A balding 26-year-old Russian immigrant, Nikita Oster takes the stage on a November night at Laughs Comedy Club, opening for his one of his heroes, Andy Kindler. Forgoing manufactured bonhomie with the audience, Oster immediately cruises into his set. He intones in a grave deadpan with the precision of a serious literature student who mastered a second language with a discipline unknown to most Americans, “Towards the middle of this sentence, you’ll find that I have a suspicious accent. It might be European… but it’s definitely not one of the good ones.”
Thus Oster establishes his distinctive m.o.: sly self-deprecation and a no-bullshit delivery that keeps you hanging on every perfectly timed pregnant pause. He describes his demeanor as “negative charisma,” which places the burden of his humor on his words. And Oster’s words are among the most acutely funny wafting around Seattle comedy rooms. (He’s also one of the rare comics who can trigger hearty laughter merely by stating his age.) Despite only embarking on a comedy career two years ago, Oster has earned a spot at the 40th annual Seattle International Comedy Competition. He’s one of 32 comics from all over the world who’ll be performing at this prestigious event that takes place this month at various local venues. [See below for more info.]
Oster grew up in Moscow, the son of one of that country’s most famous children’s authors and scriptwriters for animation, Grigoriy Oster. The young Nikita came of age among the Russian intelligentsia and graduated from high school at age 13. He absorbed its members’ elitist attitude toward the popular arts and lowbrow culture while also sharing their suspicion of the government, but now rejects any objective hierarchy about taste and remains open-minded about all forms of artistic expression.
His parents sent him to boarding school in New Jersey and he later studied literature, logic, and philosophy at New York University, where he worked toward a “Language and Mind” degree. “That’s why my parents wanted me to move [out of Russia], even as a kid, because they knew that chances were pretty good that things would turn out the way they did, or worse,” Oster says in an interview in a communal space at his Queen Anne apartment building. He also spent time in Amsterdam studying formal logic, but he felt like a fraud doing that. His primary interest was in storytelling.
“Most of my influences were literary when I was growing up,” Oster says. “Because my father is a writer, I expected myself to be a writer, and from pretty early on, I would act in that certain way that some obnoxious kids act, when they’re convinced that they’re going to be doing an ‘art.'” Reading Russian authors such as Vladimir Nabokov, Andrei Platonov, and the Oberiu society of Russian absurdists in the early 20th century contributed to Oster’s “taste for existentialism and a certain kind of sadness.”
Oster relates that during his childhood, Russia had no stand-up comedy scene. “What existed in its place was this strange mixture of theatrical conventions, and fringe clownery that was generally frowned upon by the literati of the time.” While Oster hasn’t been to Russian in three years, he notes that a movement is slowly developing there. I wondered if he could transport what he’s learned in America about stand-up to the land of Vladimir Putin.
“It’s impossible to say. I have that doubt every time I go up here. Like, I never really know how the audience will react. I take risks with a lot of my bits… not to make myself sound like a brave artist or performer, because I don’t take real risks,” he says, laughing. “But I do take risks aesthetically when I go up, and it would be even more of a risk to go up in Russia, because it’s a very traditional society, [although] not the most traditional society I can think of, but way more traditional than Seattle. And even though I’m not political in my material, it comes from a set of presuppositions that would not be perceived in a friendly way by many Russian speakers.”
Reflecting on his background in the literature of obscure yet influential figures such as Nikolai Oleynikov and Daniil Kharms, Oster says that “after I started doing stand-up, I would think back and re-read some of the things I really liked of theirs, and I realized that a lot of what I liked about those writers were actually elements that are very much connected to stand-up. Nabokov was a sort of a comedian; if you look at his prose style, if you look at his observations, if you look at his innate sense of irony in the way that he depicts culture.”
When asked if he’s happy that he moved to the U.S., Oster says, “I don’t think there’s a single thing in my biography that I’m 100-percent happy about, but I definitely prefer being here to being in Russia right now, if that answers the question.”
