In Character: Mark Sieve of Puke And Snot

Thirty-five years is a long time to be known by the word for a repellent bodily function, but Mark "Puke" Sieve has hung in there. As the taller half of Puke And Snot, Sieve has performed bawdy vaudevillian banter and mock-heroic swordplay at renaissance fairs across America, becoming one of the longest-running comedy duos in the country. During their early days, the duo spent half the year on the road, but now it sticks to fairs in Colorado, Maryland, and, of course, its pirate-ship set at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival, where Sieve and Joe Kudla co-founded the duo in the early 1970s. After Kudla died unexpectedly of a heart attack just before the 2008 festival, Sieve brought in longtime friend John Gamoke as "Thomas Snot Jr." Sieve will read from his new autobiography, Call Me Puke: A Life On The Dirt Circuit, at Magers & Quinn on Aug. 16, and kicks off Puke And Snot's shows at the Renaissance Festival Aug. 22. He talked to The A.V. Club about finding comedy in conflict, mourning his partner, and moving on.

Sieve with the original Snot, Joe KudlaThe A.V. Club: A lot of the energy behind many of the great comedy duos, like Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello, comes from the clash of personalities between the performers. What was that like for the two of you?

Mark Sieve: We ended up kind of like the Sunshine Boys. When we were deciding where the sketches would go, who would do what parts, it was a constant tug of war. A lot of the comedy in our show came out of our personalities. Joe was a really dark, paranoid, almost schizophrenic guy, and lot of that came out on stage. People were fascinated, I think, by his personality. The show that I’m doing now with John Gamoke, using some of same scripts, has a lot less dangerous feel because John’s just a big teddy bear. Joe was pretty dark. Sometimes Joe would go off the script in the middle of the show and chew me out on stage, and I would look at him like he was crazy. I couldn’t believe he didn’t remember he was on a microphone.

Usually in comedy teams, there’s one guy who tends to take over the business side and the other guy tends to be the artistic sparkplug. Stan Laurel was definitely the driving force behind Laurel and Hardy, and Jerry Lewis took over in Martin and Lewis. With us, I sort of took over the business and the scriptwriting, and Joe is who I think the people showed up to see… Joe and I split early on. We tried to work with other actors but neither of us could make that work, so we came back together, and wrote a new contract with each other and we honored it. And it worked. Thirty-five years of this stuff. We had definite personality conflicts, but we also knew we had a good thing going on, and people liked the show for whatever sparks they sensed.

AVC: How has your act evolved over the years?

MS: Only recently we have become more political. The Bush administration is pretty polarizing, as you probably know if you’ve been awake at all in the last eight years, so we did this sketch where Puke decided he was getting out of the Renaissance business and was going to go into politics. So Snot decides to grill him about his political skills, and Puke turns out to be this perfectly honest political candidate. Snot puts him through a press conference: “What about the war on terror?” “I’m still fighting the war on drugs.” “So you’re not concerned about terror?” “Yes, I am. I’m terrified I’ll run out of drugs.” People loved it, [though] we’d sometimes have some neo-conservative people who would walk out because we hit Bush pretty hard with a few quick shots. But we don’t really dwell on it; it’s hit-and-run comedy. Audiences have just gotten larger. We’ve got a pretty wide demographic, it seems. We’ve got old people that come up and remember Abbott and Costello, and we remind them of that. We’ve got kids in high school that email us and want to do our routines for speech contests. A few years after we started, beautiful women would come up to us after the show and say, “I really love your show.” And then about 10 years into it, beautiful women came up to us after the show and said, “My mom really loves your show.” Now we’re getting beautiful women telling us how their grandmothers and their children love it, so we’re back to the beginning. It’s a little scary.

AVC: What was it like to lose Joe Kudla? Did you think about putting the act aside at that point?

MS: Oh, absolutely. I went through all the stuff that you’d expect. I felt guilty; I said, “I can’t do this. We haven’t even buried the guy yet.” But I did the eulogy, and that helped, and I think he’s glad this is going on. I called John Gamoke, who had done Snot for us before. The first day or two, I was still trying to process Joe’s death. The Minnesota festival wanted the show, and I just didn’t think it was appropriate. At the same time, I wanted everybody to know Joe and what he had done for the last 30 years, how he had helped build these festivals. I wanted it to be a celebration of him and his work. [But in rehearsals, I wasn't] hearing it. I’d stop all the time and tell John, “Do the line this way,” and John was frustrated because he was doing his best. I was trying to get John to do Joe, and that was stupid. The scripts were still funny; I just had to find a way to listen to John and respond differently. I stopped correcting him, and it started to get funny. So John walked out that Saturday morning at 7 a.m. in front of a thousand people, and we got a five-minute standing ovation. We started a memorial fund for Joe’s daughter that day, and people contributed big sums of money. It turned out to be a real positive thing, continuing the show. It gave people a chance to experience the comedy, mourn Joe, and move along. Early in the show [Gamoke] does this crazy, ridiculous bit, and I turn to the audience and say, “Of all the unemployed actors in the country, why did I call him first?” Then we’d wait for the laugh to die down. It was a laugh that released a lot of tension. Then Gamoke would mutter, “Why did I answer the phone?” [Laughs.]

AVC: It hasn’t really been that long since Kudla died.

MS: No, it's only been 10 months. One of the things my wife reminds me of is every weekend, it's another 10 wakes. Every show, after the show, people come up and talk about Joe and how much they miss him. I’m kind of hoping that when Minnesota opens Aug. 22, we can launch a new Puke And Snot show. We’ll still remember Joe, but it's not going to be the focus like it was. I will still be glad to talk to anybody who has memories of Joe. I’ll probably do that the rest of the time I’m doing this, and that’s good. [Laughs.] I’ve put a bunch of [memorials from fans] on our website. People write the most touching stuff. If you do this for over 30 years, some people literally grow up with it. They feel an ownership for you and the show. You don’t even know that until something like this happens. Joe dies, and everything gets revealed. It's really humbling. We’ve never pretended to be more than just a little outdoor festival show. But, holy smokes, I had no idea the lives that Joe had touched until he died. Quite remarkable, I think.

Sieve and Gamoke at the 2008 Renaissance Festival: