Comedians are more than happy to dive into depression

"One person had written in capital letters, 'Don't talk about depression,'" Gulman said recently backstage before a show at St. Paul's Fitzgerald Theater. "It didn't throw me off, because I had just been in a meet-and-greet and half the people there thanked me for being open about it."

But Gulman, 53, had to wrestle with his own apprehensions. He grew up in an era when emotional disorders were a taboo topic. In college, he'd sneak into his therapist's office.

But the deeper he got into the comedy world, the less shame he felt.

"I don't know if comedians are any more likely to have mental health issues than the general public, but they are 1,000 times more likely to talk about it with strangers," he said while nibbling pineapple in the green room. "For a long time, it was one of those things you don't talk about in public, and that gets comedians excited. 'Let's go in that direction. Let's make people uncomfortable.'"

Brian Regan, 65, started getting onstage in the early '80s. But it's only on recent tours that he's done material on how he suspects he might have an obsessive-compulsive disorder.

"When I first started out, I was poking fun at the world out there," said the Miami-born Regan, who is one of Jerry Seinfeld's favorite stand-ups. "Now my act is more introspective. A lot of today's comedians are more comfortable talking about themselves. I think that's a good thing."

Rob Ryan had been doing stand-up for nearly a decade before the native New Yorker felt adept enough to build his act around his dysfunctional family that included an alcoholic mother and a brother who killed himself after severe bouts of depression.

"When you're first starting out, you're a baby. You just have to learn to construct the most basic guy-walks-into-a-bar joke," said Ryan, who took his one-man show, "Mascot," to New York City last year. "Part of the reason I was excited to tackle more difficult topics is that I knew I had the tools to be funny now."

But today's younger comedians aren't waiting to dive into the deep end. Taylor Tomlinson, Matt Rife and Pete Davidson all rocketed to the top in their 20s by openly talking about crippling battles with the blues.

In one of her recent stand-up specials, Tomlinson, who hosts CBS' "After Midnight," talked about how one of her best friends responded when she told him she was bipolar.

...continued

swipe to next page