Comedian Shane Mauss doesn’t want to just make you laugh with his show “A Better Trip,” he wants to expand your mind.
Described as “an immersive psychedelic comedy experience,” Mauss has moved beyond what any other standup comic has done before, melding real-time multimedia visuals with a two-hour performance that’s part TED Talk, part trip report, and full of humor.
“It’s really kind of like a two-person performance,” Mauss said of “A Better Trip.” “And it’s something that no one else is really doing, which, I always like doing something off the beaten path.”
Mauss started developing what would become “A Better Trip” with digital visual artist/VJ Michael Strauss nearly two years ago, for a residency at the Las Vegas psychedelic entertainment complex Area 15, that involved four-wall projection mapping in their immersive performance space.
“I never had an interest in performing in Vegas because I’ve done it many times,” Mauss said. “And historically, casino audiences are the worst. But this wasn’t a casino, it was a psychedelic art space, and I was like, ‘This is perfect.’”
Together on tour, with Mauss onstage and Strauss streaming live visuals remotely, “A Better Trip” feels less like a PowerPoint presentation with jokes than a one-man show swirling with an improvisational performance.
“It’s a whole completely different thing when you’re working with a second person,” Mauss said of how different this show is from anything he’s ever done. “And instead of a second person actually being on stage, it’s like visuals and stuff that you’re interacting with. And (the audience) they’re not just responding to you, but with various animations and stuff like that. It’s just so cool.”
An acclaimed comedian, first known for his 2013 Netflix special and comedy albums – as well as numerous appearances on “Conan” early in his comedy career – Mauss moved into the science and psychedelic spaces, with his podcast, “Here We Are,” where he talked with scientists about everything from animal mating habits, to neuroscience, to the meaning of life.
“I’ve been a comedian for 20 years, and I think that when I started the path to becoming a comedian was a little more clear,” Mauss said. “And now there’s just so many different opportunities and perhaps even pressure to do things in novel ways.”
In 2016 he partnered with the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) for “A Good Trip,” a psychedelic and science-packed comedy show about Mauss’s own mental health experiences using psychedelics. He chronicled taking that show on tour with the 2018 Amazon Prime documentary, “Psychonautics: A Comic’s Exploration of Psychedelics.”
“It’s cool how when I started comedy, the idea of going around, and say interviewing scientists for a podcast, or even doing a bunch of science jokes or psychedelic themed show, something like that was unheard of and not really even possible,” Mauss said. “And now it’s just so easy to do these indie shows.”
Admitting that the hard part remains finding an audience, Mauss said he’s grateful to have found his people, a group that consists of experienced psychedelic users eager for discussion, academics interested in the science, and complete newcomers curious to explore.
“It’s really interesting because when I did my first psychedelic shows in 2015, the people that were very enthusiastic and interested who were maybe more advanced or, say, more regular users of psychedelics were coming out to the shows,” Mauss said. “And because psychedelics have become more normalized over the last five years, suddenly there’s 10 percent of my audience that has never done a psychedelic. And I think that what the topic of psychedelics does is it brings just people that are maybe a little more open minded and creative and curious. And so those people are just going to resonate and be more receptive to concepts about our perception and consciousness and that sort of stuff generally. So, I’m able to crowbar a lot of science into a psychedelic conversation.”
“A Better Trip” has had even greater success since heading out on tour, selling out here in Grand Rapids when the show came to the Wealthy Theatre last year, with Mauss now making a return trip to the venue July 20, along with two other tour stops in Michigan just this month, and shows scheduled across the country into the fall.
“Just last night someone said that they were really blown away by the amount of information, and the number of experiences that I was able to articulate in one given show,” Mauss said. “So I think it’s a really interesting, fertile playground to talk about a lot of different concepts and journeys. And I think it really represents the psychedelic experience to cover a lot of different topics. I mean, you do psychedelics and you find yourself contemplating mortality, and the universe, and our behavioral patterns, and relationships with family and our childhood.”
Venturing further into the mood altering world, Mauss has partnered with company co-founder Suzy Baker for My Purple Lady, a plant activated product line that he recently launched.
“Being in the psychedelic space, and being cued into like, what is the newest thing that’s the buzz, Blue Lotus, for example, is a new one that the average public doesn’t know much about yet, but is used more and more in the psychedelic space, almost like a mild MDMA experience,” Mauss said.
“Being from Wisconsin originally, where alcohol was the main thing that you’re going to, to get altered, or have fun, or celebrate, or self-medicate, or be sad or whatever,” he added. “And now that alcohol is becoming less and less popular, there’s a real demand for other less harmful ways of altering mood and states. And so that’s how (My Purple Lady) came together. And I have a hungry audience that’s interested in hearing about that. And now I might have to write a whole show about kind of starting my own drug company, essentially, because it’s been a wild, interesting experience.
A Better Trip with Shane Mauss
Wealthy Theatre, 1130 Wealthy St. SE, Grand Rapids
July 20, 7 p.m. doors, 8 p.m. show, $28-38
Shanemauss.com, Grcmc.org
