I spent the past several weeks trying to find out what Reggie Watts
has up his sleeve for Unwrapped, the benefit for the Portland Institute
for Contemporary Art (PICA). Calls were made and emails were sent in an
attempt to uncover what we might expect from Watts, who was the runaway
hit at this year’s Time-Based Art Festival (TBA).
I should have known better: If Reggie Watts is anything, he’s
impossible to pin down. His TBA performance, Disinformation, was
a polyrhythmic gumbo of stand-up comedy, experimental voice
compositions, video sketches, beatboxing, modern dance, brain-melting
samples, and a “fuckshit stack.” (The show was so good that I went back
the next night to see it again, unaware that Watts had improvised the
bulk of Disinformation. I was stunned when the second night
provided an almost entirely different, but equally jaw-dropping
experience.)
Trained as a classical musician, Watts is best known in the
Northwest as the vocalist for Seattle’s Maktub. But for the past
several years, Watts has been honing his solo performances at comedy
clubs alongside the likes of Eugene Mirman and Aziz Ansari. Last year,
he won the Andy Kaufman Award at the New York Comedy Festival for his
ability to “break the barriers of conventional stand-up comedy by
evoking emotions from the audience that range from agitation to
enlightenment.” Well said, comedy festival judges.
This week we have a chance to catch Watts again—two chances,
actually, on the same night. From 7-10 pm, PICA’s swanky fundraiser
happens, with Watts doing a set of his studied mania, plus food,
drinks, and a silent auction. And at 10 pm, they hide the good
silverware and open the doors for an all-night dance party. Watts is
also slated to take the mic for a few informal mini-sets during this
later shindig, most likely providing some beatbox and sampling
interludes.
Eventually, Watts leaked a few of the topics that might pop up in
his Unwrapped set. They include “the end of the world, different social
languages, the theater world, people that like to party a lot, hiphop,
and quantum physics.” Watts isn’t trying to be obtuse or witty here:
These are simply the genuine raw materials of Watts’ delirious,
syncopated, and tangled creativity.