Host Chris Lindstrom is joined by storyteller Noam Osband to talk about his award-winning show "Circumscribed", making its Pittsburgh debut. It's a story about growing up with a father who was a mohel (Jewish ritual circumciser) who buried foreskins at home, failed efforts at finding paternal figures after his untimely death, and wrestling with circumcising his own kid. Weaving together family video, pictures, and audio recordings, this comedic storytelling is a perfect show about the lovable eccentrics we call family.

Winner of the Audience Choice Award at the 2025 New York Fringe.

Circumscribed

Date(s): March 20, 2026 - March 21, 2026

Time(s): 6:35 pm

Venue: Bloomfield Garfield Activity Center

https://pittsburghfringe.org/events/circumscribed-a-true-tall-tale-of-one-father-two-sons-and-thousands-of-foreskins/

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I like this song.

Well, that music means it's time for another episode of Just can't not.

I'm your host, Chris Lindstrom, and this is part of our preview for the Pittsburgh Fringe Festival.

I know this outside of our typical Rochester and surrounding area content, but the fringe is universal, and we're thrilled to partner with the Pittsburgh team for their 13th year running from March 19th to the 28th.

To learn more about all the shows and get Tickets, go to pittsburghfringe.org Tickets cap out at $20 per show, and an entire event passes only 150.

So make sure to get your tickets today and join the action over on Penn Ave. And I'm here with a guest.

Guest, why don't you introduce yourself?

My name is Noam Osband, and I am a artist and theater performer who lives in Philadel, albeit one with deep family roots in Rochester.

That's awesome.

I'm excited to bounce around on that a little bit.

And Gnome's doing a show called Circumscribed, a true tall tale of one father, two sons, and thousands of foreskins.

Emphasis on my side.

And then the shows are being held, the shows being held over at the Bloomfield Garfield activity Center on March 20th and the 21st, both at 6:35pm TBS standard time.

$15 tickets over at Pittsburgh Fringe dot or so.

I mean, the title is evocative in of itself, but tell me about the broad sheets on the show and then we'll start bouncing around.

Sure.

So it's a show about family and fatherhood and those relationships and what it is to become an adult and become a different person than perhaps a beloved parent might have thought.

And it's through the prism of my own father.

And he went to Monroe High, played tennis there.

So cool.

You're from Rochester.

And.

And it's.

He was a moel, a Jewish ritual, circumcised and, you know, he was a pediatrician.

And then when my mom was pregnant with her first kid, he loved.

He was a very spiritual and religious man, and he wanted to do the circumcision himself.

So he at the time was doing his residency in pediatrics in the Bronx, and he volunteered to do all of the circumcisions in the hospital.

And that's how we learned jokes on him, because that was the only one of their four children who was a girl, but then the others were boys, and he circumcised me and my siblings and friend, kids and family.

Kids and we used to bury foreskins by the sassafras tree near the garage.

And so it's a story both about my relationship with him and having this father who was this real, not perfect, but really wonderful father, but also this, like, larger than life character who would tell these stories that had like a sort of fantastical tale element to them that I actually think he probably believed a lot of them and about sort of having him as a dad.

And then he passed when I was 20, so fairly young.

He was 51.

And in the years after looking for father figures and making choices that were maybe not ideal, and then becoming a father myself at age 40 and wrestling with the topic of circumcision for my own son.

So, you know, and I'll say, you know, circumcision is sort of a through line, but it's not.

I wouldn't say that's exactly what the show's about.

It's.

It's very catchy.

You know, you notice the title, and most shows don't have foreskins in the title, and it's.

It's legit, you know, and all, but it's an, you know, I'd say it's broader, sort of like an examination of just sort of family relationships and all.

And it's told with a lot of.

There's a projector, and I show a lot of photos and videos and letters, like a note I got in ninth grade for my science teacher who gave me a 90 instead of a 92 because I was too disruptive.

And, you know, a lot of sort of fun gems like that.

Well, I mean, and I love that description of, you know, there's so many different subsets of dads when you think about them.

Right?

There's the serious dad, there's the business dad who's never around.

And you know what?

There's the.

There's the character dad.

You know, it's the character dad, the weird dad, the guy that's got a system for everything.

But the way you're describing it, like, you had a character dad, like somebody who was, you know, had a lot of.

Might have had a lot of big ideas and, you know, all those other things.

There's.

There's something.

Everyone is special in their own right, but that, that's a.

It's a certain lane, growing up that way with that kind of person.

Yeah, no, a hundred percent, I think.

You know, I've never heard of, like, that typology before, but I think you're absolutely right.

You know, like he, He.

You know, I grew up in this very insular Orthodox Jewish community right outside of Boston in Brookline.

Even though I grew up like within walking distance of Fenway Park, I didn't really have any serious, like non Jewish friends or acquaintances till college and.

But within that sort of tight knit community, he was a very well known and sort of big character.

And I think in part because on the one hand he was a very respected physician and, you know, he was a pediatric hematologist, oncologist, so kids with blood cancers and.

And would work with like the most intense, craziest thing maybe that exists.

And was a teacher of Torah and like served, really served the community.

He was like on the board of the Jewish Day school and he was part of the Chevre Kadisha, which is the group that takes care of bodies after they die in accordance with Jewish tradition.

But he also had this part of him which was a complete clown and humorist and he could get away with being outrageous because he was also a very respected man, you know, so like, he could get away with.

Every Saturday afternoon after services in the synagogue, there's a meal that's eaten called Shala Shut us.

It's like the third meal of Sabbath.

And he would, every week the meal would end and he would open the doors to the synagogue, to the auditorium, and he would loudly scream, feeding time.

