I am coming here because Robert Brustein asked me to come. I read a couple of his books in college and he is the reason I got into theatre. He has been a huge influence in my life, especially back at the Yale School of Theatre where he was the Dean of Students when I was studying.

-Lewis Black

Ivan Favelevic: What brought you to Suffolk University to talk about your career, rather than to do a traditional stand-up routine?

Lewis Black: I am coming here because Robert Brustein asked me to come. I read a couple of his books in college and he is the reason I got into theatre. He has been a huge influence in my life, especially back at the Yale School of Theatre where he was the Dean of Students when I was studying.

IF: You wrote plays early in your career, are you still keeping up with playwrighting?

LB: There was an old play of mine … that I wrote about 30 years ago. This summer it’s going to be done out in Seattle and this fall it is going to be done just outside of New York. Right now I am not writing too much for theatre, only books.

IF: What made you do the jump to comedy after dedicating your life to theatre?

LB: It was something I was doing on the side, I was always interested in it. I made hundreds of one-act plays with friends. Each night, I would introduce the plays, and got comfortable on stage. People were taking an interest in me as a performer. I was so broke, and I was fed up with the American theatre and my plays were not getting noticed. I was asking myself ‘what’s the difference between [my play] being kinda shitty and theirs being kinda shitty.’ I had a better idea? If you were going to do the shitty one wouldn’t you do the one with the better idea. It was time to move on.

IF: What exactly is your creative method?

LB: I write on stage. When I sit around, I think about what I want to talk about so I put them in order, but I always wrote on stage.

IF: How much would you credit the Bush Administration for your rise to fame?

LB: I think by the time even Bush was elected the American people were angrier than we realized. Some people are angrier than I am. All Bush did was open doors for people to be like ‘oh I get the joke.’ People think Clinton was great but he gave us George Bush. One of them always leads to the next.

IF: The heavy political satire you include in much of your stand-up actually made politics much more accessible to a younger generation, such as me. Was this your intention, to make the hypocrisy of much of the political landscape more accessible to those who don’t bother to follow it on the news?

LB: Nah, I’m funny when I’m angry and lived around D.C. when I was a kid so I always had a focus on it. With each passing year I got angrier and angrier. We are the richest country in the world so how is it possible to have poverty in it? Out the back door of Congress were some of the worst slums in the U.S. and I was like ‘guys come on,’ the country is run by people with the attention span of a 5 year old. To be honest, I had no clue that out of that there would come an audience, and nothing made me happier than to be found by kids. People my own age couldn’t give a shit.

IF: Is there a bit of yourself in the character you portray on stage?

LB: It is me between the time I was 14 and college. My internal screaming and yelling “are you kidding me?”

IF: What do you do in your spare time? Any hobbies?

LB: I like to stuff animals (laughs). No, I play golf, it is a great way to not think about things, I mean you think about things but nothing important.

IF: Any thoughts on the current presidential race?

LB: I’ve never seen anything like it. I didn’t think it was possible that a group of people were in such fear for of the world ending because of one man. That both parties think that this or that guy will take us all to hell. [The republican party] cannot find anyone they like or that can fix the economy and they are yelling at us for putting Obama there. Donald Trump should never have been allowed to run, he is not a legitimate political thinker. I am not a legitimate political thinker, I am a comic, he is an entrepreneur. He is not even that much of an entrepreneur. He is like the Kardashians, only he does stuff.