Anyone who doubts geography’s role in destiny should look to Ariel Elias.
Elias, 36, whose website describes her as a “Kentucky Jew,” is a purveyor of sharp, regularly hilarious observational comedy, a significant portion of which is rooted in her fish-out-of-water experience growing up Jewish in the very un-Jewish environment of Lexington, Kentucky. During a recent phone chat occasioned by her scheduled performance this Saturday night at Margate’s Dominic A. Polenta Performing Arts Center, she admitted she may not have become a comedian had she been raised in New York City or some other locale with a sizable Jewish community.
“I don’t know that I would have, because I think so much of my upbringing was explaining myself to people and feeling like an outsider because of being in such a minority,” she offered. “And not just the minority, but being part of a culture that a lot of people had no exposure to.
“So, when you’re an outsider, it gives you a different perspective on the world, and you can see a lot of absurdities and how funny things are. I think if I had grown up [in New York, where she and her husband currently reside], I don’t know that I would’ve been forced to have the same defense and survival mechanisms. So, I don’t think so.”
Planting career seeds
Generally, comedians recall being inspired in their youth by specific performers they saw on television or heard on records owned by their parents. But for Elias, discovering the stand-up world was a far more self-generated experience.
“I don’t know if there was a [specific influence], but I remember at my bat mitzvah getting laughs and loving that feeling,” she said, adding that response came as something of a surprise.
“I was an introverted kid. I wasn’t like the class clown or anything. I was like, quietly funny. I was really sarcastic and it would come out, I think, a lot more in my writing assignments than anywhere else. But in class I was just very quiet.
“I only had a couple of friends at school, and they would tell you I was funny. But if you asked anybody else, they would be like, ‘What?’”
Getting serious about making jokes
Elias was too young to seriously consider a life in comedy at age 13, but a decade later, being a standup comic began to emerge as a legitimate career option.
“When I was getting ready to graduate [from Tulane University in New Orleans], it was the recession, so I didn’t have any job prospects,” she explained. “I had been a saxophone player, but had jaw problems so I had to stop.
“I was trying to find another creative outlet. I was listening to comedy podcasts. It was the beginning of podcasts, and all these comedians would talk about how if you wanted to start doing standup, you would just have to go to an open-mic night and be really bad at it. And I thought, ‘Well, I could be bad at it.’
“I looked up ‘open mics near me,’ and there was one the next night. So, I wrote some stuff down and brought two of my roommates with me. In my mind at the time, it went well. But I’m sure if there had been video — which thank God there’s not — I would watch it and be like, ‘Oh God!’”
She quickly discovered that talking about her life was the ticket to success.
“I think the most popular comedy at the time was identity-based comedy,” she reasoned, “and so, the first jokes I wrote that I liked and that were getting good reception were the jokes that I wrote about growing up Jewish in Kentucky. And I realized that those were jokes that only I could tell.”
An unexpected career boost
From those humble beginnings, Elias steadily built a career through touring. But in October, 2022, things took an unexpected turn thanks to an incident that took place at a comedy club in Point Pleasant, Ocean County.
During her set, a woman in the audience, upset that Elias likely voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, headed for the exit. Her boyfriend followed, but as he left, he threw a full can of beer at Elias. Luckily, his aim wasn’t accurate. How Elias responded could have gone several ways, including totally ignoring what had transpired, or, perhaps experiencing a meltdown that may have seriously damaged her career.
Instead, Elias, whose debut special, “A Jewish Star,” is on YouTube, wordlessly picked up the can and chugged it. Not surprisingly, a video of the incident went viral, which led to an invitation to appear on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” It also raised her comedy-universe profile, as such heavy hitters as Patton Oswald Jim Gaffigan and Whitney Cummings took to social media to offer their support.
So, how did she have the presence of mind to react the way she did?
“There were so many things that kind of had to happen right,” she explained. “One is that I am, just by nature, very good at compartmentalizing my feelings almost to a fault. So, when I experience things, it takes me a long time to actually process my emotions around it. That helps in situations where somebody’s attacking you.”
She also credited an incident that occurred a couple weeks earlier in St. Louis.
“There was this woman in the crowd who was talking too much, and she was just being annoying. And she got to me and I was really mean to her really fast.
“Afterwards, I remember talking to the headliner a little bit and he gave me a good lesson: Don’t let them see that they’ve gotten to you.”
For more on Ariel Elias, go to arieleliascomedy.com
The Dominic A. Polenta Performing Arts Center is located at 7998 Monmouth Ave., Margate.
For tickets, go to eventbrite.com.