And when people would say to him, like, michael, why do you say that?

He'd say, oh, because that's what they say in the zoo when it's time to feed the animals.

And I think if he hadn't been also this like, serious person who was a real upstanding, contributing member of society.

Yeah,

that wouldn't have played as well, you know, but.

But he was.

So it did.

And you know, he would.

He would be the auctioneer at the school auction.

Yep.

And it was one of my favorite nights of the year because it was basically watching my dad do stand up for three hours.

It's exactly the way you described him too, is like, you're talking about somebody who had that.

Who is a serious person in many ways, but had that innate showmanship of, oh, yeah, wanting to do the bit all the time, but was stuck in the fact that he, like, was stuck in, like, in an Orthodox community.

Not stuck, but, you know, like who lived in an Orthodox community, who is like respected pediatric, you know, like cancer doctor and then like, just wants to do bits.

He just wants to do bits.

That's very true.

You know, my sister, I remember in the eulogy she gave for him, said something like, at any like.

Like bar mitzvah or like big, you know, Batman for a big event, you would want to be at the table with him.

Yeah.

Which is true because he just.

He was such a funny person.

I.

Such good memories of him.

Just, like, making everybody laugh at our Sabbath TV table or when we had guests.

And, you know, and this comes up in the show that, like, part of what inspired the show and part of what the show is about is, like, when we talk about him and we celebrate him and my family, the things that we celebrate are the more serious elements.

Yeah.

That he was a real teacher of Torah, that he was this physician.

He was a real committed Zionist at a time when I think it was maybe a little bit less complicated than it is now.

Although, to be fair, if he was alive now, I think like most of my family, he.

He still would be.

The show doesn't really get into politics

at all or that I think realistically those things are.

Those things were always complicated.

It just had the veneer of not being complicated at the time.

It was always complicated.

But that's so many things in life where it's just a weird analogy.

I was like, when I was on a work trip, somebody had.

I'm a big coffee person amongst many food and beverage things.

But somebody brought it up and I told him, like, here all these things about coffee and geopolitical and, you know, economic drivers of different communities and third world countries.

It's like, oh, well, it didn't used to be that complicated.

I'm like, no, no, it's always complicated.

Yeah.

We just didn't know.

We didn't know much about it.

It was always that way.

Yeah, but that's.

That's true.

That's very fair.

But the point I was going to make is those are all true.

And that's what we usually get talked about when we, like, celebrate the day of, you know, his death each year.

Yeah.

But the parts that left the biggest impression on me were this, like, sense of absurdity and storytelling and being a funny person.

And he loved crossing the line in a way that didn't usually make people uncomfortable.

You know, like, I remember him being at the table telling, like, jokes about the Holocaust as a Jew with a real sense of humor.

Yeah.

And that's the part of him that really rubbed off on me.

And, you know, I should say, like, I don't think those things are.

While they might not be serious, I think those things are really weighty and important.

Like, I do a lot of street performing.

I improvise songs in parks, and I'm at the Eagles games in Philly every week in the lots, and I give out a car that says, noah Mosband, troubadour for hire.

And on the back of it it says, because silliness is serious business.

Yeah, and I firmly believe that 100% agree.

And that's the part of him that left the deepest impression on me.

And I think that's in part what the show is about, is like, that I, you know, I chose sort of not to be religious and, you know, personally do.

Do not believe in God and do not practice Judaism without all the sort of rigor and strictures he did.

And.

But I still feel really connected to him in part because of these other elements that were so impactful, informative for me.

And, you know, like, I'm.

I'm a performer and there's a.

There's a part of me that's a ham.

And there's nothing better than being in front of a room and making the room all laugh.

And, you know, this show doesn't do.

I have other shows that are, like, a bit more where, like, they play with people, making people, like, uncomfortable.

Like, this show doesn't really do that in a few bits.

Like, there's.

But on the whole, I don't.

But it's like that that's what really resonated with me.

And it's fun to tell his story in my own terms.

Well, and I think there's also, like, not.

Not everybody is like, you know, you know, I'd say has spent time around the, you know, Jewish communities, you know, Orthodox and otherwise.

When you mention all those different aspects, to me, that seems.

That seems like a very logical statement where there's.

There's seriousness, but amongst a lot of the seriousness, depending on scale, of course, because you can be ultra serious.

But a lot of it, there's a lot of seriousness, but there's also a lot of debate and there's a lot of, like, oh, how do we interpret this?

And it's.

It was never.

It's never perfectly clear because, you know, each, you know, each rabbi from a different place might interpret something differently, and there's all the different aspects of it where that debate of all the little things, and it never stops.

It's never, like, hard codified.

Some things are, of course, but a lot of things are debated continuously, forever.

And that constant, like, oh, I want to defend my point.

I want to Be involved with this.

How do you understand this?

Like, there's always that constant wanting to learn more and, yes, be respectful.

But always, like, being modern, too, in many ways.

Maybe not all of the Orthodox, but, you know, a lot of parts of the culture continue to evolve as time goes on.

Yeah.

No, and, you know, I'll say the specific subset that I grew up in, the term that gets used is modern Orthodox.

Maybe that describes like.

Like Congregation Beth Shalom, that my father.

My father's parents used to go there until my father, until my grandfather, who was a lovely grandfather but a real curmudgeon, had a falling out with the rabbi.

That was probably, I'm sure, his fault.

Like, my grandfather's fault.

And then he insisted for the rest of his life he would not call him Rabbi Kilimnik.

He insisted on calling him Mr. Kilimnik.

Oh.

Oh, okay.

Zeta.

Oh, for a serious man.

That is that, though.

