Phil Jason

Today I am interviewing Phil Jason, a comedian born in New York, NY who has been doing comedy for less than a year. To find out more about Phil, please visit his website.


Why did you start doing stand-up comedy?

I see comedy as a way to heal the world. When people are laughing, they are more accepting and lighter and far more open to the experience of love, which is the foundation of joy and peace. It is the recognition of truth that heals us and as a stand-up comedian, I have the ability to reach out to people through laughter and show them truths that they would be too scared or angry to see otherwise. But making people laugh is really only the beginning . Ultimately, it is my goal to teach them how to see the humor in the world on their own.

I also think it is fascinating that a human being can do something like stand-up comedy. It's such a strange phenomena that people will come to sit and watch someone else stand there and say things that they find funny. I had to find out for myself what it was like to do that.

What is your recipe for a great joke?

A great joke has a penetrating clarity that touches something deep within the recipient, changing how they see the world. If this clarity can be presented in terms of the simple aspects of the ordinary world that people are most familiar with or by making connections between things that people would not normally see as related, the joke will invoke a rush of joy in the audience that accompanies a wonderful elevation in their awareness. That's what makes every great joke more or less a little miracle.

What would you have done differently if you started doing comedy today?

Well, like I said, I've only been doing comedy for less than a year, so its almost like I did start doing comedy today, but I can say that having seen what it's like to do this, I would have started years ago when the idea of doing stand-up comedy first entered my head. Back then, I allowed myself to make excuses for why I couldn't do it which I now see were all nonsense. All my fears and apprehensions were manufactured by my mind out of material presented to it by my own self-doubt. It all seemed so real and convincing, but it turned out to be false. Doing stand-up is nothing like I thought it would be, though, interestingly enough, years ago, before I had ever performed for an audience, I had a dream in which I was on stage at a large theater that was full of people and I was making them laugh and the way it felt in that dream turns out to be exactly what it feels like in real life. Beyond all that self-doubt and fear, there was clearly a part of me that did know better.