We recently connected with Noah Marger and have shared our conversation below.

Noah , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

Last year my Mom was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer, and during that time it became really challenging to want to do anything. I had been doing standup for about a year, and was at a crossroads as far as knowing if I should continue or not with it. It’s a hard thing to do, and it felt extra impossible to do comedy during that stretch. She passed away in January of this year, and I took a hard pause on stand up and improv and everything else comedy wise. It was during this time where I collected stories, and memories, and observations about not only the experience of my mom’s illness and death, but examined my relationship with her; the ups, the downs, the ugly, and the beautiful. I had a complicated relationship with my Mom. She was an alcoholic and suffered from borderline personality disorder. She also loved me as much as humanly possible and more than anyone else in her life. Those two things being true at the same time was so difficult for me to balance in my life for so long. But I wanted to talk about it. I wanted to be open about something I hid away for a really long time. I wanted to talk about how it affected me, my family, and my life. I wrote what ended up being an hour of material about it, and performed it at the end of May at The Best Comedy Club Near Me Theater in West Hollywood.

When I was putting the show together, I was so worried I would only have 15 minutes of material. How shocked was I when I was going through it and could have done 90 minutes easily and decided to cut so much stuff. I was so nervous for the show because I was talking about stuff I had previously seldom talked about. I didn’t even tell most people in my life about my Mom’s illness, and certainly most of my friends didn’t know about my Mom’s substance abuse and borderline personality disorder. I practiced incessantly leading up to the show, editing and revising and trying things out differently. I didn’t sleep at all the night before. And I am happy to say I am so proud and grateful for how the show went.

I think people really responded well to it, and I’m very proud of myself for taking these things that were painful and hard to talk about, and doing the exact thing I was afraid of. I thought I would be shamed, or cast off, or thought of differently. Instead I was met with so much love, and kindness. And they laughed! Which is what I wanted too.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

It’s hard for me to label myself as any one thing, I feel like it’s important for me to be able to move between different interests and mediums to express myself. They all inform each other, and they all talk to one another. I’m a filmmaker and writer, and actor, and for the last 2 years have been really focused on stand up comedy. Stand Up is a wonderful combo of directing, acting, and writing. You write your material, you perform it, and you are giving the audience insight into who you are and the world around you. It combines a lot of things I’m interested in, into one package. I feel like I’m in an interesting and exciting time for myself right now because I’m talking about more personal and vulnerable things on stage in a way I never have before. I’m exploring the real feelings of my family, my self image, and the pain that came along with my Mom’s cancer diagnosis and subsequent death. It’s really wild, and I’m just at the tip of the iceberg with it.

In all my art, I value honesty, truthfulness, vulnerability, being silly, really going for it, and doing the thing that excites you. I’ve found that If you are excited about something, the audience will feel that. Those are the things I am constantly running towards. Doing the things I’m excited about. And finding new things to be excited about too.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve found it so frustrating the amount of gatekeepers, or supposed gatekeepers that exist in creative and artistic fields. You wanna have a career as a filmmaker? Society says “get ready for an excruciating journey”. You wanna have a career as a painter? Same kind of thing. But if you want to work as a consultant in the business world? Come on in, the water is fine! I’m not saying theres anything wrong with being a consultant necessarily. It’s more of a statement on how society is set up, and how our economy is set up that the arts as a career are not valued the same. I think that would require a massive takedown of how things are set up right now, and the people making billions of dollars might have to concede some of those earnings, but I wish that the gatekeeping both intrinsically among industries and peers, as well as extrinsically with regard to capitalism and the pressures that come along with that were not as intense and ever present. The best way to combat this in our current climate is to support artists directly. Go see movies in theaters, indie ones especially. Go see live performances. Go buy ceramics, and paintings, and sculptures from the artists themselves if you can. Go experience the art as directly as possible. And at the same time, those gatekeepers and economic hurdles don’t have to stop you from making exactly what you want to make right now! I can’t imagine how hard it is to make a studio backed feature film even with all the money that gets thrown at them. You don’t need unlimited capital or access to have a point of view, courage, and a burning desire to say something true and authentic. You do not have to wait. You can do it right now.

If you’re hiring an artist to do work for you, pay them what they are worth. So many people try and get free labor and time from artists because we want a platform or an audience. Of course we want those things, but we want to be compensated fairly, just like everyone else. The creative work that goes into a piece is just as valid as the work that goes into an engineering project, or a presentation, or anything else in the “private” sector.

Give people chances. It feels like as a society too we see someone fail or take a big risk one time and then punish them for it. We need to give people chances to fail and make mistakes. We need to support the big swings and the big efforts. It is the only way to grow and learn.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Every piece of art and every creative act is different in goal and intention, and I think that right now this idea of making people feel less alone has really resonated with me. It has for a really long time, and right now with this new hour I’m doing it feels especially relevant. That idea can come in many forms and looks, but right now I think about that idea a lot. I have felt very lonely in my life many times, and there have been people and artists and pieces of art that have come along and said to me “you are not alone and you are so loved.” and it is truly a godsend.

I’ve also been focused on not shying away from just saying what it is you need to say. I think in the past I would dance around things out of fear and I’m working toward just saying what it is I need to say as clearly as I can, and in the way I would want to see it. I think that’s so important, to make the kind of art you would want to see. That’s a thing that can really motivate me if I feel like I’m losing steam or veering off course. And you have to veer of course at times to come back to what you really want. Knowing what you don’t want is just as important as knowing what you do. And to think “man, I would be so excited to see this” is a really special feeling that I think we can strive for in our work.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @noah_marger

Image Credits

Ian Zandi (@zandimancam on instagram)