With this litany of resentments, I’m not sure how or why I ended up buying tickets to Novak’s show˳ In light of the cultural moment that produced it, it’s truly astounding that “Get On Your Knees” is not just good, but nuanced and moving˳ Novak, 39, first got the idea to write about oral sex in a college class where she was tasked with writing about the personal as political˳ It wasn’t until the late ’10s that she began to turn this germ of an idea into a show˳ In the years preceding, she had started refining her standup on the open-mic circuit of a new interdisciplinary alt-comedy scene˳ And it was in this scene that she met the cult comedians Kate Berlant and John Early˳
Back then, Early was hosting “Showgasm,” a regular variety show at the genre-blurring theater Ars Nova in New York˳ Novak recorded her first comedy album, “Quality Notions,” at the venue, and she and Early fell into mock-professional rapport, with him camping as a fastidious director, and her, the starlet, absorbing his notes˳ Their playacting became actually productive˳ As Novak finished “G˳O˳Y˳K˳” and began to rehearse it for Edinburgh Fringe, she invited Early to give his joking feedback live after two trial shows at Union Hall˳ Eventually, she’d ask him in earnest to direct the first Off Broadway run at Cherry Lane Theater˳
‘The penis is the one true drama queen: one minute, life of the party; the very next, flopped over and sulking on the fainting couch that is the inner thigh˳’
From the beginning, the duo felt conscious of all the ways a one-woman show about sex could go wrong˳ Early feared becoming grist for what he called the “think piece industrial complex˳” “We were always on the lookout for any sort of energy that ever felt like she was saying, ‘Don’t mansplain to me!’” he says˳ “I’m fine with that kind of coverage if it’s selling tickets, but ‘girl-boss Refinery 29 takedown of men’ — that’s never ever what we wanted it to be˳” For Novak, this strain of humor felt too cheap˳ She didn’t want applause just for being vulnerable or saying something the audience agreed with˳ “If I get cheers that feel like: ‘Ding! Ding! Ding! That’s the thing we all believe!’ it makes me feel like a politician, or a student-council candidate throwing candy to the crowd˳”
Pursuing the subject through long-form standup did not make avoiding this tone easier˳ It situated “G˳O˳Y˳K˳” in the lineage of the one-woman show˳ This is a genre with a history of hack conventions: the spotlight that signals a shift into memory, the step toward the literal and figurative coat rack to try on the hats of mothers and past lovers˳ Novak felt wary of these devices, because they disrupt the narrative˳ She wanted instead to “let the notions lead˳” “We wanted to preserve this feeling of Jacqueline working through an argument live in front of you,” Early says˳ In place of prop trunks and trying on hats, the show merely refines a repertoire of natural gestures: pacing, pausing to rephrase what you just said, fiddling with the microphone cord˳
