Comedian Aryanpur To Headline MPAC

Appears With Laura Bartlett April 28

Aaron Aryanpur is looking forward to his first headlining show at the McKinney Performing Arts Center, April 28 with local comedienne Laura Bartlett. He talked about the difference between performing comedy in a club and in a theater setting.

"In a comedy club, the lights are so bright you can only see the first two rows," he said. "The trick to performing in a theater is to make the larger venue seem intimate. Sometimes, it is so big, that you have to wait for your words to travel to the back of the room and then wait for the laughs to come back to you.

"I am looking forward to working in a new venue and being in a theater. I am sure I will not see a normal nightclub crowd in McKinney."

Tickets for the show can be purchased at http://www.mckinneyperformingartscenter.tix.com/Event.asp?Event=93863

Aryanpur said he doesn’t need to be blue – use profanity – to be funny.

"A lot of us who have taken Dean Lewis’ comedy class do not work blue," he noted. "I have found I get more work if I am flexible and can be funny and clean. My comedy is for everyone."

So far, in the three shows Bartlett has produced in McKinney, the audiences have been vocal. Aryanpur said that is fine with him.

"There is a difference between getting heckled and people feeling so comfortable with you that they talk to you while you are on stage," he noted. "That kind of interaction is great and adds a sense of reality to the show."

Aryanpur spoke about one recent corporate show he did that had that dynamic.

"I was supposed to do 30 minutes. I did 15-20 minutes and the rest of the time was me getting heckled in a very conversational way," he explained. "I looked at my watch and all of a sudden I realized my time was up. There was so much laughter and applause that it would have been foolish of me to try to continue on with my material." 

Comedy Central has called Aryanpur "Likable, well-written and fresh." He was recently voted one of Maxim Magazine/Bud Light’s "Real Men of Comedy."

Aaron delivers laughs with a unique perspective, drawing on his experiences as a young husband, father, corporate employee and having lived a lifetime of being tragically uncool.

"I still am tragically uncool," he said. "I have had this universal feeling for some time of never getting it. I have tried in the past to get into the ’cool’ clique. But I still couldn’t get it right."

But he is funny. He said he learned much about comedy in Lewis’ Dallas comedy class. Bartlett also is a graduate of Lewis’ class.

"I had always thought about doing comedy," he said. "I used to write things out in long form. They were funny when I thought about them but were not that funny when I was writing them out. I couldn’t tell you where the punchlines were. Dean’s class showed me how to edit my material on stage. That saves a lot of time. When you are on stage, it is like poetry, you need to say things with fewer words."

Aryanpur did his first comedy showcase with the class five years ago and has been honing his craft ever since.

"I was very comfortable on stage that first time," he said. "But there is a big difference between being comfortable and being confident. The funny thing was, once I figured things out, it didn’t matter to me who was in the audience. The key is to be confident in yourself and your material."

Chuck Cason, who headlined Bartlett’s last show at MPAC, would come by the class and teach. Aryanpur said he learned a great deal about comedy from Cason.

"Chuck has an amazing cadence," he noted. "It is almost like you do not pay attention to his words and his comedy is telegraphed to the audience and they just know when to laugh."