Oh, boy.

That.

Those.

Those small.

That small change.

Oh, yeah.

There's a lot of weight on that.

And.

But anyways, it's a community that prides itself on engagement, within some limits, with the secular community and secular knowledge, and it is not opposed to the modern world in the way that, you know, what typifies, let's say, ultra Orthodox Jews.

Yeah.

So.

So you are absolutely right that there was that sort of both real sense of tradition, but also real engagement with the.

With the world.

Yeah.

So what I kind of want to pivot over to is, so you.

You know, when you started developing this, where did that.

I mean, obviously, you know, part of that showman heritage of your.

Of your family.

But where.

Where did your path lead you to start creating, you know, start creating shows and being involved in this side of things?

How.

Where.

Where did your path go from?

You know, learning about yourself and then getting where you are now?

Sure.

So I used to do performing as a kid.

Like, I went to a small Jewish school that didn't have a lot of theater, but there was, like, a play a year.

I would do it.

Senior year, I. I was, like, the director of it, and that was cool.

And in college, I did a lot of musical theater, but I sometimes think about, like, where I sort of, like, my baptism as a performer was.

I got a master's in English at this place called the Bredlow School of English, which is a.

It's a summer program.

You.

I spent five summers in Vermont.

It's connected to Middlebury College.

But you're outside of Middlebury, like, sort of.

It's like a campus in the woods.

It's Amazing.

Well, you don't want to be in the metropolis of Middlebury.

You need to get out into the real.

Yeah.

So this was before they had.

There was no Wi Fi on campus, and there was no cell service on campus, of course.

And there was a payphone, and it was really awesome.

Like, I remember when they got.

When they put WI fi on campus, I actually, like, approached the director and was like, I think we shouldn't have this.

And I actually still believe that.

Like, it was cooler when you.

Because then you.

Anyways, everything that makes the modern world worse.

And so, anyways, so I'm there that summer, and it's a master's in English lit.

And I took a class in romantic poetry.

I've always liked poetry.

I have four tattoos.

They're all lines of poetry.

I'm a poetry guy.

And I took this romantic poetry class with this really good teacher called Isabel Armstrong, who is just like a older English woman.

And there was a talent show one weekend, and I wrote a few songs, and one of them was.

I just thought, oh, it's kind of funny, the idea of a romantic song about a romantic poetry teacher.

I did not actually have a crush on her.

I was just like, well, that's a cute idea for a song.

And I asked her, I was like, do you mind if I sing this song?

And she was just, I think, slightly bemused.

I was like, I guess, sure, you know?

So I did.

And I actually.

I thought it was, like, kind of cute.

Whatever.

The response to it was, like, rapture.

I mean, just.

People, like, loved it.

It got a standing O that night.

I had all these people coming up to me who were like, oh, I heard you do this song.

Can you sing it for me?

And it was super inspiring and life changing.

And I was like, oh, I guess I actually have a talent of some sort for writing songs.

And so I started doing street performing.

Actually was a street performer for a decade before I did fringe shows.

And I do a lot of improvising songs on the spot.

That's like my troubadour thing.

That following fall, I was living in Philly and I'd be playing at all these Eagles games.

I actually got.

They played a bit of me on Inside the NFL, on hbo.

I wrote a very good song about Terrell Owens, who was.

I mean, what an opportunist.

What a great topic to write songs about.

So it was.

It Was the year after he had gone to Dallas, so everybody hated him.

I'll just sing you the snippet of the chorus.

Poor Terrell Owens, where are you going?

I think you're going to hell for the lies that you spread and the things that you said I hate you more than I can tell it was a crazy song and people loved it.

And I was like, cool, there's a there there.

So I used to do a lot of street performing.

And then starting in the.

In my 30s, I moved to New York.

I was working a graduate PhD in anthropology, which I did finish.

I'm a doctor of anthropology, which doesn't come up too much when performing, but it's true.

And I was living in New York when I was wrapping up, and I just started performing more and more at sort of open mics and that stuff and was doing musical comedy and was enjoying it.

And it's sort of, in some ways, my biggest passion.

But that summer, I was planting trees in Northern Ontario.

And as you do, I was by myself, as one does.

Yeah.

And I was by myself, biking around, and I said, you know, I want to do a show at the Edinburgh Fringe, Having never done any fringe festivals or anything like that before, starting with a very ambitious goal of the world's largest fringe festival.

Yeah.

And I ended up.

It was.

I did that next summer, I brought my first show.

I ended up doing shows two years in a row there that were very similar.

One was called Wikipedia Love.

The other was A Night of Wikipedia Love.

And they were songs about sex and death based on Wikipedia articles.

Great.

About Homo sapiens and other deeply tragic animals.

Super.

And it was very fun.

I had, like, a projector with me, and I would show all these slides and silly things and.

Really fun.

And then the next thing that I did for a show was I did four different iterations of a show that I still do in a lot of places called Brother Loves Good Time Gospel Hour, which is a satirical shady televangelist.

It's a very fun show.

There's never any winking.

It's like Brother Love is this.

It doesn't mock religion.

What it does is mock shady televangelists who are a category worthy of mocking.

And he.

He both is constantly raising for money for things like his two Learjets or his four alimonies.

But he also has very twisted theology I'll just give you song titles and you'll get an idea of what the show is like.

Hippie Headed Hot Bod Jesus.

That's a song about how Christ Jesus is, you know, there's no God quite as sexy as him.

And I do it with like a Southern twang.

I spent a lot of time in Arkansas and I like co created the character with a dear friend and the namesake of my child who like grew up a hillbilly Baptist in like the foothills of the Ozarks, which also like played a role in creating the character.

