On a crisp October evening, Jacqueline Novak paused her meticulously-planned stage show, Get On Your Knees, because she thought she was going to sneeze. She noted this to the audience. “I was like, ‘this has never happened before, this is not a joke,’” Novak remembers, laughing to herself. Despite the interruption, she owned the stage with the kind of confidence that made it seem scripted. To spark her memory, an audience member yelled that she was talking about miming a blowjob. “Yeah, you’re gonna have to be more specific than that; we’re on that for a while.” The crowd eats it up.
Get on Your Knees, Novak's 85-minute meditation on the art of the blowjob, is like no other form of comedy I've seen. Part one-woman show, part stand-up set, Novak offers philosophical thinking worthy of Socrates alongside a well-lived life’s collection of dick jokes, proving herself to be the foremost expert on overthinking sexual acts—without getting overtly silly. At one point, she ponders the aesthetic design of genitals; later, she considers tongue placement during the deed. “There’s a playful dignity to the whole thing where we’re taking ourselves seriously, but not so seriously that it’s a joke,” Novak tells ELLE.com. “It’s trying to strike that balance where it’s not crass. The show’s about blowjobs, but it’s legitimate.” Produced by comedian Mike Birbiglia, along with Russian Doll star Natasha Lyonne, Get On Your Knees masters a form of comedic over-analysis that is both earnest and hilarious.
The mere fact that blowjobs are handled with this level of delicacy is hysterical in its own right, but Novak takes it to the next level, creating a personal oral history of her own experience with oral sex. “It’s sort of like a coming of age story,” she says with a laugh. “It connects a lot of the things I’m interested in talking about in my stand-up and weaving that together.” Novak jokes about “child-proofing for the male ego” so men can toddle through life like “drunk kings,” never knowing they’d emotionally perish without female intervention. She laments about not having a second mouth to narrate in real time the moment she gave her first blowjob. She even touches on a theoretical approach to the dreaded toothy blowjob. She is unapologetically herself, embracing her sexuality and calling out men for their twisted perception of a woman’s sex drive, all while spinning a linguistic spiderweb akin to that of a seasoned intellectual. It’s a truly enlightening experience, with everyone from John Mulaney and Amy Schumer to Ira Glass and Miranda July singing Novak’s praises.
More From ELLE
Novak’s past work includes a coveted Comedy Central half-hour special, appearances on Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Tonight Show, and her critically acclaimed memoir, How To Weep in Public; Feeble Offerings on Depression From One Who Knows. As she navigated these milestones in her early career, the concept of Get On Your Knees was always in the back of her mind. “I wrote an essay in college tracing my life through this idea of blowjobs: the first time I heard about it, the first time I thought I was expected to do it, the first time I did it. I continued to think about that over the years. The whole blowjob story is very essential to me, in my mind.”
Her inspirations for the show range from singer/songwriter Ani DiFranco to poets such as T. S. Eliot, whom she quotes multiple times. When it comes to stand-up, she cites Chris Rock as one of her favorites. “I remember a million years ago watching Chris Rock specials, and the way he was speaking with authority, I just thought, what a thrill it would be to speak with authority about whatever I wanted to say.” Regardless of the confidence she now presents onstage, Novak says stage fright still remains. “I remember hearing this thing about Laurence Olivier throwing up before every performance until his death. And, like, that could absolutely not be true, but I always enjoyed that anecdote because it could be true. You can imagine it being true, and it kind of makes sense, and then you’re arguably showing a humble respect for the stage," she says." There’s a bunch of people who’ve shown up—which is not a small thing, I never go anywhere—so, to me, to be afraid is natural.”
Novak encourages the audience to reminisce about their own sexual firsts: what was awkward, what was fantastic, what they’ve learned. But she says the show is still evolving. “It’s funny because I still don’t think it’s finished at all,” she says. “All of it is so close to my heart. I’m going to keep tweaking it forever. It’s like the expression ‘a poem is never finished, it’s only abandoned.’” Leaving the theater, one can't help but feel (and hope) that this is the future of stand-up comedy. If that’s the case, the future is looking intelligent, unafraid, and unapologetically female.
Get on Your Knees is showing at the Lucille Lortel Theatre through February 16.
