Black is back

The last time Lewis Black strolled down the uneven stone walkways of Duke, he did so as a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill undergraduate. When he returns on Sept. 9, it will be as one of the most popular and respected stand-up comics of our day.

His story is not an uncommon one. Black grew up in Silver Spring, Md., and attended Carolina to study acting and become a playwright. On the strength of a particularly successful play, Black proceeded to enroll in Yale University as a graduate student. He laments the decision to this day.

“There was an abusive quality to art school that was just unnecessary,” Black explains. “They felt like they were preparing you for the world, when in actuality the experience was far worse.”

During these trying years, Black began to experiment with stand-up comedy. “I began doing comedy for fun. For me, it was a window to the writing,” he says. Ironically, comedy provided the artistic success for which Black had been earnestly searching.

So when did Black become the bitter cynic that we know today? “I was performing one day, and I came off stage and a friend said to me, ‘You’re angry up there, and you’re being quiet. Start yelling!’ And I did.”

From that beginning, Black describes the progression of his career as “a refinement” of that yelling. He created an accessible public persona through his stand-up act and joined The Daily Show in 1996, and he is one of only two comedians remaining from the original cast. While he continued to work in theater, television and even film, Black primarily used his actor’s training to sculpt a comedic personality. “There’s a fine line between acting [angry] and it being real, he said. “I couldn’t do that all the time, or I’d be dead.” He explains that one of the most difficult things was finding that balance, because “audiences could always tell” when the anger was too much.

Black will readily and intelligently engage in political and cultural discourse with very little prompting. And, as he often makes evident, he isn’t afraid to voice his outside-the-mainstream beliefs. “What this country needs is a third political party. And I’m not talking about Nader. The man nominated himself; you can’t vote for him,” he says. He also doesn’t balk at pointing out failings in the U.S. government. “[After Sept. 11] we had the opportunity to get the world on board for a global anti-terrorism network,” Black says. Instead, as he points out, we attacked Iraq. For Black, what comes next is clear. “We need to show [the newly liberated Iraq] how much fun democracy is. We went in there so they could vote, so suck it up and go vote,” he says.

Whether it’s catching part of his act or seeing him rant on The Daily Show, it is easy to tell that Black is a man that is plugged in to the world around him. He has opinions, and he is not afraid to use them. But in the end, he maintains that it’s all about the laughs. Whether or not he has educated someone or exposed a viewer to a new perspective doesn’t matter too much to Black. “My responsibility as a comic is to make people laugh. If I’ve done that, then I’ve succeeded,” he says.