www.
JUNE 10, 2011
It s ... It s,
.Courtenay
I
JE N N IE B A K E R P H O T O G R A P H Y
The host o f
Portland's own
Live Wire! Radio
talks the ugly
business o f
comedy,
stagefright and
m ental health —
with a nod to the
fa m ilia r freak
inside us all
BY JOANNE ZUHL
|
S TA FF W R IT E R
otirtenay Hameister has a great job. It just
scares her a little.
■
Most of us know her as the host, head
writer and associate producer Live Wire! Radio, on
OPB radio Saturday nights. But Ham eisteris also a
prolific essayist, writing humorous pieces for
specific évents or on random, but important
observations, and she is perpetually working on A
compiling her essays and musings into a book. She
helped write the successful and quirky “Road
House the Play,” with creator Shelley McClendon,
and created, with Marc Acito, the reading series
“True Stories.” She has written and produced
short films through the film collective Cinema
Syndicate, and is a regular on the podcast Cort and
Fatboy podcast, on which, she admits, she ends up
talking about sex a lot.
See? Great job.
And to listen to her, this font seëms to flow
effortlessly. Which, of course,, is simply the
polished veneer of a seasoned professional.
Inside
Writing, for Hameister, is a kicking and screaming
process, she says; and the creativity always needs
to be fed. A typical meal is a combination of
collaboration, deadlines and a morbid fear of being
figuratively naked in front of 400 audience
members come Saturday night, when Live Wire!
comes to life.
J.Z.: Speaking about being in front o f400 people
naked, I ’ve read about your stage fright. You still
struggle with that?
C.H.: Oh yeah — absolutely.
J.Z.: Is that a symptom of your craft, as a
comedian, or are you just sadistic for pursuing a
profession on stage?
C.H.: It is a little oddly sadistic. The majority of
the people that I know who are comedians have a
little bit of a self-hating side. I led a panel with
(comedian, author and filmmaker) Paul Provenza at
Wordstock. And I agree with him when he said
comedians aren’t anymore screwed up than
anybody else, we just deal with it in a different way.
It’s just out there more, and the way that some
people deal with it is to shove it down, and it
comes out in quirky ways. Whereas with comics we
just filter it out in ¿his way that is somewhat
socially acceptable. So it’s strange that I’ve chosen
to do this thing that scares me a little bit, but it’s
also a necessity.
When I started doing “True Stories,” it was in
Mississippi studios, and at the time it was much
smaller and intimate, and it felt like you were
sitting in your living room. And what happened in
that series is we would tell these humiliating
stories. I always have a sense that I’m a freak in
some way, so it’s really satisfying to get up in front
of people and tell these stories and hear people
recognize themselves in the story. When I hear
that recognitiotì and I hear them laughing, it feels
like I’m less of a freak.
When we had Dan Savage on thè show, he said
See HAMEISTER, page 7
I
1
I—
Safe - or unsound?
What we don't
know will hurt us
Why diagnosing
traumatic brain
injuries on the
streets matters
Page 3
b
Will concerns about
public safety win the
JHI
u day when it comes to
Oregon's Psychiatric
Security Review
gji Board?
ill
Page 8
Shackled by
old laws
Oregon's budget is
locked in its prisons
Page 12