And anyway, song titles are Hippie headed Hot pot Jesus, Cocaine for Christ, Let the good Lord fill your spiritual hole.

So you get the idea.

Very fun.

A show I plan on doing for the rest of my life in different times.

But is both those shows are completely different and have no element of earnestness.

Well, I think my first thought was like, oh, is this, was this a takeoff of the Bruce Prichard character from the early 90s of the WWE?

So no, not in this case, no.

But I would say Brother Love is a very wrestling type character because there's no winking to the audience.

So at no point do I ever indicate I recognize that what I'm singing is insane.

And yeah, when I'm asking people to confess their sins and talk about which kind of dog are they attracted to?

Because we've all had to deal with those temptations.

You know, there's never any winking.

But.

But then I should say, you know, I. I decided to create then this show which is my Circumscribed, which is my first storytelling show because I just was like, I have all these like amazing stories about my dad that I used to tell around the table and whatever.

And I should also say I started performing in my 30s at this thing called Mortified, which is both a live event and a podcast.

Okay.

An amazing event.

I don't think they have it in Rochester.

They do have it all around the country in some larger cities.

And what it is, is you read your childhood journals and writings and whatever.

Great.

And so you're reading stuff that is usually horrible and very embarrassing.

And so I would often read like this like juvenile poetry I wrote when I was a teenager that's like full of romantic angst and is very dirty and often has this like weird relationship to God and religion because of where I was in, in life and time.

And I would read in the show this letter that my dad sent me that I, I actually do in.

In Circumscribed.

It's a letter that I forgot about and then I rediscovered in my mom's attic in my late 20s in a box.

So I had saved it years ago because I clearly was like, well this one's a keeper.

It's a letter he sent when I was in eighth grade.

I went through this stage in middle school where I used to talk about devil worship a lot.

Not because I actually worshiped the devil.

I didn't believe in it and all, but I partly inspired by my dad.

I think a little bit nature and a little bit nurture because my son is very like this.

I just love sticking a toe over the line.

Yeah.

And, and in Jewish tradition like some of the biggest sins are things like murder, which I wasn't going to do.

Illicit sexual relations.

Oh my God, I would have loved to have done that as a teenager.

But idolatry is one of them and it's like, well, I can have fun messing around with this.

So I had a few years where I used to talk about worshiping the devil a lot because I thought it was really funny.

And I like, I remember being at camp and we had this like event, concentric circles with the girls campus.

And it was like one gender was in a circle in the middle and one was on the outside.

And you would take turns rotating and it was like an icebreaker, get to know people.

And I basically talked about worshiping the devil with everybody.

And I remember by the end of the evening there was like a group of boys following me as I would be go because I was just doing stand up.

Basically it was just like performing.

And anyways, so it's that summer I got a letter from my dad where he talks about this is letter.

This is a letter 2 of 2.

So it's actually a companion letter to a separate letter that he and his mom have written where word has gotten back to them that I've been talking about worshiping Satan.

And that I also had this incident where I skinny dipped that camp and then like walked naked from my around like the boys waterfront.

And that the head of the boys waterfront got fired because of it.

Which to be fair, all of which is true.

And, and, and you shouldn't be doing that.

And it's this letter that would always kill at mortified because it's a letter that is both very emotionally open in a way fathers are usually not, and very sincere and very warm but also real shame based parenting.

That's like horrible parenting.

So like you know, it's things like Noam, you've been blessed with extraordinary Gifts, your sense of humor, intelligence, and curiosity are unusual.

Major responsibility that Mama and I have in life is to help you fashion those gifts into a pattern of behavior that is characterized by kindness, compassion, and sensitivity.

Quite obviously, we are failing at that task.

Far more importantly, though, you are failing as well.

You know, so it's just this, like, letter that's, like, both very florid and sweet, but also laugh out loud funny.

It's very funny.

And so I would perform it at Mortified, and it would absolutely kill.

Yeah, well, there's.

There's nothing that kind of.

That kind of seriousness is like that.

That it verges into the absurd, especially in context of you as an adult.

I mean, that seriousness, earnestness can be one of the best things ever.

Right?

It's, you know, that real positivity, like, real honest positivity can be great.

Like that.

That.

That letter sounds just, like, so earnest and honest, but out of context.

That is just one of the funniest things you can possibly read.

Oh, 300%.

It's such a beloved document to me now.

And I'll say one other thing.

Two other things that sort of inspired my idea of doing the show.

I'll say three other things.

One is also, I now have gone to a lot of fringes, and I like storytelling as an art form.

I would see people do it, and I really like it.

And I.

And I like to tell stories, you

know, like, you're well suited to it, obviously.

Yeah.

You know, like, I enjoy, when hosting a meal, telling a good story and adding detail.

And there's certain things I do inspired by friends of mine.

And I don't think I'm the world's best storyteller, but I don't think I'm the worst, you know.

But beyond that, I also discovered in my late 20s or early 30s, this picture that I never knew existed.

And it's this picture, which I love, and it's of my dad, where he looks.

It looks like a Renaissance painting.

I use it in the show because, like, the lighting is perfectly cast on his face and he's dressed in religious garb.

So a talus and tefillin, which is like the shawl that you wear the fringe garment and to fill in are these leather boxes with straps, and he's doing a circumcision.

And then when I first saw it, I was like, this is such a beautiful photo because my father was a really intense, spiritual man.

And although I'm not, I feel really lucky that my father exposed me to a lot of cool religious stuff.

As a kid, like, we would go to Israel for holidays.

And there's this one holiday, Hoshana Rabba, where people go to pray at dawn at the Western Wall.

