"I've been trying to work some incredibly personal stuff into my act," explained Chris Condren, a 24-year-old stand-up comic from Libertyville. He's appearing Wednesday at the Playground Theater on Halsted Street. He sounded hesitant to explain further, then continued: "Even now, as I'm saying this, I'm thinking I shouldn't be saying this. My mom is not thrilled with me. I'm at that point where I'm still figuring out what I want to talk about versus how it affects the people around me. Audiences forget: There is collateral damage in comedy."

Condren's performance, tucked into the sprawling Just For Laughs comedy festival playing across Chicago this week, is a part of the festival's Pet Project series, devoted to new and experimental comedy voices. His act is absurdist, provocative, disturbing, often unnervingly personal; a chunk of his material is about being expelled from high school and sent to a North Shore day school for adolescents with emotional disorders.

An atypical bit the "incredibly personal stuff" he's fretting over (but working into his Just For Laughs appearance anyway) is about his father. Specifically, he learned that his father runs a gay porn website.

It's not that he's uncomfortable with the subject: "I want to share this," he said. "I'm not trying to 'heal' or anything, and I'm not mad at my father. There aren't any wounds to heal. It's just my way of dealing." Indeed, even his father, Stephen Condren, a visual artist, while not relishing his son's choice of material, is more philosophical than uneasy: "I told him that I didn't think it was wise because one day he might look back and wish that he'd rethought things. But I know he's not being disrespectful. I know it's not malicious."

So what's Chris Condren's worry?

The Internet.

In particular, Condren is worried someone will record his act with a cellphone then post the video online. "I don't want it to go viral," he said. "I know how that sounds: I want to talk about my life, but I don't want everyone to hear. To me, a stage is a controlled environment. What's said there stays there. That's the illusion I have."

Or, as his father said, "Everything is about context. Comedy is about context." And the Internet, impatient and distractible and so easily prone to knee-jerk snark, isn't great with context.

Or tone, or subtlety.

Like a lot of stand-up comics these days, particularly the type who mine excruciating personal details for material, Condren is wrestling with a paradox: Being a stand-up in 2012 means seeming relatable, approachable, having a Twitter account, a Facebook profile, YouTube videos; it means recording introspective podcasts so immediate a listener feels as if the comedian is playing to an audience of one. But there's a difference between revealing personal details to 200 strangers and broadcasting those same details to 200,000. The Internet can make a delicate art seem both more intimate and less personal. Which also means that a historically cranky, anti-social profession, rooted in a tense awkwardness, full of vulnerable people who learned how to rip their hearts open onstage, is learning again what it means to feel uncomfortable.

Original post:
How much is too much sharing for stand-up comedians?