For affable Englishman Matt Kirshen, his upcoming appearances on the thirty second annual Kung Pao Kosher Comedy at Imperial Palace restaurant in San Francisco’s Chinatown on Dec. 24-26 signify a primary.
“This is quite exciting. This is me going headlong into American Jewish Christmas,” says the comedian, a Los Angeles resident and London native who has by no means earlier than carried out on Dec. 25. He provides, “The whole concept of Jewish people going to a Chinese restaurant on Christmas Day is American. We don’t have that in Britain.”
Whereas he’s new to the day-of vacation performances—this yr’s exhibits additionally function Ophira Eisenberg and Becky Braunstein — Kirshen, nonetheless, has recognized Kung Pao Comedy host-creator Lisa Geduldig for years, and is a veteran of the Zoom Lockdown Comedy exhibits Geduldig placed on in the course of the pandemic.
Kung Pao Kosher Comedy’s 2024 lineup options, L-R, Ophira Eisenberg, Matt Kirshen, Becky Braunstein and host-creator Lisa Geduldig. (Courtesy Kung Pao Kosher Comedy)
Calling Lockdown and different on-line occasions “a bit of sanity” and “decent substitute” for doing standup in entrance of individuals’s faces, Kirshen says, “I, quote, did a gig in Finland, from my living room. It was nice being able to do comedy for people in places that I certainly couldn’t get to.”
Although he doesn’t usually dwell on Jewish themes in his act, Kirshen says he’d be a idiot to not reference his Jewish background for the primarily Jewish Kung Pao crowd.
Recalling his bar mitzvah, Kirshen delightedly mentions a grainy video of the occasion shot by his zealous camcorder-wielding uncle. Upon seeing it years later, he seen that the magician on the celebration was Carey Marx, who went on to turn into his housemate. Kirshen says, “Just the idea that a North London Jewish guy who was doing table magic would be someone who I would have some connection with 10 years down the line…. it’s funny.” He provides, “On the one hand, it’s ludicrous, but I guess on the other hand, it is sort of an inevitability, right?”
Despite the fact that he persistently has been paid to put in writing and carry out comedy for some 15 or 20 years, Kirshen admits, “I even think now it’s not really for me to say I’m funny.”
When he was youthful, he says, “I loved the creation of jokes far more than performing. I was never the kid who got up onstage and did a dance or anything like that.”
He has obscure reminiscences of some materials and performances from the early 2000s, which he calls horrible: “I’m glad there’s no tape of it. Nowadays people are videoing their first ever sets and putting them straight on social media. … But, oh, my word, I’m glad that was not the thing when I started. I can’t imagine.”
Apparently, Kirshen has no particular mentors or heroes. He’s merely happy he bought all for comedy when satellite tv for pc TV first got here to the U.Okay., and, as an alternative of simply 4 channels, there have been a great deal of channels on which he might watch comics from all around the world. Then, when he was 18, he began going to golf equipment, the place stay comedy was low-cost.
His British accent and youthful look are, a minimum of partially, the explanation his act is usually clear and missing profanity. He provides, “That’s not my personality. Doing dirty material—it’s incongruous.” Noting that pal identified to him, “You can’t do angry,” he says: “I have a natural friendliness that people seem to want. So why would I try and play up this thing that isn’t me?”
Kirshen had a momentous introduction to the U.S., arriving in 2007 as a participant on the NBC present “Last Comic Standing.”
“It was just the best possible way to come into Los Angeles on the back of a TV show with all the excitement that entailed. Suddenly you’re getting meetings everywhere… and everyone’s being lovely to you and you get glamoured everywhere you go. Then that TV show ends, and the dust settles and you’re left looking around.”
However, he provides, “Now it feels like home” after a transfer he calls a gradual technique of “little increments of upgrading my visa to a green card and so on. And now I’ve got full American citizenship and an American wife. I’m pretty entrenched here now.”
Trying ahead to his Kung Pao keep in San Francisco and strolling round a navigable metropolis, Kirshen laments Individuals’ dependence on vehicles. He queries, “How it is that no one has even thought about the possibility of a pedestrian?”
Doing gigs within the Midwest and staying in roadside motels, he’s peeved that he can’t get a fast meal at, say, Wendy’s, with out driving on an enormous freeway: “You can either walk the five miles down along the freeway, then cross the bridge and then walk five miles back, or you can get the world’s most unnecessary Uber for 90 seconds. You want to call them, and say, ‘Hey, if I just Venmo you some money, could you please throw the burger across every lane?’”
Kung Pao Kosher Comedy is at 5 and eight:30 p.m. Dec. 24-26 at Imperial Palace, 818 Washington St., San Francisco, with stay streams at 6 and eight:30 p.m. Pacific Normal Time. Tickets are $35-$96 at CityBoxOffice.com/KungPao. For extra data, go to www.KosherComedy.com.
