Comedian Paul Mecurio’s show Permission to Speak is all about bringing people together.
In his one-man show, Mecurio brings audience members on stage for a conversation. The ensuing discussion explores themes that all audience members share—joy, pain, heartache, and the successes and struggles that make up the human experience. And while that’s happening, Mecurio find a way to help us laugh about it.
“I discovered that everybody has a story,” said Mecurio in a recent phone call. “Everybody has an interesting life; you just have to uncover it, and the way to uncover it, is to let them know that they’re in safe space.”
Mecurio, who grew up in Providence, worked at his parent’s furniture store as a teenager. He credits that experience for giving him the confidence and skills to take the stage, a challenging endeavor in a politically fractured world. His award-winning show, which has run off-Broadway, evolved organically. “I can’t say I sat in a room and planned this,” says Mecurio, who graduated from Providence College before leaving the state for Georgetown Law School.
In the mid-1990s, after selling a joke to Jay Leno, he made the bold decision to step away from a career in corporate law to perform stand-up comedy. He was one of the original writers on The Daily Show and is now a regular performer on The Late Show. Recently, he appeared in the film Johnny and Clyde, a crime drama starring Megan Fox. He also hosts a podcast, “Inside Out With Paul Mecurio,” where he has interviewed guests including Paul McCartney, Kevin Costner, Kyra Sedgwick, Bryan Cranston, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Spike Lee and others.
He explained how his show is different from traditional crowd work, a practice comedians use to warm up an audience. Typically, “I’ll see that you have a beard, but I don’t really care about your beard,” says Mecurio. “I just have a two-minute bit that I want to get to about beards. But I found that if you ask more questions beyond the surface, you get these amazing stories.” The topics can vary widely, ranging from anecdotes about first dates to personal accounts of coming out to parents. “Some people want to tell their story, and some people need to tell their story.”
The result is a different show every night. “For anyone who maybe saw it before, it’s always a different show, I’m doing stand-up and telling stories, but all my jokes and stories will be different,” explained Mecurio. “The audience is involved in telling their stories, and every audience is different, so it’s a very different show every night.”
“I’m creating the kind of conversation you would have at a cocktail party,” he continued. “You’re sitting around with four or five people, and you don’t just talk to one, you don’t go into a party and just talk to one person for 10 minutes and then move to another,” he explained. “You start talking to each other and that’s what this is; we’re hanging out in someone’s basement having drinks and telling stories.”
“People make connections with each other through this experience when it’s happening because after every show they’re getting together and they’re chit chatting and they don’t know each other, but they’re alright. It’s all about getting people to connect in a way that we’re not, because things are incredibly divisive – this show has no political agenda.”
In many ways, Permission to Speak is like a group therapy session, but cheaper and more fun. “I’ve had some mental health professionals approach me about the importance of the show because there’s so much stress, and mental health issues these days,” he said. “This is a great way for people to kind of get out what they want to talk about and just have fun doing it in a supportive atmosphere. I didn’t plan it to be like this, but it’s kind of turned into that.”
Mecurio is looking forward to performing in Westerly, and delighted to see the arts scene expanding in the seaside town. “When I was growing up, Westerly, you only went there to go to Misquamicut Beach and get drunk and get arrested,” he laughed.
