Photo Credit: Steve Ullathorne/Courtesy of Ashley Blaker
Comedy can unite comic and audience in their amusement and frustration at life’s trials and absurdities. Ashley Blaker accommodates that kind of empathy in his stand-up, but he can provide an education, too.
“I don’t think comedy always has to be 100% relatable. Audiences often like to learn something that they don’t know and be challenged a bit," says Blaker, an Orthodox Jew whose religious lifestyle forms much of the basis for the humor he will bring to the Daniel M. Soref Community Hall inside Whitefish Bay's Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center Saturday, Nov. 16, at 7 p.m.
Speaking of the ideals of public broadcasting in his United Kingdom homeland, to which he has contributed such radio fare as “Ashley Blaker's Goyish Guide to Judaism,” he states, “The values of the BBC are to entertain, inform and educate, and I like to think my shows fulfil that brief.”
Though Blaker has given goyim on multiple continents a rib-tickling perspective on living frum (being religiously observant in the whole of one’s life), his material speaks as well to a Jewish audience. “I have found over the past few years that the same material can actually work for both,” Blaker affirms. “It’s only a matter of language and making sure that everyone understands what I’m talking about.”
With that in mind, it might seem natural to think that Blaker may have had the most trouble making himself understood when he performs in countries where English isn’t the native language and he’s reliant on translators. The U.S., however, has proven to be one place with a greater communication challenge. "Language is so important, and it’s often performing for English-speakers that the most confusion arises. American English is very different,” Blaker explains and offers an example of those difficulties: “There’s no point in telling a joke the punchline of which is the word torch when I actually mean a flashlight. They mean very different things and the joke won’t work if I get it wrong.”
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If a shared language separated by differing nomenclature can be a hurdle for Blaker, working with fellow comedians of differing beliefs may be less of one. Earlier this year, he shared stages with a Kenyan-British Muslim comedian on the wittily-named Prophet Sharing tour. Of that experience in ecumenical funniness, Blaker enthuses, “It was great, and we had such incredibly mixed audiences. We made each other laugh all the time with our stories about our communities. What was amazing was finding out how similar we are and that so much of my material would work for the Muslim world too.”
But Blaker is happy that he can not only amuse but give a sense of uplift to his own people, too. “I definitely hear all the time that audience members have left my shows walking taller and feeling prouder to be Jewish. That is amazing and something I’m very proud of,” he says. But in acknowledgement of wanting to make as many people laugh as possible, he adds, “I think the aim of any comedian is to bring his or her material to the widest number of people. That is what I hope to do through whichever medium can best achieve that.”
Blaker has reached audiences through the medium of television, even though his wife and several children don’t have a set in their home. As for computers and radios and other electronics that spread the word about him, how does that comport with his commitment to remain frum? Keeping within his funny nature, Blaker confides, “Shhhhh... don’t tell anyone about that!”
But, feel free to tell everyone that Blaker is a gently hilarious guy responsible for bits such as this one on his son's circumcision:
