I had to drive out to Dublin way too early on a recent Sunday morning, taking my older son to his EMT training. Deadheading home, I heard this William Blake quote on the radio: “Joy and woe are woven fine” I turned off the sound so I could feel some joy, the joy of living with my boys-who-are-men, and then grief for the world we are all trying to live in. If joy and … Read More
“Gossip is living history. History is petrified gossip“. – A.O. Scott I love this. Imagine finding a hunk of petrified gossip in your backyard. Here are some more quotes from A.O. Scott’s essay on the author William Maxwell: “Maxwell (is) an unacknowledged forerunner of autofiction, that much-argued-over postmodern style of almost-autobiographical, self-ventriloquizing prose.” I may not love this quote as much. Almost-autobiographical self-ventriloquizing? Does Scott think a ventriloquist is hiding behind a dummy, a … Read More
Moisture Festival is the world’s largest and longest running comedy and varietè festival. Most years it plays in front of live audiences in Seattle but in 20/21, they have gone virtual. Festival artists and comedians Louie Foxx and Matt Baker, hosts of The Moisture Festival Podcast, interviewed me a few months ago and the piece just dropped. Listen to the podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-moisture-festival-podcast-jeff-raz/id1509778713?i=1000530686124
When performing was my mainstay, the greatest accolade I could get was “Jeff works all the time.” In a fickle free-lance business, this meant that I had achieved a form of stability, that I had ‘medaled’ in clowning. I wore that medal proudly. “Works all the time” also meant that we all worked hurt – torn ligaments, sprained joints, broken vertebrae, as well as anxiety, loneliness and, for some, depression. Once, a Cirque du … Read More
An Interview by Pirie Jones Grossman Authority Magazine, June 13, 2021 People are creative, no matter what their job description says, and your main goal is to structure trainings and coaching sessions to elicit their creativity. Many successful people reinvented themselves in a later period in their life. Jeff Bezos worked in Wall Street before he reinvented himself and started Amazon. Sara Blakely sold office supplies before she started Spanx. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson … Read More
An interview I recently did with Pirie Jones Grossman about my “second chapter” is now on the Authority Magazine website. As a teaser, here are three of the “five things I wish someone had told me before I became a communications consultant.” “The thing you are trying to hide, that you’re a circus clown, is exactly the thing that makes you good at this job.” “You will need to teach executives many of the … Read More
Thirty-four years ago today, Comedy of Errors opened at Lincoln Center Theater. The producers were kind enough to schedule this big event on my 30th birthday. After the show, I got into an all-plaid outfit purchased just for the occasion and made my way down to Sardi’s with my date Amy Aquino. We walked in, Amy saw that the place was SRO and, in a voice that soared easily above the chatter and my … Read More
If it hadn’t been for the CETA program, I would never have found myself on an old burlesque stage getting kicked through a wall by a yeti. I was paid by the federal government, through the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), to play three roles in the Dell’Arte Players’ “Whiteman meets Bigfoot.” One of the roles was a scientist who pisses off Bigfoot (actor Don Forrest on fur covered stilts) and quickly finds … Read More
You may have seen Avner (the Eccentric) Eisenberg in the title role of the movie “The Jewel of the Nile.” Or in his solo clown show, which ran on Broadway for nine months and has toured the world. Or in “Comedy of Errors” which we performed, along with many others, at the Goodman in Chicago, the Olympic Arts Festival in L.A. and Lincoln Center in NYC. Avner is also a great teacher. Here are … Read More
Our dog Val seems to enjoy five of the seven deadly sins – sloth, gluttony, pride, envy and lust. Despite this she lives a good life, walking gently through the world, loving and being loved, avoiding most of the ills that we humans suffer and create. The last two sins, greed and wrath, just aren’t her jam. Dogs might have something here. As individual humans, we could stop worrying so much about the first … Read More