Brown Thrasher can mimic up to 2,000 sounds. Apparently it’s advantageous for mate-seeking male Brown Thrashers to excel at pretending they’re something that they’re not.
But what a random gift it is for a human to be brilliant at imitating everything they hear. How did that sort of thing help bring the human race out of the stone age?
Possibly by making us laugh.
Comedian Steven Briggs is fundamentally a storyteller. His stories are picture books in which the images are crafted from tempo, physicality and mind-blowingly sophisticated sound effects. If his material would be improved by a train, he makes a train. The train comes from a distance, passes us and we may even hear a whistle heading on down the track. We can follow dub step beats from outside the front door, into the middle of the party, up the stairs and into the bathroom, where, in one of our favorite storyline twists, he catches his roommate in a compromising position.
Briggs said he learned early in life what fun it is to make people laugh. He and his brothers, one close in age and another 15 years older, routinely shared funny stories to keep themselves entertained in a religious household that severely circumscribed TV and movie watching.
Family friends thought he was hilarious, but he said he barely knew what standup is until he turned 21.
“A friend of my mom’s thought I was funny, and he took me to a comedy show. (The emcee said) ‘Next up is Steven Briggs,’ and I thought, ‘There must be another Steven Briggs in here’.”
The crowd showed him enough love that he got his first paid gig out of it. Without the benefit of beginner’s luck, though, he tanked. The promoter was decent enough to pay him $15, anyway.
“After that I was, ‘I guess I’ll do this until I figure out what I’m going to do.’” There followed a period of odd jobs and as many paid comedy gigs as he could find. A move to LA led to more of the same, but the odd jobs then included bit parts in movies and TV. Might you remember “sneezing man” in that one episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm”? Behind the scenes he found a passion for filmmaking, and became an apprentice, of sorts, to some of the best in the business.
When he finally figured out what he “was going to do,” comedy turned out to be his ticket. “A friend recommended me for a USO tour,” he said. “I didn’t know what to expect. I’d never really (left) the country except to go to the dentist in Tijuana.”
On the USO tour, he said, “I got to really see outside of the U.S. I’d never thought about that before. ‘Wow, I can see the country and get paid for it! This is awesome.’ So, then I started just exploring a lot overseas.”
Briggs tours internationally every year now. Constantly writing, rewriting and tweaking his comedy, he’s found some of his best stories and most memorable characters on the road. “I have a lot of free time when I’m at airports. I get fixated on jokes I’m working on and how to make them just a little bit better, just even a percentage better. I really want to get it to that next level.
“I look at stories like paintings and each thing that you can do is a different color in your palette,” he said. “So maybe (physicality) is one color in the palette. Timing is another color and sound effects are another color. The more colors you have, the more vibrant you can make your (art).”
Briggs was already writing comedy as much as possible when he decided to add sounds. He found that he was able to create them as easily as he could sneeze.
“The first sound I discovered I could make was dubstep music. It has this really aggressive sound to it, but, to me, it just sounds like the way my dad talks. He has a vocal range that sounds like that.” When he demonstrates, his dad sounds just like the metal-grinding sub-bass of a dubstep beat.
He’s from the Bronx (where Briggs and his brothers grew up), so he already has a rough voice. And then he smoked cigarettes with no filter.”
His father, a veteran and engineer, and his mother, a correctional officer in jails, were both raised in the Bronx. They sent the boys to military school to learn discipline and values, and, we imagine, to keep them off the streets.
Right now, Briggs lives in LA, doing a lot of what he calls “just regular touring,” but he adds, “It’s kind of expanded into this whole other thing. I do a lot of content creation. I film and edit every day.” He posts content to all the socials, and the sketch comedy he posts for his YouTube channel is a hit. Those videos regularly draw as many as 100,000 views.
Notably, for all his imitation prowess, Briggs never descends to caricature or offensive stereotypes. “I’m playing people I know. And when I tell stories, I think the driving force is that the character is in the story with me, right now. I play myself and I play the character.”
Recently, in Berlin, he was inspired to adopt a “foreign” accent to heighten a story about a particular German he met there. “The guy I met is very specific,” he said. “I do the mannerisms.
“When I meet someone I find very compelling, for some reason I absorb some of their mannerisms and it’s easy for me to do them. It’s not easy for me to do a celebrity impression.”
At this point, he felt inspired to mimic the distance-softened chirp of a bird we hadn’t noticed in the back yard. Once we heard Briggs, we also heard the bird.
Steven Briggs, Laff’s Comedy Caffe, 2900 E. Broadway Boulevard. 8 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. Friday, March 3, and 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Saturday, March 4, laffstucson.com, $15, $20 preferred seating
Other shows this week
Tucson Improv Movement/TIM Comedy Theatre, 414 E. Ninth Street, tucsonimprov.com, $7 each show, $10 for both shows, same night, free jam and open mic. 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 2, Improv 101 Showcase; 8:30 p.m. Open Mic.; 6:30 p.m. Friday, March 3, Improv Jam; 7:30 p.m. “The Soapbox” with Rachael Parker; 9 p.m. Stand Up Showcase; 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 11, “Tastebuds” and “Finding the Words;” 9 p.m. “Improv Madness.”
Unscrewed Theater, 4500 E. Speedway Boulevard. unscrewedtheatre.org, $8, live or remote, $5 kids. 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 3, From the Top Improvised Musical; 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 3, Family Friendly Improv; 9 p.m. The Backyard Improv Playground (pay what you will admission)
Wavelab, 111 S. Sixth Avenue, $10, “Burnout Turnout” Comedy and Music, Steven Black hosts Chris Quinn, Jesus Otamendi, Rebecca Fox, Joey Gaynor, Anthony Jenkins.
