Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Danny Dalah. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Danny, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

Like other art forms, comedy remains elusive and mysterious to a certain extent. When an amazing comedian performs well, the audience laughs. They don’t dissect why these jokes work so well or the physical and clown-based character work that made a certain bit hilarious (unless you’re a twisted comedy nerd like me). Good comedy appears natural and easy, because people are “born hilarious right out of the womb”. Why is neuroscience teachable, but something as simple as comedy so elusive?

I’m not the funniest person in the world, and I don’t want the stress of holding that title, but I know a fair amount about comedy; a few people have paid me for my funny ideas, I’ve made dozens of projects, and most importantly, my girlfriend thinks I’m funny on a consistent enough basis. Throughout my journey of studying, writing, and performing improv, sketch, stand-up, sitcoms, video-games, satirical articles and everything in between, I have become a better comedian over time; in a way, I’m living proof that comedy is a craft that can be worked at.

Above all, the most important skill set in comedy is the resilience to try something out, potentially fail, get feedback, and adjust accordingly. Just trying something out in front of an audience for the first time can be incredibly scary, but it is only through this discomfort that we can grow as comedians and as artists. As a recovering perfectionist, I always want to present the best, perfect, idealized version of everything that I do, but that very philosophy gets in the way of trying new things. In other words, “perfect is the enemy of done”.

Put yourself out there. It might work. It might not work. It kind of might not work, but then a better idea could come along from that experience. Whatever the result will be, a creative risk needs to be taken as comedy relies on funny choices and a choice must be made before we can determine if it is funny or not. One tool I use to calm the nagging perfectionist inside me is coming up with a list of ten jokes, scenarios, sketches, etc. This list allows us the freedom to fail, because if the first idea is bad, then at least one of the other nine should be decent.

To this day, I still struggle with this battle, but as artists, we cannot criticize our art before it even has a chance to become art; that is how you end up with writer’s block.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Danny Dalah, and I’m an Israeli-American writer/director/comedian, who was brought up with ‘70s Israeli movie references to films I have never seen. In middle school, I started making stop-motions that included an early attempt at satire, where I animated the Founding Fathers breaking out in “I’m Blue Daba Dee ” mid-Constitution signing. Following my family’s advice about financial stability, I went to film school and earned a bachelor’s degree in Cinema from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts and a Comedy Minor for my back-up plan. I further pursued higher education by finishing the sketch and improv tracks at the Upright Citizens Brigade.

After performing musical comedy all over Los Angeles for years, I recently put out a comedy album titled “Mr. Self-Sabotage”, and I also wrote and directed a sketch-comedy, musical, puppet, web-series titled “Everybody Wants to Date My Sister” (based on real life events). The web-series aired on Channel 101, and was nominated for three different awards and even won an award at the Channies!

Here is one of our episodes titled “I Peaked in the Third Grade”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=CGT5dU7MwhQ

Throughout my work, I always use fantastical world-building and hybrid genres to satirize the nonsense occurring in our own society. Sure, “I Peaked in the Third Grade” is a silly escapist puppet rap track music video, but it also touches on how awful getting by in the United States can be.

When I’m not railing against the man through comedy, I enjoy rock-climbing, sight-seeing with my girlfriend, and new experiences with my awesome friends.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Society should support working artists including comedians in the same way they support doctors, mechanics, lawyers, etc. Like these other jobs, making a living as an artist has its positives and negatives, but it is still a real job and should be seen as such.

Just think about how many of us watch TV shows after work to unwind from the daily nine-to-five grind. Actors, writers, directors, production designers, editors, and everyone involved puts their best work forward to create this collaborative art piece. Sure, it is an exciting field full of adventure and fulfilling work, but it also comes with no guarantees of working again, insane competition, rampant exploitation, and low wages (sometimes even free labor).

Most creatives/artists work a full-time job while trying to turn their art into a full-time job. In other words, they work two jobs. The first job is a regular nine-to-five that allows them to put food on the table and keep a roof over their head; the second job takes years of unpaid hours to essentially build a business for your art. You will probably even lose money on projects as any business has start-up funds.

On my journey, I have self-funded projects through bartending at various bars, writing audio description, being a production assistant, and doing everything in between. The costumes, puppet theater, props, etc. for the web-series came from tips I made while shaking margaritas and stirring negronis. I say this not for sympathy or something, but because stories like mine are super common. All of my artist friends are out here living in one of the most expensive cities in the world, supporting themselves through a day job of some sort, and financing their own projects using their own money and time with whatever small amount of money they have left.

Choosing to live your life as an artist of any sort is a rewarding lifestyle and it is the way that I want to structure my own life, because for me, these struggles are worth it; I get to create funny pieces of art with some of my amazing and talented friends. However, let us please stop pretending that this lifestyle is always fun, easy, or lavish, because it is far from any of those things ninety-five percent of the time.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

When the pandemic hit, Hollywood effectively shut down for a while. Writing and assistant jobs were few and far between, so I ended up getting a bartending job to support myself. Although getting a job outside of my creative field felt like a failure to my perfectionist brain at first, bartending and mixology taught me so much about myself, life, and art.

As one of the newer bartenders at my bar, I quickly learned through trial and error how to fail forward. Sure, I spilled a cocktail a couple times and broke a few glasses here and there, but I always picked myself back up, learned from it, and tried again (sound familiar to comedy yet?). Within a couple months, I was opening and closing the bar, had put some of my own cocktail creations on the menu, and was promoted to shift lead bartender.

Through these experiences, I learned to trust myself in handling all sorts of difficult situations that included: hundreds of antsy customers constantly fighting for my attention to get served immediately, taking twelve drink orders and remembering them all while working on a different set of drinks, working with security to have them escort out aggressive guests, and even the police showing up in the middle of a busy shift to pop-quiz us about the law. After each difficult circumstance, I trusted myself more and more.

Additionally, crafting cocktails is its own art form that has similarities to writing, comedy, filmmaking, and other arts. For example, some of the most commercially successful movies and TV shows take a well-established concept and add an new original twist to it. In the same way that audiences are familiar with the genre tropes that come along with a horror movie, customers are also familiar with the flavor tropes of something like a margarita. In the ‘90s, Wes Craven was a revolutionary director, because he took the already established tropes of the slasher-horror genre and added a new element: a humorous tone. Similarly, in the Cosmopolitan’s Ghost Donkey bar, they have a groundbreaking cocktail: a mushroom margarita. This mushroom margarita takes the core ingredients of a margarita (tequila, lime, agave, orange liqueur) and fat-washes their tequila with the huitlacoche mushroom to create an innovative new twist on a classic.

From mixology and bartending, I learned so many lessons that I still utilize to this day. Even when cooking at home, I translate my experience of balancing cocktails to balancing flavors in food. No matter where life takes us, we can learn from every experience that we have; after all, the best art comes from the human experience.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.dannydalah.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dannydalah/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DannyDalah/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4fEnZy7KggJcMGBmLPP8Rg