John Early Is Ready to Go There

Photograph by Austin Hargrave / AUGUSTSave this story Save this story Save this story Save this story There are two tacks for the contemporary performer facing the decline of classic genres of film and comedy. The first is distrust, hence the prevalence of a flat, over-it style that wouldn’t dare rise to the level of caring. The second is going full out, plunging into the vacuum with such enthusiasm that dormant modes are made odd and affecting again.

John Early, as anyone encountering his work soon apprehends, chooses the latter. He is an actor, a writer, and a performing artist in other ways—a singer, a dancer, a standup comedian—who’s embraced that plurality in self-assigned opportunities to exercise his talents. I don’t remember how I learned about “555,” the 2017 anthology on Vimeo created with the director Andrew DeYoung, written and acted alongside Early’s best friend and artistic—but not actual—spouse Kate Berlant. Across the short films, Early plays, among other roles, a smiling, fiendish mall pop act; the shy, offbeat child of an overbearing stage mom; and an extra in a makeup chair whose instruments, his face and his voice, are progressively hampered by prosthetics.

He shares with Berlant an exquisite comedic timbre, that of insecurity at its primal, human pitch, sourcing humor and discomfort from characters incapable of feigning a convincing detachment from egotism. (“555” ’s précis: “What happens when your dreams don’t answer your call?”) In a “Tonight Show” performance promoting the series, Early and Berlant—the duo has since become so familiar that you want to say “John and Kate”—play comedians on the rise whose basking gratitude for the opportunity runs out the clock, leaving them unable to perform their planned material. “We let down our communities, O.K.?” Early announces, briskly nodding.