Two years ago, Rafe Adeyemi-Kross released a stand-up special that was watched by more people in its first weekend than had seen him live in his entire career. Then he announced he would never record another. Since then the London-born, Los Angeles-based comedian has been touring small rooms, many of them public libraries, performing a new hour that exists only in the memory of those who were there. We met in a diner in Glendale, where he ordered pancakes and apologised for them.
Why stop recording? 'Because the special was eating the act. Once you know an hour is going to be filmed, you start writing for the camera, for the clip, for the thirty seconds someone will post online. The jokes get louder and shorter. I noticed I was cutting anything that needed the audience to lean in. And the best stuff in comedy always needs the audience to lean in. That is the whole trick.'
Isn't that a strange decision commercially? 'Financially it is insane, and my manager reminds me weekly. But I did the maths differently. The special paid well once. The tour pays less, but it pays every night, and the people who come are the people who actually want to be there. I would rather have four hundred people who chose to be in the room than four million who were scrolling past on the way to something else.'
Jokes that only work once
Why libraries? 'Partly because they are everywhere, and they are quiet, which means people arrive quiet. There is no bar, no two-drink minimum, nobody heckling. The acoustics are strange, all those books absorb sound, so you have to work harder and the audience has to listen harder. I also like that the money goes somewhere useful. We split the door with the library. One branch in Ohio bought new chairs with it.'
A joke is a conversation. If you record it, it becomes a speech. I am not interested in giving speeches.
What has changed in the material? 'It is slower and stranger. There is a twenty-minute section about my grandfather's allotment in Peckham that would never survive an edit. Every night it is different, because every room laughs at different moments, and I follow the laughter. Some nights it goes nowhere. Some nights it becomes the best thing I have ever done, and then it disappears. I have made my peace with that. Mostly.'
Do you worry about people filming on their phones? 'We lock phones in pouches at the door, which people complain about for five minutes and then forget. After the show, the most common thing people tell me is that they had forgotten what it felt like to watch something without also recording it. That is not really about comedy. That is about being alive in a room with other people, which it turns out we all badly miss.'
Will there ever be another special? 'Never say never, because the moment I do my accountant will faint. But if there is, it will be something odd, filmed in one take in a library with the lights up. No crowd shots, no reaction cutaways. Just the room.' He finishes the pancakes, apologises for them again and leaves for a show that evening in a branch library in Pasadena, capacity one hundred and twelve.