As noted above, Oster starts his stand-up sets with no pleasantries, whereas most comedians try to instantly develop a rapport with the crowd in order to gain some sort of advantage, like, “Okay, you’re going to like me as a person before I actually say anything funny.” Oster says, “That’s a decision I’ve consciously made. In my case, attempting to be liked by the audience would be a strategic miscalculation, and it’s not a self-deprecating thing. Some people are likable and have charisma, and some people have negative charisma, and some people are sort of neutral. If you take my accent into account, I’m neutral, like leaning toward negative, when it comes to charisma onstage, so if I thought I could successfully pander, I’m sure I would, but I don’t think it’s a route I can take, so I just try to get straight to the game.”
Personally, I’d prefer not to hear comedians open their sets with “How you doin’, [insert city here]?” To me, it’s a sign of weakness. Oster disagrees. “If your personality—not just your worldview, but your actual personality, which are different things—is a part of your set, if it influences your material, then initiating your interaction with the audience by displaying that personality might be a useful thing, but I don’t think it is in my case. I try to have my worldview influence my material, but I don’t think my personality is very interesting, from an artistic standpoint, which is why I also don’t talk about myself very much; I prefer to do material that’s more abstract and… or absurd.
“Right now, I am focused a lot on abstraction and just language, but I do think it’s good to let your worldview influence your comedy. But there is a difference between having material influenced by your beliefs and your worldview, and having material that is about you, as a person, and about the specificities of your life. And while there is definitely nothing wrong with being personal, and talking about yourself in stand-up—and I often enjoy comedians who do that—I personally don’t find myself interesting enough to make myself the subject of my material.”
Oster says that the most important catalyst for humor is mutual understanding. “All art is fundamentally about empathy, because any work of art is an attempt at communicating with your audience, and any interaction with a work of art, be that as a listener, or a reader, or an audience member at a stand-up performance, is you perceiving that communication, and this goes back to my background in language and linguistics. I have a very detailed blueprint of how I think language works and how communication works.
“All art is about empathy and learning to perceive another person’s perspective, and because comedy has to do with this very mechanical thing that happens when we find something funny, that nobody quite understands what it is. But there is definitely some mechanical thing that happens, and being able to find that mechanical thing is a beautifully reassuring form of mutual understanding that you can’t really find anywhere else.
“Pete Holmes had a bit where he says, ‘I bet magicians wish that there was a noise people made when they’re amazed.’ Looking for that understanding and tinkering with those expectations, and the joy of actually interfacing with another person’s expectations and world model is my favorite thing about doing stand-up; feeling understood—and that sounds pretty pretentious, doesn’t it?”
Oster cites Gary Gulman‘s latest special, The Great Depresh, which deals with his struggle with depression, as an example of the type of work he’d like to do someday. “Because he talks about things that are extremely relatable, but they’re hard for people to talk about. Because they require a lot of work to be able to express, and he does it in such a beautiful way that I had never quite seen before. [The Great Depresh] should be mandatory viewing for everyone; I’ve never encountered a work of art before that would have more direct potential to save human lives than that special. He is one of the absolute greats, a genius.”
Given the fact that since Trump has come into office, Russia has moved to the forefront of Americans’ minds regarding its influence on our political landscape, perhaps Oster could capitalize on his ethnicity in his act. It seems like it might be a rich area for humor. But Oster doesn’t believe that approach plays to his strengths.
“My life is definitely entangled with politics by virtue of being an immigrant from Russia. I have to consider politics in my daily life, to a certain degree. And I definitely have to consider Russia, inescapably. If I happen to write a joke about Russia (which has happened before; I have at least one bit that I still do, actively, about Russia), but if I happen to write more jokes about Russia, I would be happy to include them in my material, but I don’t like trying to write about Russia, because it’s very important to me to not come across as having that as a gimmick.
