Interview: Josh Sharp Invites Us Into His Brain to Talk About His Show Ta-Da!

“I don’t want anyone going to fucking TheaterMania and giving me a one-star review,” Josh Sharp declares near the end of ta-da! We don’t normally give starred reviews, but made an exception for the comedian’s wildly funny and precise riff on the one-man show, performed as he makes his way through a staggering 2,000 PowerPoint slides.

With the help of his clicker and those many, many slide cues, Sharp (who also co-wrote and starred in Dicks: The Musical), takes audiences through stories about sexual encounters, growing up in the South, coming out at age 22 (after being “gently bullied” out of the closet by his mother, who was battling ovarian cancer), and a near-death experience he had last year.

Directed by Sam Pinkleton (Oh, Mary!), ta-da! is a magic trick in itself: appearing spontaneous and chaotic but actually meticulously planned, and arguing that people can process multiple things at once. On the same day that ta-da’s extension was announced (it’s now running through Sept. 11 at the Greenwich House Theater), Sharp spoke about the show’s evolution, reading audience energy, and the nuances of a one-man show being stand-up or theater—or both.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

I have to ask why you chose to name-check TheaterMania in that line.
It’s just the funniest sounding one to say. A lot of comedy is just picking the funniest sounds and then hoping they have context. “On BroadwayWorld” doesn’t really hit as much as TheaterMania, don’t you think?

The “Mania” really makes it.
The “mania” feels of the show, which is rather manic.

What inspired you to create a show like this?
This is a concept I started doing in stand-up spaces. I just did, like, 10 minutes of stand-up with a ton of slides, and I liked the idea that I can say one joke and you get another joke behind me. Ten minutes became 20, 30 minutes, and then at a certain point, I was like, wait, is this going to be a show show? Then I folded in things like the stories about my mom and the accident. I was still doing it in comedy clubs, and after doing it a time or two, I was like, I think it’s one of those shows. So then I invited [producers] Mike Lavoie and Carlee Briglia and [director] Sam Pinkleton, and they all came on board, and that really ushered it into, let’s get it a theater.

And at what point did the PowerPoint become part of the work?
From the beginning. When I was doing this 10-minute bit, it was always with slides. But then it was really fun to bring in Steve Arnoczy, who’s credited as the co-video designer. I had already designed, like, 2,000 slides before he showed up, and he reformatted every one of those and made it feel intentional and elegant and cool and funny.

When you say 2,000 slides, it really is 2,000 slides. What was the rehearsal process like to memorize all of those cues?
Luckily, I’d been doing it a lot, like every month or two. So some of it still felt in me. But I remember being like, Sam, we should really go into rehearsal with what we think the show is, because it’s really hard to relearn all these cues. Of course, we didn’t do that. We got in there and were like, we got to cut this, we got to change this. I just rep it a ton. I sort of play it like it’s a percussion instrument. So it’s learning the rhythms and putting it in my body. Sometimes small mistakes still happen, but now it’s mostly perfect, or close to perfect. But yes, it is specifically 2,000 slides.

You start off with this rapid-fire introduction that feels very free-wheeling, but then you show how much precision really goes into this.
It’s funny to me to have done way too much work for this thing. But then also, stand-up just feels normally so off-the-cuff and conversational, that I wanted to really lean into that energy while also showing you that I’m on script. Something about that juxtaposition was fun. And certainly there’s a macro joke where I’m just like, can you believe I did too much work for you?

Sometimes with solo shows, people question whether it’s stand-up or theater. Where do you see ta-da! sitting in that spectrum?
It’s a show where you’re being asked to do two things at once, so the answer speaks to that, where I think it’s both. There’s a ton of jokes, and also I see the faces of every single person in the room because I’m in front of a giant, well-lit screen. I’m taking in their energy, and I love that I can play the room, which is what a stand-up does. But I think at the same time, by virtue of this device and the amount of work that’s been put into it, and the team we’ve built and the and the way we’ve designed this theater, you walk in first thing and you’re like, this is not a rental where a guy’s got a mic and is doing his 80 minutes. We wanted it to feel like a theatrical experience.

ta-da! is all about being able to hold two things at once, which subverts what we might think of as the traditional solo show format where the performer tells some stories and they all tie into this one overarching point. I was wondering how intentional that was.
I love those kinds of shows, to be clear. But I was like, if I’m gonna do one of those shows, I want it to be that and something else. So it’s both trying to be one of those shows while also being inside of this other thing that I think enhances and enriches and makes fun of it. So it was conscious. It’s not quite a meta version of one of those shows, but it’s allowed to comment on it and embrace it.

How does that audience energy differ from show to show?
It’s been different every night. I was like, well, the matinees are this way, and then the matinee on Saturday at 5pm was fucking wild as hell. Someone left their panties in the theater, and that’s not a joke. So it’s less like I’m learning like Friday nights are this, and Tuesdays are this, as much as I show up every night, and the energy of those people in that space is something I can be aware of and have fun with. It’s been lovely to sort of be a witch who can read energy.

And we’re all just in your little coven.
Absolutely, that’s all I want. Come take a bath in my brain and join my coven for 80 minutes.