Stuart Goldsmith: But Are You Happy?

It is said when the stu­dent is ready the mas­ter will appear. 

That is the feel­ing that Valerie Lopez and I had when we first saw a live record­ing of Stu­art Gold­smith’s The Comedian’s Come­di­an Pod­cast at this year’s SXSW. From the very first tap­ing fea­tur­ing guest James Davis, we real­ized that we weren’t just watch­ing a live pod­cast, we were watch­ing a mas­ter class in what we always try to bring our lis­ten­ers at Com­e­dy Wham Presents. From that moment, it was our mis­sion to see as many episodes as we could dur­ing his brief time in Austin and even try to sit down with the man him­self. Upon our very first meet­ing, Gold­smith was kind and approach­able, as if he wants to con­nect with every per­son in the world. And it seems he does, as he gen­er­ous­ly offered us time for an inter­view, amidst his hec­tic SXSW schedule.

Ear­ly on in his teens watch­ing street per­form­ers gave Gold­smith the idea, ​“I could do that!“Stu­art Goldsmith

While Stu­art Gold­smith may not yet be a house­hold name in the US, across the pond (you knew we had to work it in) he’s quite an accom­plished standup come­di­an. Ear­ly on in his teens watch­ing street per­form­ers gave Gold­smith the idea, ​“I could do that!” Fig­ur­ing out the trick to walk­ing on bro­ken glass, Gold­smith advis­es ​“don’t try this at home,” but that’s exact­ly what he and his pal did. Com­bined with the jug­gling he already knew, a few more tricks and they were busk­ing on the streets in no time. Gold­smith went to a fair­ly strict school, which he detest­ed, so per­form­ing on week­ends was a great escape. At the age of 18, he even went to cir­cus school to add to his skill.

But when your earn­ing poten­tial relies on build­ing an imme­di­ate and fresh audi­ence con­stant­ly, you learn the art of charis­ma, show­man­ship, and in Gold­smith’s case com­e­dy. He was real­ly bit­ten with the com­e­dy bug when a dra­ma group he per­formed with went to the Edin­burgh Fes­ti­val Fringe. He would do street per­for­mance and then attend as much standup com­e­dy as he could afford from his earn­ings. He want­ed bad­ly to per­form, but a fear of heck­ling kept the desire at bay for a while. Final­ly, desire won out and he just had to give it a try. He recounts after his first set the feel­ing of instant­ly real­iz­ing this was what he was always sup­posed to do. He con­tin­ued street per­form­ing for a time, but began work­ing more toward standup, care­ful­ly and crafti­ly keep­ing the two separate. 

A com­bi­na­tion of feel­ing he had been poor­ly inter­viewed on a com­e­dy real­i­ty tele­vi­sion show and want­i­ng to know more about the art of standup, Gold­smith start­ed The Come­di­an’s Come­di­an Pod­cast in 2012. He had not had any for­mal train­ing in the art of standup and hoped to gain tips and insights from his expe­ri­enced guests. How­ev­er, hav­ing strug­gled with depres­sion and anx­i­ety, he also had a desire to con­nect with his guests on a deep­er lev­el and raise aware­ness of the men­tal health strug­gles that plague so many comics and non-comics alike. Gold­smith cre­at­ed the recipe for a beau­ti­ful and intrigu­ing inter­view for­mat, most­ly because he actu­al­ly lis­tens. He will allow a ques­tion to hang uncom­fort­ably in the air, if it must, to allow guests to give gen­uine and unguid­ed answers. While Gold­smith start­ed the project for him­self, come­di­ans, fans of com­e­dy, and those who hope to become come­di­ans have grown him an avid fol­low­ing. Raw at times, but often heart­felt and vul­ner­a­ble, The Come­di­an’s Come­di­an Pod­cast is every­thing a come­di­an, fan of com­e­dy, or just plain fan of human­i­ty could hope for in a show.