And there's this one prayer that when you get to the moment, which is when the first crack of Alas Hashachar, when the first crack of light comes out, you're supposed to say, like, the most important prayer, the Shmuna esre.

And it's a silent prayer.

And so there's this amazing thing, which is tens of thousands of people go.

And it gets loud.

And then when that second happens, everybody is quiet, praying silently, and you hear the birds, and it's amazing.

Or he would take us to, like, ultra Orthodox, like a tish, a singing gathering, which was, like, not our thing, but my cousins would know where it was going on.

So he exposed me to really cool stuff.

And I'll say, one day I'm going to do a show about this.

I have this very interesting relationship with, like, Jesus where, like, I used to go to when I taught high school in Arkansas.

I'd be going to, like, black Pentecostal churches by myself a lot.

I lived in the Mississippi Delta and I played in a church band, a Catholic church band in Brooklyn for a few years.

I'm almost done with an album of songs that are, like, legit religious songs with, like, me and this nun made.

And I love it's.

Even though I personally am not a believer at all, I am very comfortable in religious spaces and actually really love the sense of wonder that they can invoke.

And so I love this picture because it's just with my dad, with this, like, gaze in the distance, looking like an Old Testament prophet.

And then I realized in looking at the back of the photo, it's.

It's me that he has circumcised.

Oh, wow.

And so now it's the picture I keep above my desk.

It's just my absolute favorite photo of my dad.

Yeah.

So that.

That also played, I think, a role in.

In things.

And then.

And that when I perform and mortified, I. I use that picture and, you know, it's really lovely.

You know, before I'd be doing this show, I'd be performing at Mortified about him.

And I love my dad.

And he died sadly too young.

And so to me, like, when I would perform with his.

This large picture above me of the two of us and reading his letter, you know, fundamentally, it's about entertaining the crowd and its performance.

It's not about my own personal, like, psychodrama.

And catharsis, but deeply rewarding.

And then the last thing is I became a father at age 40.

And a lot of the things that I do as a parent are inspired by him.

He was a really great dad.

And I love wrestling with my kids, being silly with my kids, tickling my kids, giving them a sense of wonder in the world.

You know, when I.

When I do this thing sometimes where I'm outside with my kids and we're not in gritty Philly, but we're in the forest, I do something.

Sometimes my kids, we just, like, close our eyes and we listen for a minute.

And now sometimes my son does that to me.

So sometimes we're outside, and my son's like, okay, we're gonna close our eyes and be quiet.

And that's not something that my dad did with me, but that's, like, completely because of the dad I had.

I think if I had had a different dad, that wouldn't have been my tip.

And so.

So then I think about my dad all the time.

But more importantly, I guess vis.

Via show, it's like, well, now there's a certain.

Now.

Now that.

Now I could see how there was a show to do.

Now it's like, oh, there's a through line.

It becomes about relationships, it becomes about fatherhood.

It becomes about creating a relationship with your dad when he dies young.

And I.

You know, by the time he died, I never told him I was starting to not be religious, because that would have been a hard conversation.

And.

And he got.

At the end, got really sick very quickly and was in the high cancer, was in the hospital for three weeks.

And I really wanted to.

But I also was like, I don't want to distress a sick man at this point.

And.

And also, you know, it's so important for me to have my kids have a relationship with him.

Not even so much for, like, their own sake.

Like, I.

When they get older, maybe they'll care about him, maybe they won't.

I don't know.

Probably not too much because he's a man they'll never meet and all.

But, like, it's important for me for my own needs to do that.

And so then it just felt like, okay, there's the material for a show.

So I started writing it.

I performed it for the first time 12 months ago at a fringe festival in Fresno, California.

Okay.

I started writing it maybe 16 months ago.

And what I did was, I have this.

I'm seeing if it's on the table.

It's not on the table.

I have A the Alpha Smart 2 is a word processor from the.

The aughts or the early teens, which it is the most bare bones tech that has now become pop.

You can't connect to the Internet, you can't do anything that like just write simple text so so you don't get distracted.

And I just, I started writing out like, what are stories that are funny of his?

What are the, what are the stories that I tell friends?

What are, you know, and, or like what are stories that I thought were funny?

You know, like, like the time when I was 19 and I gave blood and I got a letter from the Red Cross that my blood had tested positive than negative then inconclusive for syphilis.

So hey, get yourself tested.

But I, I was a virgin, so I wasn't too worried.

I would have loved to have been exposed to syphilis.

But I, there I am telling my parents like, hey guys, I need a syphilis test, even though I promise you I'm a virgin.

And I tell, I talk like, I tell a longer version of the story.

And then I end up going to the hospital that my dad worked at.

I needed a physical before college and everybody at the hospital, my dad didn't take off his yarmulke at work.

Some parents in our community did that.

My dad didn't.

Everybody knew he was a very religious man.

And my dad had to like ask one of the nurses to give me a physical.

And then he has to be to her, say to her afterwards when everybody leaves the room.

Like, by the way, Cassie, Noam's a good Jewish boy.

We're really excited for him to start college.

But also you got to give him a syphilis test.

And so just like stories like that.

And then I had like all this material and then I, and I started fashioning it and I was like, how do I make this a cohesive story with through lines and callbacks and lines that pay off later, you know, and,

and also building that, that you'll hear.

Yeah.

And building that up and down.

Right.

Like if you're just, if you're just telling the big stories, like that's cool.

Like that's, you know, that's like the, you know, columns from somebody who are just, oh, column, column, column.

Now it's a book.

Yeah.

But a complete thought is, that's the work is to take all of those things and distill it into something that has your laugh moments and then the serious moments and the, and the emotional moments.

