Ian Abramson’s Comedy for Feeling and Thinking

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Photo: Ian Abramson - ianabramson.com

Ian Abramson

Ian Abramson

Some comedians want to contemplate the world about them. Ian Abramson sees his profession differently. 

“Philosophers think about what is important, and what is getting in our way. Comedians make fun of what’s important and then trip over it,” he says. 

Abramson knows from tripping, among other physical and verbal ways to elicit laughter. He brings them to The Laughing Tap (706 B S. 5th St.) for three shows on Friday March 31 and Saturday April 1. 

As to what things comedy should do, he offers, “I think that good comedy makes you feel something in the moment and think about it a little later. Hopefully that sentence makes you feel confused right now, and a little later you can think about how confusing it is." 

The physical aspect of his act, as Abramson tells it, extends experiences from before he became a comic. “People have been laughing at my body for much longer than I’ve done comedy.” Elaborating further, he says, “Physical comedy feels like a playground for me, and there’s nothing funnier than a grown man getting hurt on an empty playground.” 

Spoofing SNL

When actual playgrounds were left barren by COVID-19 lockdowns and school closures in 2020, Abramson found a place of recreation in “Saturday Night Live.” The unauthorized facsimile of an SNL episode he oversaw gave him a high viral profile while the show he spoofed was on pandemic-forced hiatus.

“That was such a whirlwind. It was messy, and chaotic but so fun to do. To make props, write a bunch, and then get to show videos that others were making,” Abramson recalls. His Twitch-streamed TV show got him pondering what to do for a follow-up. “It made me think a lot about the sort of projects I want to build in the future. Now that it is the future, I’ve been trying to chase the spirit of that, and also get a flying car.” Traveling like George Jetson might not yet be possible, but it may be less risky to Abramson’s health than making an unapproved episode of a television institution could have been to his wealth.

“I was just glad they didn’t send a cease-and-desist letter, although if Lorne (Michaels, SNL’s creator) had signed it, I probably could have put it on eBay,” Abramson surmises. The venture that could have landed him in a world of legal hurt hasn’t, however, dimmed his desire to act more. “I hope I get to act more, write more, and one day go to space. I feel grateful for the amount of acting I’ve been able to do so far, and fingers crossed I get to do more in the future,” he says. In the meanwhile, “Stand-up is the core, it’s the thing I’ve spent the most time doing, and I love it. 

“I love getting to try and discover new ways to approach it, or try out something I don’t usually see,” Abramson remarks on the experimental nature of his act, including the uniqueness of his humor’s physicality. Furthermore, “I’d say that I like to take chances and try to do something different. I’m not a comedian that makes fun of the audience even if they look really, really stupid. In stand-up you can start making stuff up off the top of your head, but in improv you’re not allowed to ask if people in the front row are dating.”

Here Abramson indulges his surrealist side, equivalents of physical comedy one-liners and some potentially literally shocking crowd work on “Conan” ...

... and one of his “Saturday Night Quarantine” skits, wherein Toonces The Driving Cat, sans green screen, attends an AA meeting...