Photo: Michael Yo - Facebook
Michael Yo
Michael Yo
“Every person I interviewed, they were living their dream,” comedian Michael Yo recalls of his days as an entertainment reporter.
“I liked being an entertainment correspondent at that time," Yo, who began interviewing celebrities on radio before cable and broadcast TV outlets such as Chelsea Handler's E! series “Chelsea Lately” and CBS’ “The Tal” beckoned, continues “but it wasn’t my ultimate dream. I was interviewing people who were living out their ultimate dreams. So, I would walk away with great interviews but also the question ‘Are you doing what you want to do?’ When you’re hearing about everybody’s dreams all the time, it makes you reevaluate things."
His reevaluation became but one step into a comedy career for which he seems to have been destined. That destiny brings Yo to the main room at The Improv (at The Corners of Brookfield, 20110 Lower Union St.) for five shows from Thursday Sept. 22 to Sunday Sept. 24. As with so many comics, his family was a formative influence on his future in humor.
“Growing up, at family gatherings or reunions, my dad was center of attention. Everyone wanted to be around him. He had everyone laughing. He was the life of the party, but in normal life he wasn’t overly funny. It’s just when the time came to be in the spotlight, he was incredibly funny,” Yo says of his father. Of taking after his dad, he elaborates, “I’m kind of the same way. Day to day, I’m not cracking jokes, but when it’s time to go on stage, I find my voice and my comedy.”
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
His Background, His Hook
Though it doesn't encompass the whole of his act, Yo’s initial hook as a humorist is arguably his background of having an African American father and Korean mom. His first special’s title, “Blasian,” telegraphs both his lineage and subject of much of his act. That is, alongside his having a white wife and two children whose multicultural makeup has made the nickname he has given them—pandas—adorably appropriate. And Yo is nothing but truthful about his family and everything else about which he cracks wise.
“Truth is everything in comedy,” Yo declares. To his reckoning, his style of stand-up intrinsically relies on his veracity. “I could tell a story on stage, but people know if it’s not real. I’m not a one-two-punch type of comic. I’m a storyteller, so authenticity is important.” And the ethnic variety among the characters populating his stories is almost beside the point. “It really doesn’t matter the color of the players in my family because everyone can identify with somebody in my family, no matter what color they are.”
Physically standing up doesn’t matter as much to Yo in performance nowadays either. In his latest special, “I Never Thought,” he is seen upright, but no a stool. The reason for his uncommon position relates both to breaking away from his comedic coach and the effects of the coronavirus he suffered.
“Since my mentor is Jo Koy, I saw him being energetic and moving around the stage. So, for my first special I did that as well.” Yo remembers. “Then, when I started to stand-up again after the long haul COVID,” he says, mentioning one of more poignant leitmotifs of Thought, “I didn’t have enough energy to do that. So, I sat down and started telling jokes.”
Audience Interaction
His accommodation to fatigue became a revelation in performer-audience interaction. “What I noticed is the laughs got a lot bigger, and I felt the room really paying attention to every word. When I’m standing up and moving around, it doesn’t feel as intimate as sitting down. Seated, now you feel like it’s a conversation just between me and you. It doesn’t feel like a performance but more like I’m hanging out with you. So, it started because I was too weak after COVID to move around, and now it’s the way I do comedy.”
Whatever physical position Yo assumes, the multi-talented polymath choose comedy for the most satisfying thing he could do among the many things he can. "I love the immediacy of stand-up. There’s no ‘I wonder if that was good.’ You know as soon as you say it. I love that part.”
From the time before he became an early pandemic survivor, here Yo goes on about the effects of his playing Wyoming, his appreciation of different people groups and negotiating sleep for going out for the evening after age 35 ...
