Video by Karina Granda and Elizabeth Kreutz

Did you miss our third annual live showcase as part of the New York Comedy Festival? Enjoy a snippet from each of the fantastic performers; it will have to be enough to tide you over until next year.

Read profiles of the comics here, here and here.

At last night’s annual fundraiser for storytelling powerhouse the Moth, the superstars of the world of the narrative celebrated and gave their support. We asked each the same question: “What will be the opening line of your next memoir, real or imaginary?”

“If you know me, please don’t read this.”
Jonathan Ames, essayist, HBO character

“I was completely unprepared for this.”
Sarah Jones, playwright

“Thank God for my two families, my original and my present.”
Albert Maysles, documentary filmmaker

“I am sitting in a Starbucks trying to fill the page so they’ll pay me.”
Mike Birbiglia, comedian and author

“I wish I’d never gotten involved with storytelling.”
George Dawes Green, novelist and founder of the Moth

“It was on Labor Day, lying on a massage table with a woman squeezing my glutes and talking about Jesus, when I realized that I was suffering a stroke.”
Garrison Keillor, Prairie Homesteader

“This is an ambush and I’m outraged.”
Tony Hendra, satirist, Ian Faith

“57 and not getting any taller.”
Simon Doonan, creative director of Barneys

“There are the things we can see and the things we can’t.”
Jennifer Stein, poet and writer

“Let’s see, where was I…”
Tommy Tune, Broadway director and choreographer

“My name is Adam Wade, and I’m originally from New Hampshire.”
Adam Wade, Moth GrandSlam Winner

“Everything changed once I was able to hold two ideas in my head at the same time: that life wasn’t fair and that I was really lucky to be here.”
Ed Gavagan, Moth GrandSlam Winner

Photographs of Jonathan Ames (top) and Garrison Keillor by Sarah Stacke.

1. A surprise set from melodic and heartfelt indie-rock power duo Mates of State is the perfect lead-in to a night of comedy from stand-up’s most endearing talent, Mike Birbiglia; both are the performance equivalent of friendly hugs.

2. He wasn’t drunk. He promises. In spite of what a blogger claimed to have been disappointed by in an earlier performance, Birbiglia is never intoxicated onstage. “Apparently I’m just a mess. Me at neutral is a mess.”

3. The spinning-circles-within-spinning-circles movement of the “ubiquitous” carnival ride known as the Scrambler can actually be physically represented by one person on a stage. And it will make you as nauseous as the memory being recalled.

4. Birbiglia always sticks his landings. His act is not only a collection of funny jokes, but also a series of ideas and anecdotes that, you realize at the end, relate to one another thematically and humorously for an even bigger payoff.

5. When he sprinkled classic jokes into his set, audience members delivered the punch lines in tandem—”Season tickets to the Yankees!”—and when the Mates of State backed him on “The Oatmeal Song” as an encore, the crowd stood, clapped and sang along. Mike Birbiglia will be a household name…but I guess we actually learned that a while ago.

Just for Laughs ‘09:
718 artists, 306 shows, almost 25 venues, innumerable hangovers.

Excluding the gala hosts—Whoopi Goldberg, Martin Short, Lewis Black and John Cleese—there was a dearth of TV and film celebrities at this year’s fest. Bill Cosby did a couple of shows, as did David Alan Grier, Paul Rodriguez and sketch group Broken Lizard (Super Troopers, Beerfest), but otherwise performance slots were filled by touring comics and new faces—which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Still, the circumstance leads one to wonder if the festival’s continued expansion—not only in Toronto but now also in Chicago—is cannibalizing the roster of its flagship event.

However, for comedy nerds there were still plenty of celebrities on hand. Here is a conversation I overheard two comics having while walking back to the Hyatt around 3:30am. “Look, there’s Louis C.K., just walking on the street like he’s a normal person and not a genius.” “Yeah, just  breathing the same air as the unworthy lowlifes traipsing along behind him.”

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Even within the context of comedy, the definition of improvisation varies greatly, obviously, depending on whether the word is being used to describe a stand-up or a group of people creating scenes. Or so I thought.

U.K. superstar stand-up Ross Noble is a game changer. For Noble, who performed an hour in a small cabaret space more than 1,000 seats shy of his typical venues, improvisation is not a digression or distraction, is not a way to deftly handle the unanticipated or to warm up the crowd; it is the show itself.

He got sweet on the idea that there might be a simultaneous show happening next door with “wheelie panthers”—it spawned from one audience member’s overzealous reaction to Noble’s entrance; his scream was so sensational, Noble deduced there must have been a panther behind him, though probably it would have been stuffed, as that makes more sense, and would therefore have had to have to been on some sort of wheeled dolly crossing the stage, clearly to get to the show next door.

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Less than an hour before last night’s televised gala program began, the Just for Laughs festival office e-mailed a release stating that film star and Python John Cleese would be unable to host its premier event, as he was undergoing emergency treatment for prostatitis. The show went on; Lewis Black filled in, ably, and Cleese will return to host a newly added gala on Sunday. We wish him a speedy recovery.

Beyond the jump, the brightest of the New Faces showcase, with links to their clips.
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