Jake Shoolheifer: About a Boy

Stand up guys

A few columns ago, I wrote about the importance of art and performance, especially when the chips are down. Well, having just finished a run of three comedy sketch shows, with two of my best friends at the Camden Fringe, that’s never felt more true to me than it does now. 

When I get the chance, I can be a real trundler. A school report I once had said “Jake has an approach to work that would make a sloth envious.” I really can drift and procrastinate with the best of them. Is there a guitar in the room? Then you’ll be getting nothing out of me. Is there test cricket on telly? Forget it.

Were it not for two good mates I’d known since I was eight, I’d never have had the gumption to do anything as risky and ambitious as to ask 120 people if I’m funny or not and expect an instant response. Over a terrifyingly short space of time, they prodded and coaxed out all my effort and creativity in a way only someone who had known me for 15 years could.

Jake has an approach to work that would make a sloth envious

Thank everything that they did, not necessarily because it produced a show that made everyone who watched it laugh (it totally did though, how cool is that?), but because the days building up to it were some of the happiest of my life so far. 

They were stressful, long and tough, but relentlessly hilarious as each last minute idea to make each sketch just that little bit better formed from thin air.

Processes like these are always such a knife-edge dynamic. They’ve always known how to push my buttons – our friendship consists almost exclusively of teasing and provocation – but it’s only ever been borne out of the possibility that something funny might happen, and this time it did. If it sounds like I’m showing off, I am, and when you do your thing, you should too.