“Once I went to an open mic and I had a new joke that had to do with Russia and the drowning children joke that I actually do a lot of the time, and I did them in a row, and it was about three minutes, and then an audience member saw me outside and said, ‘Hey, that Russia stuff was great,’ and that didn’t feel good. I don’t want a whole set to ever sound like ‘that Russia stuff,’ because if I did use it as a gimmick, it would pigeonhole me into talking about that thing alone, and that thing alone, no matter how important it might be to my daily life, is not the most interesting thing in the world. Tyrannies are all about the same…tyrannical governments are not very interesting.”
Oster isn’t interested in mining the easy comedy vein of comparing Russian and American cultures. “This is one difficulty that I have in working with Seattle audiences: there is this tendency to respect people’s cultural backgrounds, and I don’t think we should respect our own cultural backgrounds. What we should respect is rational humanism as a philosophy, and most tradition is just outright bad. A tradition is something that’s almost definitionally irrational and misguided, because you don’t take a rational action and call it a tradition.
“We should be more empathetic and rational, regardless of our backgrounds, but respecting tradition… like, when people tell me that they want to respect my traditions, that’s sort of ethically appalling to me, because if they knew what, what my traditions are…”
One thing that distinguishes Oster’s act is how precise and analytical his sentences are. They seem extremely honed. “A big part of it is my lack of perceived charisma, or self-confidence. If I have something to offer, it’s in that work, not in being onstage and just shining glory onto the people in the audience.
“And some comedians, like Robin Williams, they could do that. They could just go onstage and just be funny, and some, and I know people, even in my actual, real life who can do that, and I’m always impressed by it. It’s fantastic to see, but I’m definitely not like that.
“I can riff and I occasionally can do it in a way that the audience will enjoy it, but for the most part, if I do have something to offer the audience, it’s in the work that I do offstage… in the meticulous polishing and grinding of material that happens both off- and onstage, but that takes multiple performances. And I will write a joke and I will have a draft, I will take it to an open mic, and then I will start changing things around, hopefully. I’ll start seeing what works and what doesn’t, but I think this is the process for most comedians, unless someone is extremely good at riffing, and they can improvise their way, or just quickly, intuitively find something. But I don’t have that speed; it takes me usually a few weeks to land on a finalized draft for a joke, and it takes multiple open mics and multiple performances to polish it.”
Oster praises Seattle’s “fantastic” comedy milieu and says he could mention dozens of names in his personal pantheon. “I could talk about well-established veterans of the scene like Erin Ingle, Bo Johnson, or Claire Webber, but I should use this opportunity to mention some of the people who are relative beginners like myself.
“Paul Curry is hilarious and terrifyingly quick. Richard Bowen and Kyle Bob Mullens write absurd material in a way that I really appreciate. Andrew Frank (who is a very experienced comedian, but new to Seattle) has a way of befriending his audiences that can be downright magical. Chelsea Tolle and Jesse Warren are two of the most disgustingly hard-working comedians I’ve met and are creating opportunities not just for themselves, but everyone in the community. All of these people can be caught regularly at the open mics at Laughs Comedy Club, Comedy Underground, and Jai Thai on Broadway, which is a hot-bed of Seattle comedy in its own right.”
In addition to his frequent stand-up appearances, Oster writes for a Russian reality-TV series and serves as head writer for the local comedy start-up Socially Inept, which roasts the area’s tech sector foibles. He’ll be performing five sets at Seattle International Comedy Competition; check out the schedule below.
SICC-40 PRELIMINARY WEEK ONE SCHEDULE:
Show One: Thursday November 7th
Unexpected Productions (aka Market Theater)
1428 Post Alley Seattle
Showtime: 8pmShow Two: Friday November 8th
Auburn Ave Theatre
10 Auburn Ave. Auburn
Showtime: 7:30pmShow Three: Saturday November 9th
Comedy on Broadway (at Jai Thai, Capitol Hill)
235 Broadway Ave E, Seattle
Showtime: 8pmShow Four: Sunday November 10th
Emory’s on Silver Lake
11830 19th Ave SE, Everett
Showtime: 8pmShow Five: Monday November 11th
Comedy Underground
109 S. Washington St. Seattle
Showtime: 8pm
