US Comedian Parker Callahan: 'Lying is an art form'

That’s right: it’s the Charlotte Tilbury bit. My mom’s name is Ellen DeGeneres. Walk with me…

I am floored by artists who can create and perform works of honest, personal revelation and deep soul-baring. All artists are looking to be known. Seen. Unfortunately for me, the muses have tapped me to do this in an ass-backwards way. My medium is untruths.

Lying is an artform. I’m an American so I don't need to expound on the detrimental harm that lies can cause. But if they have the potential for insidious catastrophe they logically also have the potential for the opposite. It all depends on who’s in charge. In this case that’s me, and I like to lie. Not in real life. But lying on stage? I love it. Lying onstage is a dance with perception. Who do you think I am? What happens if I twist it? What if I sincerely say the wildest thing possible? That’s good stuff to me.

Put yourself in my shoes: mic in hand, a captive audience. You have the authority to say anything you want. Nobody (unless they bravely buck societal expectations) can challenge you and, for a moment, anything you say gets to be true. You, as an audience member, need to digest it, compare it with who you think I am, and decide whether to believe it. And my hope is that by the time your brain makes that call, I’ve already moved on, you don’t care anymore, and we’re all just living, laughing, loving.

In Soda Pop, my solo comedy show and Fringe offering, I tell the audience almost nothing factually accurate about myself. And yet, by the end, I feel like they know something about me; not the biography, but my essence. That’s the magic of performance. The stories I choose, the tone I use, and the way I lie to your face all form a self-portrait. Not a literal recreation of myself, but a Warholian abstraction of sorts.

I was a compulsive liar as a kid but merely for the sake of fantasy. I told the kids on the school bus that the house I was getting dropped off at was just a summer place. I really lived in a hospital penthouse on Mount Everest, where my parents were emergency room doctors. It wasn’t a cry for help. It was an early sign of showmanship.

What I love about lying is that it requires imagination. Children, famously, use their imaginations with abandon and lie often. Adults lie too, of course, but usually to avoid consequences.

Boss: Why did you miss that deadline? You: I was at a specialist appointment... for a rare groin issue. I’d show you, but again it’s my groin and I don’t think HR would appreciate a groin reveal, don't you agree, Gordon? (the boss’ name is Gordon)

That’s invention under duress.

But fantasy for fantasy’s sake? That’s undervalued. We live in a serious world. We are expected to be serious people. And when we crave a break, we stream, scroll, and swipe, and we're never bored. And boredom is essential. It creates the conditions for the mind to wander.

My show is that wandering. It arrived from letting my brain stew. In fact, it was born while I sat in the audience of a very confessional (and very bad) solo show. I couldn’t take out my phone and scroll away so my mind drifted. What would I subject a captive, paying audience to? What would it look like to say absolutely nothing real and have fun for the sake of having fun?

READ MORE: Kate Copstick: ‘The church of the clown has never been broader’

My answer is Soda Pop. A tasting menu of lies. A guided tour of my imagined self. My obsessions. My fixations.

I BEG YOU: let me remain an enigma because the mystery is more fun for both of us. This show is the antithesis of the online and the confessional. All I’m offering is a playful exaggeration of myself; a man with six butts.

Parker Callahan: Soda Pop, Assembly George Square, 10.05pm, until 24 August

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