Right.

Because if it's just comedy, you know, just comedy Is amazing.

Like, I love just comedy, but when there's a complete thought, especially with something that has, that's loaded, right?

That has, that has your history, that has your, hey, you have the emotions in there from a 20 year old that lost their father, but you didn't get to see him soften with age.

You didn't get to see some of that stuff.

My wife had something happen at a similar age.

Like we don't have connection with like a lot of her family.

That's a hard thing to reckon with.

And like, I didn't know her then.

Like, and like nobody else can know that version of you before because that, that affects you.

But I love that you brought up that specific term which is, although I don't necessarily, you know, go about it the same way that you respect people that maintain wonder, that maintain that, you know, passion and community.

Right.

Like all the things you're describing is like identifying real community in the way that people find it.

And religion is one of those ways that people find that real community that for them enriches their lives.

I agree with you.

For me, that's not that place.

I love that you found moments of that still though, through that and that that worked for you.

Even though it wasn't about the religion.

The community can still be vibrant.

It can still be a cool thing.

When you're working through all of these thoughts, right?

You're working through all of these big ideas, how is that process of filtering it all through, like, filtering it through like the knowledge of somebody in their 40s to look back at that version of you and bring some of that, bring some of that like, you know, naivete of somebody who's 20, who thinks they know so much.

Yeah.

And bringing some, like, how do you look back at that and like, how do you grab some of that for the show?

Yeah, I mean, part of it's through stories.

So like, part of these stories are like these father figures I had.

There's a lot of like, you hear me just being really stupid in my 20s, you know, like one of them, some of these are stories that seem larger than life.

Like one of these is, you know, and I'll say as a side point, I.

A part of me that I actually like, don't like, but I have resigned myself to.

It's like this is.

I am very literal minded.

I can't ever date anybody or my spouse is not like this.

And nobody ever dated to go well with who was very sarcastic because I don't pick up on it.

Well, I truly, I'm not joking.

I truly have a memory of being in fourth grade and hearing somebody say they took sarcastic out of the dictionary and looking it up in the dictionary and being like, I don't get it.

It's in the dictionary.

And I do really poorly with that.

Similarly, I very much, I hate this about me.

When I hear stand up and I hear people telling stories about like something that happened to them, there's the part of me that's like, I don't think it happened.

Like that kills it for me.

A lot of the time that's not.

I wish it wasn't like that.

Most people, it doesn't bother them and they can laugh and that'd be cool.

And similarly, I think it's understood that for most storytelling shows there's an element of hyperbole and everything you hear might not be true.

For better or worse.

I can't, I can't do that.

It's just like, that's not how I'm wired.

I found great inspiration.

There's a poet, Jack Gilbert, who's this amazing poet of the 20th century.

His poetry is generally pretty accessible.

He's amazing.

Amazing.

I love him.

And I once read an interview with him where he talked about how like, all his poems are autobiographical, he cannot make up details.

And I found that really affirming because it's like, I don't think there's no value judgment.

I don't think one is better.

And undoubtedly it's actually much more difficult if you can't make things up.

And it's harder.

But that's how I am wired.

So I say this insofar as like there are certain like that this story that comes of my show about like this guy who I once met on a bus in New York City who was a low level gangster who I spoke to.

And he says to turn that we speak for two seconds and then he turns around, he's like, I'll tell you what, kid, how about you get off the bus, I'll show you things ain't never seen.

Like sounding truly like a Sopranos character.

And I hung out with him a few times.

It's just like, it's crazy.

It didn't end up poorly.

Like he was a low level, like, heroin dealer, God knows what else, who had recently gotten out of jail, showed me his gun on the street both times we hung out and, and, and then we were supposed to hang out a third time when I was going to go visit one of his two families for dinner.

And then he got arrested and he asked me for bail.

And then I was like, I probably shouldn't do that.

And this is one of the circumstances where going to the third spot probably not the best idea.

Yeah.

100.

I mean, it's just crazy.

Like, I got off the bus, I leave my luggage in his friend's store and walk around with him.

I look back at it and it's like, that's crazy now.

Oh, that is.

That is a crazy.

That is a wild idea.

But I do.

I am.

I love that.

Yeah.

I am very lucky that in my 20s, I had a bunch of experiences and interactions with people which could have ended very poorly, and they didn't.

And I just, you know.

So this is all to say, you asked about, like, how do you do that?

So part of it's like telling some of these stories where, like, I sound like a stupid person in my 20s is a way to do that.

You know, sometimes people actually will say to me after the show, like, it's impressive you're willing to tell things that don't always make you look good.

Because I talk about, like, getting in trouble stuff as a kid.

I never struggle with that.

There are certain things I think I would feel a sense of shame of that maybe I wouldn't want to talk about in front of people.

But sure, it's few and far between, and none of that's in the show.

And it's not hard for me to want to be real, I think, you know, I spend a lot of time talking to strangers, both, like, working on a doctorate in anthropology or working as I do now.

I'm a professional, like, audio producer and documentary maker.

And so I do interviews with people or when I street perform on the street and I improvise songs.

I ask people for a prompt, but then I talk to them for 30 seconds where I'm drawing out details that I'm going to add to the song, although they don't realize what I'm doing.

So I spend a lot of time talking to strangers.

And there are people who have different approaches at it.

Me and my wife have super different approaches that I think are each effective in their own way.

I think we both are generally likable to strangers.

She is very empathetic and is, like the warmest, kindest person in the world.

And you would immediately feel that.

And that draws people in.

I don't think I'm unempathetic, but I don't think that's the first word people like.

I just.

