more questions you ask, the better it is to get to that story, and that’s how this was born. And I was just randomly picking people out of audiences, and I was doing it at “The Late Show,” and some Broadway producers saw me doing it, and they said, “we think there’s a show in this.”

James Baumgartner: Okay, let’s hear one of those stories. This is Travis.

[Excerpt from “Permission to Speak”]

Mecurio: What are we doing here, what’s the issue?

Travis: Polio.

Mecurio: Oh yeah.

Travis: When my kids were younger, I would go to the school plays. Obviously, kids would be like, “Is that your dad? Is he Robocop?” I would tell the kids, “Hey, I’m from Vietnam, that’s how I got hurt.” They would be like, “Really? You were in Vietnam?” And I was like, “Yeah!” It was a joke, but my daughter is 18 now and a few months ago she was like, “Daddy, were you really in Vietnam?” And I forgot that I told her that. “I’d told everybody that when you were like six. I just never fixed it.”

Mecurio: So Travis was important to me for several reasons, because anybody with an affliction, people don’t talk to them. And they mean well, but you know, whether it’s somebody with MS in a wheelchair, or in this case, he had the kind of crutches where you knew it wasn’t a broken ankle, there was an affliction. And what happens with those people is, I think people are fundamentally decent and go, “Oh, oh, he’s got a thing. And I’m not, I don’t want to say anything inappropriate,” especially now we’re all so on edge about political correctness, that you end up ignoring the person and marginalizing them. And they don’t, that guy, if you go on, people go onto my website, paulmecurio.com, you can see that clip. This guy’s arms are, he’s pumped. He’s a really healthy-looking guy. You wouldn’t know if he had crutches. So he, in his mind, he’s still that young guy that didn’t have this, right? And then I loved it because you couldn’t write that. Like, if we were writers in a writer’s room and said, let’s come up with a thing where he lies to his daughter and says Vietnam, nobody’s gonna believe it. And he was laughing at himself. It checked off all the boxes of what we love about the show, which is it’s just letting people see how somebody else lives their life that you have no idea of anything about or any sense of like how people would sort of navigate those waters. And that’s why we loved him. 

Baumgartner: You grew up in Rhode Island. Is there anything unique to our little state that you bring to the show?

Mecurio: It’s such a microcosm of the world, Rhode Island. You know, there’s a variety of ethnicities and religions, and a variety of socioeconomic classes. So it’s like, I can relate to anybody because I grew up here. Plus I grew up in my parents’ furniture business, my mom’s furniture store, where she had me selling furniture at eleven to like 60-year-old people. So I kind of just have that ability, I guess, a gift for gab. And I also think Rhode Islanders kind of, pretty much — I think you’re from the Midwest originally, and I work in the Midwest a lot, they’re a little more reserved. I think Rhode Islanders are kind of more on their sleeve, like, “what did you mean by that?” They’ll be like, in a nice way, kind of in your face a little bit. And I think I bring that to it. I think that’s why I can do the show, because I’ll just say to somebody — like Frank Oz, my director, always marvels that I just say whatever I say. Like the guy who had polio, I go, “so what do you got, what’s going on, what’s your issue?” And he goes, he laughs every time, he goes, “because I’ve never seen anybody ask a question that way.” But it’s not offensive, I think Rhode Islanders just kind of get to the heart of the matter quickly, but in a way that’s not obnoxious, and I think that that has been, like, something I’m able to kind of bring to the show as well. 

Baumgartner: Did anybody that you brought up on stage just leave you completely speechless with their story?  

Mecurio: Yeah. One of the things that Frank, my director Frank Oz and I said is we have kind of like a 70/30 rule, which is 70 percent story, 30 percent funny. Don’t push for the funny. I’m a comedian, and you get scared if there’s not laughs every 30 seconds. But you can’t do this and worry about that, because I need to ask that second, third, and fourth question, right? And by that fourth question, you know, then you get that gold. Like, “How are you doing? What’s your name?” “Travis.” “What’s going on?” And then you ease into, “So why do you have crutches?” “Oh, I have this,” right? So now I’m a minute and a half in, and I haven’t gotten a laugh. That’s scary for a comedian. But if you wait, you’re rewarded with gold. It’s like in sports, letting the game come to you.

So, I had a woman on stage, transitioning into being a man. Mason. Transgender. And I wanted to talk for the same reason as the polio – they’re marginalized. I wanted people to see that they’re not these weirdo freaks or whatever. They’re just people trying to figure their lives out. So, he had his father with him. He’s about 28, Mason. And I said, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Five minutes in and I said, “So how did you tell your parents that you…” He goes, “I don’t remember.” And he goes, “Well, I have severe bipolar disorder and I’ve had electroshock treatments three times, so I don’t remember a lot of things.”

