Different.
Even for a one-person show that relates a life-changing shaggy dog story, “300 Paintings,” come and gone from Princeton’s McCarter Theatre, is unique in its individuality and perspective. It is unlike any of the 15,000 shows I’ve seen in 58 years of theatergoing.
It’s also entertainingly ironic.
Author and performer Sam Kissajukian is a comedian so fed up with the crowd-pleasing strictures of stand-up comedy, he abandons an itinerant 10-year career that had him yo-yoing to clubs throughout Australia and New Zealand.
After taking time as a recluse to re-invent himself, he’s yo-yoing all over the world — if this is October 29 to November 2, 2025, this must be Princeton, New Jersey— doing an elaborate stand-up about his transition from unfulfilled comic to exhibited artist and, with purposeful coincidence, his bout with mental health and all it wrought.
“300 Paintings” is funny, but in a way Kissajukian demonstrates indirectly in the way he always wanted to perform comedy, as a commentator relating what happens in life, what he thinks about it, and what he’s learned from it, instead of telling stock jokes, preferably ones relating to body parts, to give Down Under comedy clubbers the exact material they’ve come to expect.
In telling his story about jettisoning a career that kept him busy but left him unsatisfied and living meager club fee-to-club fee, taking residence in an abandoned Sydney warehouse, occupying himself with paint and cardboard he found there, producing paintings at a head-spinning rate, and emerging as a prolific artist with shows at galleries and museums, Kissajukian can’t repress the humor that may have been his saving grace in life.
He can’t repress much else either. Among the points of “300 Paintings” is behavior that eventually gets diagnosed as bipolar.
Manic periods are wildly productive, with Kissajukian batting out paintings as if he was on contract with a commercial art mill. Five, six, more pieces a day were more the norm than the exception.
Yet, irony again, those paintings came from an overactive psyche and carried themes that would go from unwitting to intentional.
Then would come deep depression, months in duration, that would still the creativity and have Kissajukian retreating further into the warehouse cocoon that was already a convenient, rent-free retreat from ordinary lodging or life.
When stability, the semantically unaccounted-for third part of bipolar, hit, Kissajukian could re-evaluate all that was happening to him.
Irony three is through all the rampant insanity in manic and depressive phases, Kissajukian could function, assess, and even take action that would be remarkable for someone not going through his level of affliction.
Or evolution.
Even as he sheltered in place in a section of the Sydney warehouse that once housed a baking operation, Kissajuklian was in touch with friends and family via cell phone and social media. His existence was the bizarre with tinges of reality.
Of course, the friends and family repeated the same two-word message as if on a taped loop — “Get help.”
Kissajukian eventually did, but not until his manic side, being most frequent and most dominant, drove him to become entrepreneurial.
This part of “300 Paintings” plays almost like the jokes Kissajukian could not tell during his active but stultifying stand-up years.
From his makeshift domicile/studio, Kissajukian began marketing his paintings.
Remember he never stopped looking at social media. He saw people were selling all kinds of stuff online. If one person could sell used underwear, he might glom some cash, or the satisfaction that eluded him as a comedian, from being an artist.
Part of that dissatisfaction was from being unable to stretch the boundaries of accepted comedy club material. As an entrepreneur, a manic one at that, Kissajukian can laugh at boundaries, if in his bipolar extreme he could recognize their existence.
He got in touch with a venture capitalist, filled out all the forms with the efficiency of a proverbial gnome of Zurich, used his verbal gifts to spar sportingly yet cunningly with the moneyman at hand, and parlayed it into thrusting his paintings into items of demand.
It’s a great story that goes on and comes back to Kissajukian touring the world in basically a comic show that in some ways vaunts the benefit of mania while showing the serious range of mental health issues.
It also involves some of Kissajukian’s 300 paintings, the number being an estimate as Kissajukian’s relentless urge towards artistry continues.
Frankly, though I found some of Kissajukian’s work displayed in McCarter’s lobby, I wasn’t impressed with it. Even when I heard his often funny comments and was informed where in Kissajukian’s mental world a particular painting fit.
The paintings I enjoyed the most were from a period in which Kissajukian represented the emergence or dissolution of mania or depression with small black figures rising or falling on a deep crimson background.
Projected examples of Kissajukian’s work in the stage presentation of “300 Paintings” put it in, no pun intended, a better light. Some of the work was fascinating, particularly Kissajukian’s architectural design for an art museum dedicated to his work. His rendering of building was an integral part of the fun, penchant for creative expression, and tour of bipolar contained in “300 Paintings.”
The only sad thing I say about the show is it is no longer in Princeton. It was here for five days and has moved on to its next incarnation.
Its absence doesn’t erase its memory. The regret is I cannot urge you to get to McCarter and bask in Kissajukian’s insights, wit, chutzpah, and remarkable gift for comic storytelling.
The good news is “300 Paintings” exists and can, with the art Kissajukian so prolifically created, become a regional visitor, catchable when it arrives near our reaches.
The otherwise thorough McCarter program does not single out one designer as being responsible for the projections that so enhance Kissajukian’s work. The closet candidate for glowing praise is Avery Reagan, who is listed as the lighting consultant.
“300 Paintings” ran from October 29 to November 2 at McCarter Theatre. www.mccarter.org.