That's not my superpower.

My superpower is I am very willing to Be very open very quickly.

If I sense that you sort of are into it, and then, like, I don't.

Like.

I hate the phrase too much information.

Like, I am morally opposed to it.

How could that.

If somebody is comfortable and nobody's uncomfortable, then being real and giving too much information is the most wonderful bonding experience.

And it's easy for me to be real.

And so I think that's a way in which I sort of access those parts of me and can bring up those parts of me also.

Say one other thing is, like, when I perform this show, I almost every show have some moment where I am crying as I perform and kind of love it.

It's never, like, so much that it gets in the way.

Yeah.

I actually think it sort of adds to the show, although it's never intentional.

It's just.

It's very.

You know, I cry a lot in front of my kids.

Like, I'm not ashamed to cry.

And my grandfather was a crier, and my father was a crier, and music.

So my kids all the time, we listen to music.

My dad shared a lot of music with me, and my grandfather, the curmudgeon, shared a lot of music with me.

And so when I share music with my kids, it is such a powerful experience.

So if I'm sharing a song that has, like, deep meaning or if they're really getting into something, I frequently will tear up and cry.

My son loves it.

He'll be like, are you crying, dad?

And so I.

That.

That will inevitably happen at some point in the show.

Maybe when I read that letter from my dad, because to me, it's so moving how warm he was.

Maybe it'll be when I talk about him dying young.

Maybe it'll be when I talk about ways in which I try to create a connection with him and my kids.

And I think that both artistically, is helpful.

Again, that's not why I do it.

There's never a part of me that is doing it for that reason.

But I think it also does this part of.

Of.

I think the audience ultimately respond because it's like, you're.

You're very real.

You know, I'm not a dude afraid to show his emotions.

And even though the show is fundamentally a comedic storytelling show and most of the story is funny, there's some Ernest Ellismans, and it's the first show I've ever done that does anything like that.

And that's really fun for me as an artist, because that's nothing.

I. I've done that with documentaries.

Sure.

So it's on stage.

Like I've made documentaries that are very not funny or like, you know, so like the last two sort of major films I did was a film one about like a Jewish violence extremist in the west bank called the Radical Jew.

Very good film.

Super depressing and dark.

And then I made this film that was broadcast on PBS called A Thousand Pines, which is a documentary about a crew of Mexican tree planting guest workers in the United States.

Very good movie.

Has moments of levity.

Is fundamentally not a.

It's a serious like movie that often leads people to cry at the end.

And so I.

But I never do that on stage and I rarely do that about stuff which is autobiographical.

It's just so much easier for me to access being a clown.

Yeah, that's my natural thing.

And it's harder for me to be earnest both offstage and on stage.

It's very hard for me to be in a circle where people are being very like deeply heartfelt.

I, I can do it and I can share.

It doesn't interest me so much in a way that maybe with other people it does.

It's just not.

I don't think there's anything wrong.

It's just like that's.

I just am much more comfortable.

I don't know, something I talk about my shrink.

Why do I blanch from earnestness?

I don't know.

I have ideas but like, so to do a show that has those moments and to get emotional about them is really fun, you know, and it's, it's like, it's not why I did the show, but it's something which has been really special for me and having now done it at a lot of fringes and audiences really like it.

And it's the first show I've done that's gotten like very good 5 star reviews and has won awards.

So it resonates with people and it's very.

It's just fun to be like, well, here's a new muscle.

To be doing autobiographical storytelling at this length and to be have like try to make a show that has some sincerity to it is.

Is new.

And it's always fun to do something new and to be able to do it in a way that seems to resonate with audiences is for sure.

You know, I have an ego.

That feels great.

Yeah, well, I gotta say, like, you know, the thing that, you know, as we start to wrap up, one of the things that grabbed me while you were talking is a lot of the way I feel about interacting with people.

Way I always say is like, my wife is naturally better at me than basically everything I do.

I've done a lot of work and practice to get good at those things.

She's a better natural talker.

She's much more likable than me.

She's a better natural palette than me.

But I work a lot at those things.

And when you're talking about, oh, I meet somebody, it's like, oh, yeah, I know how to.

I know how to talk to them.

You're reading them, right?

Like that read and react.

Right.

That.

That essentially improv of, oh, this is where they're comfortable taking the conversation.

I can go in that direction.

I know how they're going to be satisfied by me going in this direction.

I knew can read and run that conversation in the way it goes.

That's the way I end up.

Having a lot of conversations with random people is, yes, it's a genuine interest.

Just, hey, I want to.

I'm interested in what you have to say.

And yeah, being actually interested.

Being actually thinking about that I might not feel the emotions then I may, you know, I think about it later and then I'll feel emotional about it.

Yeah.

Or sometimes, you know, media will do that to me.

But I love that description of it because it's a certain way of seeing the world.

Right.

Where there is an analytical nature to it.

But I also love how much of your path is that improv work and those things.

And to me, that's somebody with a brain that lives like mine.

Right.

Where we can do multiple things at once.

Like, I'm riding levels, I'm changing things.

I'm reading a web, reading a website, doing this while we're talking, while we're having a conversation.

But that's a certain kind of brain.

Like, I can tell we live in the same world when it comes to a lot of that stuff.

100%.

But when you're, when you've gotten to know yourself as an adult, do you like.

I don't know, are you happy with where you are right now and do you think you're living the life that, you know, he would be proud of at this time in your life?

That's a very good question.

Those are so.

To me, those are two separate things.

Yeah.

Am I living a life he would be proud of?

Yes.

I think my father would have had a hard time with a lot of life decisions I made.

He was not always good at accepting that.

