Out comedian Eddie Sarfaty is an insightfully funny writer and entertainer, having appeared on “The Today Show,” Logo’s “Wisecrack” and “The Joy Behar Show,” to name a few.
But Sarfaty, who sometimes refers to himself as “ChuckleF**cker,” can also teach you how to be funny on stage, if you are so inclined.
Besides being a successful comedian and author, Sarfaty is on the faculty of The Theatre Lab in Washington, D.C., and New York University, where he teaches courses in stand-up and comedy writing.
And really, who wouldn’t want to learn the finer points of humor from “Professor ChuckleF**cker”?
Sarfaty said he never envisioned himself as a comedy instructor but some people who caught his show had other ideas.
“The writing and the teaching sort of came out of stand-up,” he said. “I was doing a show in Provincetown one summer and some guys approached me who run The Theatre Lab in Washington, D.C., and said it would be great to offer a stand-up workshop. I’m in D.C. all the time because I have family there. So that’s how that started and it’s just taken off.”
His book, “Mental: Funny in the Head,” came about through a comic friend of his, Bob Smith.
“[Smith] referred someone to me to write an essay for a book they were putting together. It ended up getting well-received and led to a book deal,” Sarfaty explained. “So I came to all of those later than standup, which has been great. It is hard to manage all three but you take your work where you can get it.”
Sarfaty said he was somewhat nervous to teach at first, but he hit his stride and soon started learning a lot about himself, both as a teacher and a performer.
“I started to freak out a little bit thinking, Who am I to tell anyone what to do?” he said. “Then a friend of mine said, ‘Well, Eddie, you know more than people who don’t know anything.’ And yes, there were things that I’ve been learning as you do it. Because the people you work with, it’s not like teaching math all the time where it’s the same thing. You’re getting people who have different ideas and different levels of ability. So I’m always learning and I’ve learned a lot of stuff where I actually end up thinking, Oh, maybe I should use that kind of approach to my material. Talking to people about how to approach writing a joke and having to articulate that made me realize how much I do know. So that was really helpful.”
Lately, Sarfaty has started to push his writing into new territory, as he is currently in the middle of writing a novel — which has nothing to do with comedy.
“It’s the first thing I’ve written that is fiction and not comedic,” he said. “I discovered that I’m really good at that kind of stuff too. It’s fun to make up a whole book out of your head. I’m about halfway through the book. It’s such a big undertaking. My first book was 10 essays, but trying to make a book that’s 250 pages and cohesive, sometimes I feel like I bit off more that I can chew. But then I think if you can do stand-up comedy, I can do this.”
But the stage is where it all began for Sarfaty, and he will be coming to New Hope April 22 to make people laugh about his own experiences, and maybe offer some rants about current events.
“I’m inspired to talk about Trump but I haven’t figure out how to make my jokes anything but furiously angry,” he said. “So I’m trying to figure it out. With some audiences, that can work, but the anger can overwhelm the joke and I don’t want to do that.”
Eddie Sarfaty performs 7:30 p.m. April 22 at The Rrazz Room, 6426 Lower York Rd., New Hope. For more information or tickets, call 888-596-1027 or visit http://www.keeplaughing.com/.