And everybody did what you did. Everybody’s like, “oh my god,” right? So now you can kind of feel the plane going into the ground. But it’s okay because the show’s supposed to reflect real life, and the peaks and valleys, just like a good film has the serious moments and the funny moments and the sad moments and all this stuff. So I took a beat and I went, “hmm.” But, I knew instinctively there needed to be something funny there to pop the balloon. So I went, “Wow, really?” I go, “You know, there’s a lot of things in my life I don’t want to remember. Maybe I should have electroshock treatment.” And everybody laughed. And then, and then Mason topped me, which I always love when they’re funnier than I am. He went, “My doctor’s great at electroshock. I can give you her phone number.” And everybody just started applauding. Mason was the star of the night. Everybody went up to Mason after the show, hugged him, “good luck.” Just graduated San Diego State University. 

So that was a really special show for me. And the power of what it can do, and what Frank Oz loved about it. And the 70/30 rule was, like, if I was pushing for funny, I would get in the way of the stories. Just the funny bubbles up. The show is allowing people to see how other people live. And it’s opening, we’re getting out of our silos, out of our own little box, and we’re sort of showing to each other how we live and how we live differently, but we can still coexist.

Baumgartner: You can see Paul Mecurio’s “Permission to Speak” at the United Theatre in Westerly on Saturday, March 9, at 7:30 p.m. Ticket information at unitedtheatre.org. Paul, thanks for talking with me.

Mecurio: Thanks so much for having me, it’s been a real pleasure.

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BONUS: As a bonus for the web and podcast versions of Artscape, we’re including this special extra clip from their conversation, featuring the unlikely story of how Mecurio got Paul McCartney on his podcast, “Inside Out with Paul Mecurio.”

Mecurio: So [Paul McCartney] was performing on the Colbert show and he had just finished rehearsal. I had to run into the studio for something and I round the corner and I’m running around the thing, and I run down the hallway and I see Paul McCartney standing in the hallway all alone. Nobody, not a handler, not a manager, not a security force, all alone, which threw me more than anything. And I round the corner, I’m like, “Oh my god, it’s Paul McCartney.” My whole world slows down. 

And I’m like, should I say hi? Should I not say hi? And I’m like, look, he’s alone in the hallway with no security. He’s like a gazelle on the Serengeti plains. I’m a lion, I’m gonna pounce. So I just go over very quick. I go, honored to meet you. Huge fan. So excited to see your performance,” and I walk away. And he goes, “wait, come back.” And I go, “what? What do you want? I’m busy.” No, he goes, “What’s your name?” I go, “Paul.” He goes, “Oh, what do you do?” I go, “Oh, I’m in stand up. I perform and act” and blah, blah, blah. “Oh, I love acting, I love stand up, you got a kid?” “Yeah, I got a kid. You travel out there?”

 So, five, ten minutes go by, I’m chit chatting with Paul McCartney. By the way, everybody who works on the show is going by, walking by us in the hallway, going, “oh, Paul Mecurio knows Paul McCartney,” right? But as I’m talking to him, I’m like really cool on the outside, I’m like, “Hey, I’m talking to Paul McCartney.” On the inside, I’m like, “I’m talking to Paul McCartney!” Like, out of my mind, right? Like the girls at Shea Stadium, right? And then I blurt these words out in my mind. I go, “Paul McCartney should do my podcast.” So again, maybe because I’m from Rhode Island and don’t have another function or whatever, I go, “Hey, you know what? I’d really like to talk about how you make music. Would you do my podcast?” And he goes, “Yeah, sure.” Just like that. Now, I’m completely thrown because I expected him to say no. Instead he says yes, so now I’m frozen. And he goes, “How would we do it?” And I’m not making this up. This is how I sound. I started rocking back and forth and rubbing my leg like I’m Rain Man. I’m like, “I’ll come to London!” And he goes, “We’re in a room in New York together, why would you come to London?” And then he goes, “Is it easy to do?” And I go, “Oh my god, yeah, it’s so easy, I don’t want to be a bother, I know you’re busy. You could do it on your phone, naked from your toilet.” I’m like, oh my god, what am I saying? So I’m like, “You know what, I’ll leave you alone, and I’ll find your assistant and we’ll set it up.” And this is the mind blow right here. He goes, “No, no, you and I’ll do it.” I go, “What do you mean?” He goes, “They’re going to just make it way too complicated. You and I’ll do it. But when I call you, you’ve got to be ready to do it. Okay?” So, I’m handing him my phone number. I walk away. He does the performance. I do my performance after him that I had to do. And then I am rushing to get to “The Daily Show.” I was working on “The Daily Show” at the same time. My phone rings. I don’t recognize the number. I let it ring to voicemail, and this is the message on my phone.

Paul McCartney: Hi Paul. This is Paul McCartney here. I’m going to ring you back in five minutes to do the podcast thing. I’ve got some time now, I don’t know when I’m going to run out of time. So if you’re there in five minutes’ time, you’ve got me. Okay, bye.

Mecurio: My favorite part of that is he felt he had to identify himself by both his first and his last name. It’s like, oh, that Paul McCartney. 

Baumgartner: You know, from The Beatles. It would have been better if he had said, you know from Wings.
Mecurio: Right, exactly. From, from The Quarrymen. And, wow. And so we did it, and all we did was talk about music, and it’s on there, and I’m really proud of it. The whole thing’s been great, you know, just crazy to have him.

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