Beth Lapides is happy (most of the time)
Alt comedy guru Beth Lapides calls herself a "twenty first century artist. A hyphenated hybrid with an eye toward higher consciousness." This may be a New-Agey way of saying that she’s a stand-up artist with a difference - one with both a social and spiritual component. The California-based artist is also something of a Renaissance Woman who is as likely to turn up on in at a book signing at a local book store, posting a column on the Huffington Post, curating a program of unseen television pilots, conducting interviews posted on the Internet, leading a yoga workshop or appearing in a one-person show, as she does this week and next on the East Coast with performances of 100% Happy 88% of the Time, her latest solo piece.
As the title suggests, the show looks at the way we deal with finding contentment in every day life. She describes it as "a feel good, harmonic convergence of story, stand-up and songs. A multi-media mash up of music, musing and metaphysical magic."
Lapides is best known in the LA artistic community for Un-Cabaret, which she described as an "alternative to vapid mainstream stand-up" that recently celebrated its 20th birthday. The event, which has made its way into such varied venues as ’performance arts’ spaces (Highways in Santa Monica), nightclubs (The Knitting Factory) and museums (the Getty), has acted as a workshop for such artists as Margaret Cho, Julia Sweeney, Michael Patrick King (Sex and the City was developed there), Larry Charles, Janeane Garofalo and Kathy Griffin (before she went on the D-List).
Lapides brings the show to Club Oberon in Cambridge, MA on Thursday, July 22, 2010; Wednesday and Thursday, July 28 and 29 at The Triad; and Wednesday, August 24, 2010 at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Stockbridge, MA. EDGE caught up with Lapides earlier this week where she talked about the show, happiness vs. unhappiness, and why she calls herself a "a homolectual."
Figuring out the happiness thing
EDGE: How did 100% Happy 88% of the Time come about?
Beth Lapides: I used to think happiness was so bourgeois. Then one day I woke up and realized I was miserable. And suddenly happiness didn’t seem so bourgeois anymore. So I decided I was going to figure out this whole happiness thing. I used everything I’d learned in Hollywood. Everything I learned in yoga. Everything I’d learned at Brown. Everything I learned in my 20-year relationship with Greg. Everything I’d learned trying to manage my curly hair. And I put it all in this show.
EDGE: Do we as a society rely too much on happiness.
Beth Lapides: We rely too much on 100% ism. You can’t be 100% happy 100% of the time. But you can be 100% happy 88% of the time. If you are willing to be unhappy 12% of the time. Actually unhappy. Not ’fine’. Which was a hard thing for me to learn and that’s part of what this show’s about.
EDGE: Is the title an apt description of your view on life.
Beth Lapides: Yes! At least 88% of the time.
EDGE: How do you handle your 12%?
Beth Lapides: We used to have a policy: No crying fits after midnight. But that’s just not realistic anymore. Now if one of us, and I say ’one of us’ euphemistically. If I’m having a crying fit after midnight, I can. But I only get off the rack pep talks. No custom pep talks after midnight, One thing that helps is that now we instead of calling it a crying fit, we call it TTTP (Taking The Twelve Percent). Or ’T3P’. Also using acronyms really helps with the 12%