I remember, like, such a fight that left impression in my mind was I did really well academically as a kid and was applying for, like, a National Merit Scholarship.

And he had to write an essay.

And my dad would often help me write school essays.

He didn't.

He didn't.

We would write drafts.

His editing was maybe a touch more than should, but, you know, it wasn't so bad.

It wasn't so bad.

It was mostly, like, actually pretty good.

But I remember this essay and him being like, don't write this.

Whatever.

I don't even remember the topic, but I remember he wanted me to write something very different.

And I remember thinking, like, I.

No, that's not what I want to write.

And I remember he got very angry at me being like, you're not taking it seriously.

But I remember thinking, I'm taking it seriously.

I just don't think that's what I want to do.

Yeah.

So he wasn't always great at that.

And of his four kids, I'm the only one who's not religious.

And I definitely have the most untraditional life in a lot of ways.

And I think he would have had conver.

We would have had one or two conversations.

He would have said things he probably shouldn't have.

He would have made me feel a little bit bad.

And then he would have been the warmest and sweetest.

So I think my dad, you know, and it's in contrast to, you know, I love my mother.

My mother is a much tougher woman who is much more conservative and not into crossing the line and not performative.

And I've been performing in fringe shows and on stage for over a decade and has never come to any of my performances, which is what it is, of course.

But my dad would have.

And my dad would have.

You know, I think about that sometimes.

Like, my dad would have flown to Scotland because he would have thought that was the coolest thing in the world, you know?

Yeah.

And.

And my.

And, like, my mom would have hated that show if she was there, to be fair.

And my dad would have loved the song Hitler the Vegetarian.

You know,

am I happy with life?

Oh, God, I don't know.

I mean, I'm very much.

Yes, more than no.

I have a lot of deep regret over going to grad school.

And there's times in life where I was like, I wish.

At age 26, I.

At age 27, before I started graduate school in anthropology, I did a year in Oxford.

I got a master's in Oxford.

And the summer before I was in Boston, and I was crushing it as a performer.

I was good at improvising.

I was doing it a lot in Faneuil.

Hall.

I was doing a lot at Fenway.

I'd be in like JC Penn and people would recognize me because I was there all the time.

And then I went to grad school and stopped performing for many years.

And I, sometimes I'm like, I. I wish I hadn't done that.

And I'd just been like, I want to perform and see where that takes me.

So sometimes I have second guessing.

And now I do a lot of performing and it's a big part of my life.

But I enjoy the work I do.

I feel super lucky I'm not working in a coal mine and I get to make interesting stuff and work on cool documentaries and have a lot of flexibility.

And my work can work anywhere in the world usually.

So I get to do a lot of volunteer stuff with kids.

So I have a real appreciation for that privilege.

But sure, there are times where I'm like, God damn, I Wish at age 25 I was like, I just want to be professional, funny person and see where that goes.

So I spend a lot of time trying to stay on stage and perform when I can.

And the other thing is now I also have two kids and I love being a dad.

Yeah, a lot.

And you know, I just was away for 10 days performing over two weekends at this festival in Fresno, the one where I performed Circumscribed.

And when I came back it was just 10, 11 days, but that felt long.

And I'll do that again this summer.

I'll go to Edmonton and I'll do Circumscribed and Brother Love.

I'll do both those shows.

And so this is all to say, maybe at some point else in life I will just spend my time doing that.

I am okay with the fact that there's other responsibilities in life that I like and that's okay.

So when you ask am I happy about life, that's, that's a very long real way of talking about it.

But most days I wake up happy.

And as somebody who has struggled with depression, that feels great.

Hey, that's, that's a win.

And I, I think what, I think we can probably both say in very different ways.

If I look back at the me that was 25 or 26 and said, oh, you should have done this, I'm like, that was a dumb version of me.

I'm not that I'm that person, but a different person who's lived a life.

And the other thing that is, you could also never do the show you're doing now had you not been the dumb person.

That didn't know himself for real until later.

Like you can't do.

You can't do this show without that.

You can't do that without living a life and making mistakes and getting into weird situations.

Yeah.

So let's go ahead and close out because we can talk forever.

So the show is circumscribed and this is being held over at the Bloomfield Garfield Activity Center March 20.

March 21, 6:35pm Tickets are $15 on pittsburgh fringe.org noam Any place else you'd like people to follow your work.

Yeah, I will say I have music up on Spotify and Bandcamp and stuff.

I am the only person in the world with the name Noah Mozb.

Super easy to find.

And then yeah, I have a website.

Noah mosband.com I make.

There is a breadth of to those things I make and I take some pride in that.

Like I have this show I just created was the senior producer and head writer on a six part podcast about the First Amendment that's sort of a light hearted yet very educational take on the First Amendment called Amended Liberty's Guide to the First Amendment because the host is a professor named Liberty, which is an amazing first name.

And I make documentaries and radio pieces and make different things.

And if you go to noahmozband.com you could see them.

You could sign up for a mailing list if it tickled your fancy.

And yeah, you could find me on just about any social media thing at Noah Mossband.

Awesome.

Well, thank you so much for joining.

Just can't.

Not if people are interested in checking out other shows on the Lunch Order Podcast Network in Rochester.

We have shows that crossover and you're more universal.

Some things are very specifically here, but check them out.

Go to lunchdoor.org we're starting at Rochester's Book club in the next few months.

So if people are interested in something like that, we're starting one of those.

But we really appreciate being part of the Pittsburgh Fringe Festival this year.

Hoping to be down for the second weekend.

So hopefully you'll see people out there and we'll see you out on the fringe.

This has been a presentation of the Lunchadore Podcast Network.

I love you.