Duncan Carson, Volume 7

Dun­can Car­son has been part of the Austin scene for so long that he’s got com­e­dy down to a phi­los­o­phy. After eleven years host­ing the foun­da­tion­al standup show­case Sure Thing, which con­clud­ed amid the depar­ture of co-host Bren­dan K. O’Grady and after 512 shows, Car­son has per­formed and watched so much standup that he can’t help but come away from it with zen-like wis­dom. He’s even start­ed doing yoga.

Now teach­ing a standup class at the Fall­out The­ater, he has the oppor­tu­ni­ty to impart this wis­dom to future come­di­ans. ​“I set­tled on a fun­da­men­tal­ly exis­ten­tial­ist approach,” says Car­son. He draws just as much inspi­ra­tion from John Paul Sartre as he does Steve Mar­tin. The philosopher’s doc­trine that ​“exis­tence pre­cedes essence” is the germ for Carson’s notion of the bound­less free­dom of the form; Steve Mar­tin is point­ed to as a high­ly suc­cess­ful exam­ple. ​“He’s not telling jokes; he’s play­ing with the ingre­di­ents of what every­one expects from a standup com­ic and just being a goof­ball and sell­ing out are­nas to the point he had to walk away.” 

Car­son encour­ages stu­dents to sim­ply draw from their expe­ri­ences with­out con­cern for strict adher­ence to the ​“rules” of standup. With this idea as a base, Standup 101 is less about prompt­ing stu­dents to come up with mate­r­i­al, and more about help­ing them find their voice. ​“It became much more about, ​‘Who are you?’, ​‘What’s your back­ground?’, ​‘How does your head work?’ “, Car­son explains. ​“And then when they bring back ideas, we work togeth­er on that.” Car­son admits that teach­ing is also his chance to final­ly get on his soap­box. He makes it a point that stu­dents think about the effect their words can have on peo­ple, even if it’s in the name of com­e­dy. ​“There’s still a social con­tract as a human, so try not to say any­thing that caus­es harm” says Car­son. In light of an influx of comics who are, let’s say, less dis­cern­ing about that kind of thing, Car­son laments that he even has to bring it up. For­tu­nate­ly for his stu­dents, it’s the only major rule of the classroom. 

Carson’s oth­er main ven­ture sees him tak­ing on the role of talk show host every Fri­day night. The appro­pri­ate­ly named Fall­out Tonight fea­tures every­thing you would expect to see in a talk show for­mat, from an open­ing mono­logue to inter­views to the occa­sion­al game of Apples to Apples (fun­nier when played by come­di­ans). Fall­out Tonight picked up right where Sure Thing left off. Exact­ly a week from his for­mer show’s grand finale in Octo­ber of 2023, Car­son and co. set the stage with a couch, a pot­ted plant (with a grow­ing col­lec­tion of goo­gly eye adorn­ments) and a shiny sequin back­drop for the first edi­tion of what is still going strong as a week­ly Fall­out staple. 

“Co-” here includes found­ing con­trib­u­tors Jon Men­doza and Adam Shu­mate, head writer and exec­u­tive pro­duc­er, respec­tive­ly. More recent­ly Car­son has tak­en in two addi­tion­al writer/​producers. Artist Jor­dan Hamil­ton and fre­quent Fall­out per­former Jo Fos­ter were both stu­dents of Carson’s before being onboard­ed. ​“Jo is just preter­nat­u­ral­ly tal­ent­ed, she’s on every oth­er show in town, and she bar­tends (at Fall­out) on Fri­days,” Car­son says. ​“Jor­dan took one of my class­es, and we found out we think a lot in the same way in terms of pro­cess­ing things as writ­ers. She brings a lot of aes­thet­ic stuff to the table that none of us do.” 

Car­son and his team also com­prise the hosts of Sign­ing Off, a pod­cast record­ed in the green room imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing every Fall­out Tonight. On two spe­cial occa­sions this past year, Sign­ing Off was record­ed live on stage at the Fall­out The­ater. Car­son speaks on the chal­lenge of going from the prac­ticed, solo world of standup to ​“45 min­utes of goof­ing around with three oth­er peo­ple in front of a crowd”, as he puts it. ​“It was a real sort of leap of faith”. 

Hav­ing been a standup com­ic first and fore­most for twen­ty years, Car­son admits that improv (an art­form Valerie has recent­ly thrown her­self deeply into) puts him out of his com­fort zone. The absence of any pre-planned, pre-rehearsed mate­r­i­al, and the ephemer­al nature of it all — what­ev­er hap­pens on stage can’t be repeat­ed — are both qual­i­ties that clash with Carson’s need for con­trol. Or maybe it’s the pre-show rit­u­als that improv teams warm up through; hav­ing borne wit­ness to a few, Car­son jokes that it ​“kind of feels like when you go to a church you’re not a part of and they’re like ​‘peace be with you’ and you’re like ​‘is this blas­phe­mous for me to say?’”. 

Car­son recalls a time ear­ly on in his career when even standup was intim­i­dat­ing. Fail­ing to make head­way in the standup scene of Mil­wau­kee, it took a change of per­spec­tive to boost his con­fi­dence. Car­son pri­or­i­tized the thrill of express­ing his ideas on stage over fears of how he’d be per­ceived. He also learned to appre­ci­ate the small­ness of what he was doing. ​“The stakes aren’t crazy high here,” rea­soned Car­son. ​“Let’s just tell some jokes and we’ll still be our­selves when it’s over.”

It’s this way of think­ing that Car­son hopes to instill in his stu­dents. It’s also in keep­ing with his atti­tude on com­e­dy as a career. As Car­son describes it, in every con­ver­sa­tion he has with oth­er aspir­ing come­di­ans about ​“mak­ing it” in the indus­try, the goal posts are grad­u­al­ly reduced to this sim­ple abstract: ​“I just want to make a cre­ative liv­ing”. To this point Car­son posits that every liv­ing is cre­ative. ​“That’s very ​‘throw pil­low’, cheesy stuff,” Car­son says. ​“But, whether you made it or not, your life is going to be some ratio of cre­ative ful­fill­ment to toil and drudgery.” 

Fol­low Duncan

• Twit­ter — @aduncancarson
  
• Insta­gram — @aduncancarson
• Face­book — face​book​.com/​d​u​n​c​a​n​c​arson
• Tik­Tok — @duncancarson

Fol­low Fall­out Tonight

• Link­tree — Fall​out​Tonight​.com
• Insta­gram — @fallout_tonight
  

Fol­low Sure Thing Records

• Web­site — SureThin​gRecords​.com
• Insta­gram — @surethingatx

See Dun­can

• Fall­out Tonight — Week­ly on Fri­days, 9:30pm at Fall­out Theater
• Sign­ing Off Pod­cast — Week­ly episode recap­ping Fall­out Tonight with Jon Men­doza, Adam Shu­mate, and oth­er guests