To hear comedian Aaron Freeman tell it, he`s one mediocre talent, plain and simple.
”I`m the patron saint of Second City rejects,” he said one recent gray afternoon as he sat in his 11th floor office in the Art Deco Tower building, with an outstanding view of Wicker Park rooftops.
”I was in Second City on and off for 15 years. Never the best one in any company I was ever in. There were always people who were exponentially better than me. Standup comics exponentially better. Actors exponentially better. Singers, I don`t even want to talk about it.”
As evidence of his ordinariness, he freely admits he was fired not once but twice from the famous comedy troupe for the worst offense a comic can commit: He wasn`t funny.
But for a man who claims to have merely pedestrian talents, Freeman has done something rather extraordinary. With the help of Rob Kolson, his co-star, he has kept ”Do the White Thing,” his tartly irreverent political and social revue, alive and thriving in the cold, cruel world of Chicago theater.
The two-man show, which Freeman expected would last six weeks-if he got real lucky-recently celebrated its two-year anniversary. Launched with an initial $1,500 investment, the production has grossed around $1.5 million, according to Freeman and Kolson.
By any measure, it`s a major hit that draws healthy numbers of weekend theatergoers, including repeat business, to the Steppenwolf North on North Halsted Street, where it moved seven months ago from the smaller Organic Theater on North Clark Street.
”It`s really a remarkable achievement, extraordinary, for theater at any level,” said Robert Perkins, president of Perkins Theatres, which operates the Royal George Theatre Center. A dean of for-profit theater in Chicago, he says, ”Of the thousands of productions that open, less than 1 percent achieve any significantly long run.”
Perkins, who has seen Freeman`s show 2 1/2 times, said it has been blessed with great concept, engaging performers who are good at getting publicity, good word of mouth and smart management.
”We`re very lucky,” Freeman, 35, said in his booming, croaky, Popeye-the-sailor voice. ”We don`t claim to deserve it. We just claim to be really grateful for it.”
Freeman, a computerphile who once considered abandoning the stage to sell computers when his comic career hit bottom several years ago, conducted the interview while ”defragmenting” his computer`s hard drive, getting the pieces of data in tidy order by running a special program.
He kept swiveling around between the computer behind him and the reporter before him on a broken black-leather office chair that listed sharply to starboard. That seemed fitting since Freeman apparently delights in taking a different angle on things.
For instance, he argues the case for polygamy with a visitor while his guest takes up for monogamy. ”It`s biblical,” he declared. ”Solomon had 1,000 wives.”
He once wore one green and one clear contact lens. ”That made it look like I had glaucoma. People couldn`t stand looking at me or talking to me. It was really stupid. I quit that.”
Winning `Council Wars`
Of his theatrical creation, he said: ” `Do the White Thing` is this very great friend that keeps writing me big checks. And every now and then a dear friend that humiliates me in public.”
Created by Freeman, the show is partly a fast-moving excursion through the headlines of the moment, a blend of scripted jokes and improvisation that can lead to the aforesaid embarrassment when it doesn`t quite gel. It also includes original songs, economic theory and a little drama.
These sound like unusual ingredients for a successful stage act, but they play to its co-stars` strengths. Before ”Do the White Thing,” Freeman was perhaps best known for his political satire called ”Council Wars,” a takeoff on the movie ”Star Wars.”
It was a scathingly funny spoof of the infamous legislative brawl between the human dictionary, Chicago`s first black mayor, Harold ”Skytalker”
Washington, and the so-called ”29,” the obstructionist band of white aldermen led by former council member Edward ”Darth” Vrydolyak. ”That was the most thoroughly hyped six minutes of comedy you could ever imagine in the history of Chicago,” said Freeman.
Freeman was the first African-American essayist on the Public Broadcasting System`s MacNeil-Lehrer show. And he has a Sunday night public-affairs TV show, ”Talking With Aaron Freeman,” on WPWR-Ch. 50.
Kolson, 39, once taught economics at the University of Chicago, ran a Wisconsin dairy-processing company (”He lost his whey,” quips Freeman) and was an investment banker. But he left those fields for entertainment, to perform business comedy and songs before corporate groups needing laughs. He just won an Emmy for music he wrote for the half-hour NBC special ”Do What You Love,” about teenage entrepreneurs. He plays guitar and piano in ”Do the White Thing.”
Midway fodder
Art imitates life in the show: It`s the story of a political satirist named Aaron and a stagestruck economist named Rob who becomes a street musician. Rob is struggling because he sings opaque lyrics about
Libertarianism and economic theory that leave listeners cold. Aaron tries to give him the common touch.
One of the reasons for the show`s success is that it constantly changes, thanks to its reliance on current events. That gives it a freshness and unpredictability.
For instance, last Friday night, Freeman and Kolson worked the Midway Airlines misfortunes, the safe-sex zeitgeist, what looked like an imminent teachers` strike and the notoriously sorry state of Chicago`s school system into the act, all to uproarious laughter from the audience:
Kolson: ”Why do you think Northwest pulled out of the deal?”
