Welcome to the stage Reggie Watts! To call him just a comedian would be disrespectful to his unique multi-talented nature. Reggie Watts much like The Umbilical Brothers in the previous post combines many different mediums and senses to create what i call a “comedic experience”. It’s hard even to state in a fluid manner what he actually does. Firstly Watts is a long trained vocal Jazz musician who knows his way around a loop machine or non-linear loop based technology as Watts likes to call it. Watts then uses his skills of looping and music to create live improvised songs. This is just the beginning. When Watts is not doing music in his act he is using his immense imitation skills to create creative characters that he switches through quickly, leaving you wondering which character is actually him. You’ll also rarely find a traditional or repeated joke in Watts oeuvre because everything he does is stream of consciousness. He is making up jokes and music left and right in a highly intellectual manner. He is truly the new pioneer of artistic comedy. Oh and did i mention he’s fluent in three languages?
This pushing away from the somewhat archaic comedy concepts of the 20th century is something that excites me very much. Soon there will be no more “A cat walks into a bar” jokes or anything of that nature. A new revolution is on its way in the world of comedy and Reggie Watts is leading the charge.
If you want to see more of the genius of Reggie Watts check out this amazing set he did at “AtGoogleTalks”. It’s 40 minutes of Reggie but it shows every creative facet of his comedy and it’s worth every minute. Skip to 2:30.
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