While so much of marketing in stand-up comedy is based on sharing new material, Jacqueline Novak is taking a bit of a different approach as she returns to Boston, by once standing by the potency and surprise of her constantly in-progress labor of love.
With her smash-hit solo show Get On Your Knees, which makes its way to The Wilbur on Sunday (March 19), Novak is excited to share how the show has evolved since she last brought it to town, but even with its nature of always being in flux, that’s not so much a reflection of Novak consciously trying to keep it fresh after having run it all over the world for the better part of the past four years. Rather, it’s actually more of a reflection of her creative foundation in not letting things get stale or outdated.
“This thing is never done to me until it gets filmed, or is pulled from my cold, dead hands,” Novak tells Vanyaland. “To me, it’s the same exact show, in that I’m still trying to do the same thing, and my goal is go out there and deliver the same show, and yet, anything could go in or get cut out. It’s in this bizarro state of having done it so many times, but I’m still [working on making it better]. It’s something where, if you start trying to change it, you can really start to lose what was good about it to begin with, but with my compulsive tinkering, it still kind of feels like it’s still a draft somehow and can be changed, so that way, I’m never fully bored, because I’m always convinced that it could be better.”
The outer presentation of the show is loaded with Novak’s creative and comedic force, in which she harnesses the ability to share what she sees as “lofty ideas” in both complicated and simple ways. With the easy description coming around to the show simply being about blow jobs, Novak continues to be intrigued at the element of mystery that almost obviously lingers behind such a description.
But even with what she feels is a “grandiose” idea of what the show is really about stuck in her head, and how she herself describes the plot to people who are curious, the simplicity behind the usual description, as she’s found, tends to suggest and hopefully achieve a more abstract synopsis and true meaning of the show.
“For me, finding a full description of the show has been a literal hell. We could throw phrases like ‘coming of age,’ or ‘unexpectedly philosophical,’ but at the same time, we try to frame it with the idea of it sounding like it’s about one thing, but it’s about something else,” says Novak. “I got on an elevator at a hotel recently, and after chatting with the girl next to me, she asked me about the show I was at, and when I told it was mine, sort of sounding like a douchebag, I suggested that they come check it out. But as they were getting out of the elevator, all I could get out about it was that it’s about blow jobs.”
With The Wilbur representing quite possibly the largest crowd she’s performed the show for, Novak is beyond excited to, as she sees it, “take a big swing” with the never-finished product and see how many people connect with it. With every performance, she finds herself in a state of wondering if she can pull off the on-the-fly changes to material, and in turn, the surprise elements that naturally come along with approach. Now, maybe with her next project, she’ll put together a show that doesn’t make her feel like her soul is in the line every night, but for now, Novak is still an exhilaration in that very aspect of the whole experience.
“The thrill with this show is that it is this big swing that feels risky, where I’m putting some stuff that doesn’t feel like it’s an absolute guarantee that it will be caught or understand how I’m intending,” says Novak. “I like being able to throw stuff in there that could or couldn’t stick, but then to have people respond to it, especially when it’s something you’re putting out there that’s out on the edge a little bit in the way you’re trying to express it, it’s that just a such a magical feeling. The bigger and weirder it feels, and more people that level with it and get what I’m saying, the greater thrill.”
JACQUELINE NOVAK :: Sunday, March 19 at The Wilbur Theatre, 246 Tremont St. in Boston, MA :: 6:30 p.m., $29 to $39 :: Advance Tickets