We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kevin Krieger a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Kevin, appreciate you joining us today. Are you happier as a creative? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? Can you talk to us about how you think through these emotions?
First let’s make a clear distinction between being an artist and making art for money. I do both (most creatives do), but making art for money is intrinsically rewarding because you know someone is paying you to do it. When you are getting paid, you make compromises for the client. Being an artist is a completely different thing. It is you baring your soul. It makes no room for compromises. For me, making art for money is just a means to continue on my path of being an artist. I’m not always happy about making art for money, mostly because the lines can get blurred and I start seeking artistic fulfillment in it, but for the most part, I’m grateful to be able to do it because it allows me to be flexible, entrepreneurial and to provide value to clients. The path of an artist is much more treacherous.
To answer the question directly: yes, the process of making art makes me happy. Do I sometimes wish I would have chosen another path? Every damn day, and every damn day I tell that voice to f*@$ off, picking up my metaphorical shovel and getting back to the work of digging myself out of the hole. I don’t think it’s as easy as saying you’re an artist and all of a sudden you are on the path. You are constantly being rejected or rejecting yourself, questioning everything, and then you choose between fight or flight. It’s a neverending nonstop battle. You’ve chosen to swim upstream, in direct opposition to culture and society, and you’re killing yourself just to hold your position, then maybe if you’re lucky you get some validation or some money and you think, finally, I can quit fighting the forces of nature, but YOU ARE WRONG because you HATE floating, and so now you’ve got to swim even harder because you’ve got expectations and baggage (full of $$$ and/or failure) weighing your ass down. If you can fight the temptation to flee for long enough, you’ll start to realize you were born to swim upstream, and that there isn’t a destination or resolution. There’s just more fighting to be done, and you live to fight.
Kevin, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I am a clown. I have a wife and a child and a baby on the way. I own a small community theater in Altadena with my BFF Claire Woolner. I direct shows and teach classes. I do a little acting and voiceover. I run a small creative services and post-production company. I have some things and I do lots of things, but I am a clown.
Believe me, it’s as hard to write as it is to read. I’m not a stand-up comedian. I’m not an improv comedian. I’m not a sketch comedian. I’ve studied them, I’ve tried my hand at each, but I’m just a silly little clown. I don’t wear a nose or makeup. I don’t squirt water from a flower on my lapel. I don’t perform for children, but I assure you I am a clown. I live to entertain and I do it by making a fool of myself. I’m not sharp as a tack or fast as a whip, but I will do anything for you. I’ll put my heart at risk of being broken, I’ll put my dignity on the line, I’ll fall into a trash can – whatever it takes to crack the armor of the ego and bring us back together again. I show you what a fool I am so you don’t have to feel so bad about being one yourself. When you laugh at me, you laugh at yourself, and when we all do it together we know for a fact we are not alone.
After college, I came to Los Angeles with the hopes of working in the entertainment industry. It was the closest thing to being an artist that I could dream of at the time. Before I knew it, I was closer to the truth, trying to perform, trying to write, trying to be a big success, hoping to get discovered. Then I took a class at The Idiot Workshop and realized that I was a clown. I’ve spent an entire decade learning how to be a fool from the great John Gilkey (I owe this man a limb), making shows with him and some of the funniest people I’ve ever met (The MURGE, Invention of Language, Good Time, Great Time Game Show) and pretty quickly discovering the gift of teaching clown to other people who have always been clowns but probably didn’t know it. I’m still teaching at The Idiot Workshop, and I’ve even started teaching my own workshops out of Public Displays of Altadena (PDA), a small 40-seat indie theater I opened with Claire Woolner post-pandemic. Last year, I directed Claire’s solo show A Retrospection and it went on to win Best of Hollywood Fringe, before sweeping the audiences of Edinburgh Fringe off of their feet.
I’m currently working on a solo project called, HONEST WORK (formerly PLZ Don’t Come), an hour of solo improvisation. It’s not improv comedy. It is me, a clown, improvising. I have a singular purpose, to do all that is necessary to entertain without material. I’m putting my ass on the line and failing miserably – which is great because that’s where the magic happens. I’ve been performing these shows for over a year and a half and chopping them to bits for consumption on Instagram (@kevingregorykrieger). I stream all of my shows on PDA’s Twitch account. You can catch the next HONEST WORK on twitch.tv/pda_space.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
My mission is community. It is going to save us from peril. I don’t own a theater for the money, it’s a tough business, especially when you only have 40 seats. I own a theater because I believe in the power of togetherness, self-expression, and community. I perform for the same reasons. Sure, I’d love to get paid what I think my performance is worth, but I’m much more interested in what my performance can do for my audience and whether it contributes to the advancement of our culture.
We’re at a pivotal point, don’t you think? We need the clown more than ever. Our egos have gotten out of control. It’s the clown’s job to expose the ego for what it is: a construct. The only ideal left in America is to be famous or rich. We’ve lost touch with the oneness of humanity, and we are all pretending to be perfect when in fact we are all suffering from a lack of purpose and connection. Instead of seeking to ease the suffering we see around us we just obsess about our own. How long before we are all walking around in an augmented reality, being our own gods and choosing our own adventure? The AI will wipe homeless people from view so we don’t even have to acknowledge our privilege or their suffering. We will want for nothing but feel empty inside. Buy, consume, die (or maybe live forever–what a nightmare). It all sounds really bleak, but the answer is simple: to be together and to be in service to one another.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
I avoided social media for so long because I didn’t like all the vanity and self-promotion. It made me feel bad about myself. It made me feel hopeless. It felt unfair that I was obligated to participate when all I wanted to do was perform for real people in real life. Then I got over myself, and faced the truth: I was a perfectionist, and social media is no place for perfectionism. I also had to trust my artistry. It’s tempting to fall into the trap of trends and tricks to get more likes and clicks, but I knew the only way I could do it was to be myself and make the content I wanted to see, not the content I was seeing have success.
In the past 5 or 6 months I’ve started posting more regularly and I’ve grown from 1k to 6.5k on Instagram. It’s bittersweet, sometimes I find myself getting wrapped up in that little number, which is completely gross, but more often I find myself connecting with fans of my work from all over the world. It makes my heart want to explode. If I had the money, I’d fly all over the world and do a show for each one of them individually.
My advice:
1. Stockpile content. Before I even started posting I spent a year performing and simultaneously filming over 25, hour-long, improvised shows. I’ve got enough content to cut over 300 reels, and I continue to perform and film and stockpile. If you want to be consistent, you always need to have content in the tank to burn.
2. Don’t be precious. It’s a volume game. The algo is a mysterious beast, but one thing is for sure you have to feed it regularly. It is always the thing you least suspect that finds its way to a broader audience.
3. Be you. Yes, you can trick the algorithm into pushing regurgitated content and trends, but it doesn’t create valuable relationships with your audience. Your goal is to reach people that love what you do, not what everyone else is doing. I’m not saying you shouldn’t play into the trends at all, but don’t compromise your art or yourself in the process.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.publicdisplaysofaltadena.com
- Instagram: @kevingregorykrieger @pda_space
Image Credits
Adam Hart