Despite being literally in transit — Baltimore to New York for those curious — humorist and writer David Sedaris took a beat to discuss the details of his Saturday appearance at Playhouse Square. With all-new material up his sleeve and an arsenal of witty remarks to sharpen the minds of any crowd, Clevelanders be advised: this weekend’s reading is likely to never be repeated again … at least not in this exact form.
Cleveland Magazine: “National Coffee Day was the first of this month, I'd love to know what your go-to coffee order is as someone who travels and tours as much as you do. You must have an order you can depend on to enjoy regardless of the barista making it.”
David Sedaris: “Yeah, I just get a cup of coffee.”
Cleveland Magazine: “Just your normal black cup of coffee. Nothing in it?”
David Sedaris: “You know, milk in it, but I resent that because it used to be that before the pandemic you’d just do that yourself and now you have to have them do it. I resent that.”
Cleveland Magazine: “Got it. No sugar?”
David Sedaris: “No, but I’d just as soon put the milk in there myself. Because then, you know, they do it but then they didn't put enough in there and then you got — another thing is that you used to get rewarded for, you know, at Starbucks anyway, if you wanted just coffee, they’d just give it to you. Now they want your name, and it's like, ‘why can't you do it? Why can't you just get me the coffee? It's right behind you.’”
Cleveland Magazine: “Now they want to know you. They want to befriend you.”
David Sedaris: “No, it's not that. I think it's all these mobile orders. You know, then you just take your part in some queue anyway. I just get a coffee. I have harsh harsh judgment for people who get anything involving a blender or any kind of a special order or anything involving the steamer. I just silently condemn them.”
Cleveland Magazine: “Your latest work, Happy-Go-Lucky, was published in May of 2022, and if I'm not mistaken, you were last on stage in Cleveland a month prior meaning perhaps, if I've got my detective hat on, we missed hearing Happy-Go-Lucky excerpts. Is that what sparked this current tour stop in Cleveland? You couldn't leave us out?”
David Sedaris: “No, it had nothing to do with that. I just have a lecture agent who winds me up and tells me where to go and so I go there, but I would never read from the book. You know, like going on tour right now. I mean, I just started [touring] a couple of nights ago. I'm completely done with that book. I'll never, ever read anything from it. I mean, I was just in Germany on a book tour, and so I had to read from it because that was touring, you know, for that book, but I would never open that book again. I'm done with that. It's behind me.”
Cleveland Magazine: “The event description for next weekend is fairly vague for Playhouse Square’s web blurb. For those that may be unfamiliar with what ‘An Evening with David Sedaris’ truly entails, do you mind giving us a little preview?”
David Sedaris: “I just read out loud. I mean, that sounds pretty boring, but I just read out loud the things that I've written. I hope that people laugh. That's the goal. I want you to laugh. And I want you to think, that would be great, but if you don’t, I don’t care. I really just want you to sit in the dark and laugh. That's what I want, and so I read new things. I started this tour with six new essays, maybe seven, so I read things out loud and I go back to my room and I rewrite them and I read them and I rewrite them again. They get better as they go along. I'm in a car right now going from Baltimore to New York, and I have a show in Princeton tonight, so I’ll look at the notes I made last night and make some little changes. The essays that I read last night will be different tonight. It's such a good opportunity to kind of edit in front of an audience, you know, to get notes from the audience. I don't mean that I would ask the audience, ‘What did you think of this or that?’ They tell me what they think by laughing or not laughing, by groaning, by coughing, by coming up afterward and saying they didn't understand something. Somebody said last night, ‘You said 2020. Is that the date you meant?’ I thought, ‘Oh my god. I don't know how that happened. I meant 2022.’ It was pertinent because it was related to something regarding the pandemic. So, hopefully, by the time I get to Cleveland, everything I have now will be better than it is today, but right now it's still pretty damn good.”