Freeman: ”Well because they said, eh . . .”
Kolson: ”Because they believe in safe mergers.”
Freeman: ”Now Midway passengers will qualify for Midway`s frequent bankruptcy fares. You know what will probably happen? Monday the teachers will go on strike and they`ll start flying the Midway planes.”
Kolson: ”I don`t know. If they were going to do that they`d have to read the instructions and I don`t believe they`re capable of that.”
Teachers offended by that last joke should know that though it was told by Kolson, it comports with Freeman`s comic approach. An idol smasher of the first degree, Freeman believes nothing is sacred. The night of Magic Johnson`s press conference from Los Angeles, he told his audience a Johnson joke he had heard that started circulating shortly after the announcement, a joke not fit for a family newspaper.
The audience moaned when he told it. ”Then they probably went out later and told it themselves,” he said. ”My job requires that I believe everything is funny.” Nothing is off limits. ”Nothing in my own life. Nothing in anybody else`s life. That`s the only way you have any integrity.”
Another of Freeman`s credos is ”everything in your life winds up in your act.” So the Johnson joke is in a way part of that, because Freeman has had personal experience with AIDS. He was one of Max Robinson`s closest friends and his caretaker when the former network TV news anchorman lay dying of AIDS three years ago.
Freeman has led the kind of life and has the sort of interests that lend themselves to offbeat comedy. He tells his visitor he just tested negative for the HIV virus, a test he has taken often because he`s a regular contributor to a sperm bank. ”My goal is to father one child in every sign of the zodiac,” he said. ”I have five kids, three girls and two boys but only three signs so far. So there`s a lot more work to do.
”I know absolutely nothing about any of them (aside from birthdates and sexes) and I have no interest in knowing any of them,” he continued. ”I only know two of the families are trying to have more kids with more of my sperm. They`re really happy. They want the same donor so the kids look alike.
”It`s great. You get to contribute to the gene pool, you get to reproduce and you never have to buy anybody dinner.”
A very unfunny year
A West Sider, the middle child of James and Leona Freeman, he attended Catholic schools that are all closed now. Then he went East to college but dropped out of New York University. He did some theater in England and was headed to California to do his standup act when he auditioned at Second City. He was hired and lasted 5 1/2 years, until he was fired.
Fate intervened. Harold Washington was elected, got into a long-running imbroglio with his political opponents, and a peerless comic routine was born, reviving the career of a young and out comic. ”Life got much better,” said Freeman.
”Council Wars” greased his triumphal return to Second City. But after a while he was fired again. ”I wasn`t funny,” he said without the slightest trace of bitterness. ”I couldn`t get too mad about it because they were right. It wasn`t like they were unfair or there was racism or anything.”
Of course, he had reasons for not being funny; Robinson had died, Freeman`s older brother was terminally ill with cancer, and the comedian was getting divorced. ”I had an excuse for not being funny, but still I wasn`t funny.”
He went out to Los Angeles hoping to kickstart his career but wound up playing a lot of golf. ”That`s what you do in L.A. when you`re waiting for your ship to come in,” he said.
In fall 1989 he got a call from Richard Fire, artistic director of the Organic Theater, who suggested that Freeman create a one-man show. Freeman solicited Kolson, an old friend, to play the piano. As the show developed, Kolson became a co-star in the true sense. He bought a piece of the show and now produces it. He also co-writes material with Freeman and composes the songs.
”Aaron is a contrarian,” said Kolson. ”Whatever you say he likes to take issue with, it doesn`t matter. It`s like working with Norman Mailer if you`re Gore Vidal. … It`s like working with Woody Allen if you`re his mother. My best revenge, he hates this, is when I say, `Aaron, I agree.”`
Because the news is their raw material, the two have had some close calls. Driving home from the theater after a Sunday night performance in August, they heard on the car radio that Mikhail Gorbachev had been overthrown.
Over the next few days they furiously rewrote the second act, which contained a big Gorbachev routine, for their next performance Thursday evening. The Cold War is back, was the theme. But by Thursday morning the Cold War was over. Again. Gorbachev was back in power. Back to the word processor. ”By Thursday night, we were right there. Every new joke worked. It was sublime, like the audience was blown away. We had songs based on what happened that morning. They couldn`t believe it. It was politically correct and we even pronounced the names right.”
In the future, ”Do the White Thing” is due for a name change. ”We found that a lot of people don`t want to come to the show because they think it`s a parody of Spike Lee`s `Do the Right Thing,` or they think it`s a show about race,” said Kolson.
Though the name is a play on the Spike Lee movie title, it actually refers to a dramatic moment from the show in which a character describes what happens when the colors of the spectrum converge: They form white. They do the white thing.
Plans are to take the show to Washington next year. ”And if it goes well in Washington there`s no reason why it can`t do well in New York,” said Freeman. ”The pinnacle, the climax, for `Do the White Thing` would be on Broadway. But who knows? We`ll see what happens.”
