Today we’d like to introduce you to Zach Zwagil.
Hi Zach, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
My story is one of 17 years of evolving pursuits, aka being all over the damn place. I graduated college in 2008 with a pre-med degree, but when the 2008 economic collapse occurred, my job prospects vanished on the spot. So, I moved back home to Baltimore with my parents and had the privilege to figure out what was next. I decided I no longer wanted to do medicine and took to following my truest passion of pursuing visual arts, something I wish now that I had pursued in school. I spent the next 10 years steeped in visual arts and performing music — I built a portfolio, sold numerous pieces, took commissions, wrote music, performed in multiple bands, etc.
While all that was happening, I got heavily involved in a volunteer capacity with the movements to fight police brutality and wrongful convictions in Baltimore in the wake of the 2015 police murder of Freddie Gray. In 2019, I quit my job in the visual artists and, due to my volunteer experience, I was offered a position with the Maryland Office of the Public Defender as an investigator and data analyst.
And then COVID happened. I wasn’t making art or playing music. I was just holed up in the house working from home. Over a year went by and then lockdown ended. My closest friend and I started going to a comedy open mic in Baltimore every week just to get out of the house. Months of going to the open mic went by and then I got the itch. Though I had been a standup comedy fan my entire life, I never thought I should be the one to do it. When I was a kid, George Carlin came to Baltimore and I BEGGED my parents to take me to see him, and to their eternal credit they took me. Fast forward to getting the itch at that open mic, I spent the next two months trying to figure out what the hell I was going to say on that stage for the first time. Then the day came, and of course, I ate shit. So much shit. But now, nearly three and a half years later, I am a working standup comic performing 5+ nights a week in Baltimore, DC, the DMV, and NYC. I still work at the MD Office of the Public Defender and I recently got back to making some of the best visual art I’ve made in years.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Please, not smooth in the slightest. I question myself daily, and have for the last 17 years. Art, music, and comedy are three of the toughest pursuits to stick with — much less to find success in. I’ve been lucky enough to have just enough financial stability to pursue those passions without being derailed by a job or lack thereof. At the same time, it is a perpetual struggle to figure out who you are as an artist, what you want to say, what you should be saying, what is true to you, what is relevant, and how that manifests in what you create. It has been a series of existential crises, albeit crises that have kept me honest with myself, honest with my art, and humble enough to call myself out when I’m producing absolute garbage.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am known to most as a standup comic. I perform 5+ nights a week. Without sounding like a pretentious prick, I would say I’m known for pushing on sociopolitical and cultural taboos, challenging crowds to question the day-to-day nonsense of our institutional wasteland, bemoaning dating in Baltimore, and telling batshit true stories about my family. I am also known for being elderly — in that I started when I was 36, whereas most comics start in their 20s.
I am 1/3 of a Baltimore-based comedy collective known as Mobtown Comedy, with comics Teddy K and Jamar Taylor. Our team is known for high production value and curating great club aesthetics. I’m very proud that we have become a fixture in the Baltimore comedy scene such that the Baltimore Comedy Festival falling this year on Labor Day weekend has reached out to us to produce multiple events. That said, it’s hard to say after 3.5 years what exactly sets me apart. The conventional wisdom in standup comedy is that it takes 10 years to “find your voice”. I have absolutely no idea if I have figured that out. Come find me in 6 years and I’ll let you know.
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
Staying on the subject of comedy, risk is the whole kit and kaboodle. Risk can be in a taboo topic, a risky angle on a safer topic, the way you provoke a crowd, the way you react to a crowd provoking you, etc. Good comedy requires risk. Our culture has been listening to standup comedy for over 100 years, which means crowds have already heard everything. As a result, current crowds are not impressed by stale jokes, expected jokes, safe jokes, or easy laughs. Crowds want to hear something fresh. However, taking risk on stage can result in a comic being gratuitously offensive, by which I mean offending for the sake of offending rather than in order to make a more profound point. I believe you can write a joke about anything, as long as it’s not at the complete expense of people for whom that subject matter hits too close to home. For example, there’s a difference between making fun of rape and writing a joke about rape. The former diminishes the very real trauma of rape, whereas the latter comments on rape as an aspect of our society. The best comics know how to thread the needle of packaging a risky message within a truly funny joke. Amateur comics might make a risky point, but the humor ain’t there. Or, they might do un-risky material because it’s easier to get a laugh. Neither of those options are the best of what comedy has to offer. To quote one of my favorite comics, the late Patrice O’Neal, “The idea of comedy, really, is not everybody should be laughing. It should be about 50 people laughing, and 50 people horrified.”
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.mobtowncomedy.com/
- Instagram: @everythingzwagil, @mobtowncomedy
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zach.zwagil
