This week was a milestone for Kurtis Conner. Under the tall ceiling of City Winery, Conner took the stage in spotless white hightops that screamed “I’m not from New York City” as he expressed to the crowd that this marks his first visit to NYC that he hasn’t gotten a stye, and that he just cut a wedge of cheese for the first time. “Is this what it’s like to live here?”
With a tip he learned from comedy school, Conner opened his “Let’s Try This Again” show: start with a self-deprecating joke… Really? That sounds very basic, I know. And maybe there’s some truth to that. But Kurtis Conner and self-deprecation go hand-in-hand, giving him the space to sprinkle some of that humor throughout the show.
However, it was Dean Hebscher who opened the night. Hebscher’s pandemic jokes, personal stories, and controversial attitude about Toronto perfectly foreshadowed Conner’s material that would follow.
Pandemic jokes are tough. Personally, I always start putting the guards up when I hear the buildup to what might be a very insensitive and misinformed statement. As it stands right now, there’s not much pandemic-related comedy that’s good. But Conner’s material is deeply affected by current events. The courage that the pandemic has given people to just be rude is the perfect way to consolidate the pandemic into something comical.
Conner’s material is incredibly personal and reflective, which is what makes him so funny. He is relatable even when he shouldn’t be. His down-to-earth storytelling is what makes a completely unique experience into a universally understandable one, like the time he found himself one too many ciders deep in an attempt to impress his girlfriend.
His ability to present himself as your friend sitting with you in the cafeteria creates an honest relationship between him and his fans. The crowd at the first show felt this a little too much as some acted as if the show was open for collaboration. The crowd’s participation didn’t take away from Conner’s charisma, though, and he was consistently able to adapt and bounce right back to continue on with whatever bit he was doing.
The night wasn’t all personal stories and recounting current events. Conner’s humor is also wildly immature and lighthearted. Penis jokes and silly one-liners are fairly predictable quips to the residents of Kurtistown. But there’s something to be said about his ability to make an entire room laugh at jokes that would probably elicit no response had you been the one telling them to your friends at lunch. And be honest, when was the last time you laughed at a fart joke? Mine was probably this morning. This humor is what creates the casual atmosphere of his show and makes him an easy comic to listen and laugh to.
Conner brought some new material with him, influenced by some comedians he looks up to and have made him laugh, such as Bo Burnham. Deviating from his typical standup routines, Conner adds a musical influence to “Let’s Try This Again,” in the form of copyright-free music. The more comfortable he became, the more the bit came to life, and eventually, it felt more like a performance than a typical standup show.
YouTube has prepared him well for new creative standup material like this. Amongst many qualities Conner’s Youtube videos possess, one of the qualities that make them so funny are the seemingly random skits he throws in. His skits serve almost as a subplot to the real focus of his videos.
While the new musical bit is not random at all, it has a skit-like quality when he has to acknowledge and react to the DJ who is having a major TMI moment in the middle of his track. Conner’s execution started a little stiff, but he quickly got into it and made it a great bit that amplified his creativity and diversified his show.
The first show ended less than two hours before his second show would start. But the end of show number one only meant the beginning of six sold-out back-to-back shows in New York City that Conner states were “some of the best shows of my whole life wtf!!”