Storytelling remains Cosby's foundation

Whether writing, acting or performing his legendary standup material, Bill Cosby's goals are always the same -- he wants to communicate, educate and, most importantly, connect.

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Bill Cosby will perform Sunday at Bell Auditorium.

By to the gospel of Cosby, when you connect, people listen, and when they listen, they can learn. They also, in his experience, will listen better while laughing.

Cosby was born and raised in Philadelphia, received a degree in education from Temple University, and broke into the business at a time when a black comic was an anomaly. He said that desire to connect drew him to comedy from an early age.

"Where did it start?" he asked rhetorically in a recent telephone interview promoting his two stand-up performances on Sunday at Bell Auditorium. "Where did this understanding, this desire to be funny, come from? It's certainly not something I understood growing up, but I loved hearing it. I studied it, studied how to make people laugh. It was the same as a kid playing a violin or acting or working to become a doctor. I was drawn."

Conversationally, Bill Cosby the man is similar to Bill Cosby the performer. He's a natural storyteller, letting information spill into tangents, sometimes seeming to meander and yet always managing to circle the narrative wagons around his point.

He said early professional inspiration came from Bob Newhart, Mel Brooks' and Carl Reiner's 2,000-Year-Old Man sketch, and Dick Gregory. He said he also owes a lot to an anonymous stranger encountered at a Chinese restaurant.

"There was this table there, with about nine people eating," he said. "And there's this laughter coming from the table. Women are holding napkins up and it's because of this guy that has been talking for two minutes or so. He's not a professional, but everyone is regaling. That's when I said, 'That's it. That's the style I want. That's the connection. I want to be the friend at the table.' "

From there, he developed an act that was less about setting up and delivering punch lines than becoming a practitioner of the storytelling tradition. He said storytelling, whether in a structured environment or among buddies at a bar, has a primal appeal.

"Before we were analyzing Franny and Zooey , there was the Bible," Cosby said. "We've always been listening to the storyteller. It doesn't matter if it is a minister or Aesop or Shakespeare or Robert Louis Stevenson. They are all dealing with the same things -- with relationships and what it means to be a human being."

Cosby said making people laugh has allowed him to present many of his ideas and convictions in a slightly subversive way. As an example, he talked about recent material dealing with the way men relate to women. In terms of comedy, it was framed as how men must protect themselves against feminine wiles. In truth, he was explaining the false perception of man as pursuer.

"I'm trying to deliver warnings to the males that this stuff is false," he said. "It's giving you a false sense of being in charge. It's not happening. The older you get, the more you realize how much easier things would have been if you had learned that earlier."

Standing on a stage and accepting the role of storyteller remains the foundation of not only his career, but his life. He has, he said, no intention of giving it up.

"It is who I am," he said. "Somebody once asked me why I was still on the road. I explained that my wife, who I love forever, will ask me where I'm going with things."

"Who needs an audience like that?"