In early September of 2015, when The Late Show with Stephen Colbert began airing in David Letterman’s former slot on CBS, its host quickly differentiated himself from his predecessor. For one, he was sillier and sunnier; he was also less brutally self-deprecating, unabashedly religious, and increasingly political.
But there’s another less-recognized facet of Colbert’s performance that continues to set him apart—not only from Letterman, but also from the rest of his late-night compatriots: His expert “object work.”
A tradition that dates to a 16th century theatrical style called Commedia dell’Arte, object work, also known as “space work,” has long been a mainstay of improv, where performers pantomime using imaginary objects and actions rather than relying solely on dialogue.
Viola Spolin, who is widely regarded as the mother of improv, wrote about “space objects” and incorporated them into her still-played “theater games.” “Now take this ball and just play with it,” she says in footage from a long-ago workshop that’s part of a 2021 PBS special called Inventing Improv. “Now give the ball its time in space…You’re working with the invisible, the magical invisible. That’s where the intuition is.”
Colbert was introduced to improv—and, unavoidably, Spolin’s teachings—early on. After cutting his teeth with the No Fun Mud Piranhas at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill, he studied with improv master Del Close and spent eight years at The Second City.
Those formative experiences colored everything that came after, and The Late Show is no exception.
Typically showcased during the host’s monologues (and memorialized in the excellent video above), Colbert’s object work has included wielding a flamethrower, shredding on guitars, steering a semi truck (or maybe it was a fire truck), gripping and dropping microphones, playing a trombone, spiking a football, making it rain with dollar bills, donning and doffing hats, lighting and smoking a pipe (also cigarettes and cigars). And, of course, pawing the walls of an invisible box (classic mime!).
Whatever the invisible activity, he has always fully committed—including handing his objects to someone off-camera for safekeeping and/or storage when he’s done. Because after you wreak havoc with a flamethrower, it doesn’t just vaporize.
When Colbert’s former improv student comedian Abby McEnany appeared on The Late Show in early 2020, the host produced his old Second City teacher’s notebook in which he’d jotted observations about some of her long-ago scenes.
“This is an object work note here,” he said at one point. “In the ice cream shop scene, great scooping. I could tell the difference between the vanilla and the rocky road. I could hear the chunks. I saw the whole thing. But I really wanted [it] to be clear, to see how high the counter was, because sometimes you’re putting [the ice cream] up here and sometimes you’re putting it down here, and it pops me out of the scene.”
Object work is such an integral part of Colbert’s comedy arsenal that The Late Show once produced a segment called “The Invisible Props Department” in which an invisible prop mistress named Sarah introduces viewers to an empty metal shelving unit that holds an array of unseeable items: Irons (for clothing and waffles), “delicious potato salad,” “space shuttle components,” a “festive scrotum,” bongs, sex toys (one of which, blurred out to skirt censors, began vibrating in her hand), knives, a first-aid kit for Sarah’s subsequent knife wound caused by Colbert’s careless knife flinging, a horse that Colbert had just dismounted (“She’s a good girl, but she does spook easily”), a “box of rattlesnakes and random explosives,” a crystal bust of NCIS star Michael Weatherly, and a Slip ‘N Slide. Oh, and an “emergency cowboy pistol” for putting the aforementioned horse out of her misery when she was spooked by the random explosives and broke her leg after slipping on the slide.
As Colbert’s Late Show prepares to mark its tenth anniversary this September, the host’s object work remains front and center on the show. Recent episodes have seen him reading from a speech on paper before passing it off to someone out of frame, clutching a can of Diet Coke (before chugging from an actual can of Diet Coke), imitating Donald Trump reading off his smartphone, talking on an old-school telephone (and hanging it up, natch), and cradling a baby he was about to save by tossing the tot out a window to Joe Biden.
When he recited a recent Surgeon General statement about the carcinogenic qualities of alcohol, however, he produced a real rocks glass filled with real brown liquid to punctuate his joke: “Cancer? Huh. Well, luckily, I’m a Taurus.” Bottom’s up!
Because sometimes, even for the most devoted object work practitioners, the invisible stuff just won’t do.
Mike Thomas is the co-author, with Bill Zehme, of the recent New York Times bestseller Carson the Magnificent, a biography of Johnny Carson. Mike also wrote You Might Remember Me: The Life and Times of Phil Hartman, and The Second City Unscripted: Revolution and Revelation at the World-Famous Comedy Theater.
