Theater of the absurd

Kurt Braunohler often describes his mission in life as “inserting absurdity into strangers’ lives to make the world a better place.” The comedian raised $6,000 on Kickstarter to hire a skywriter to write “How do I land?” across the Los Angeles sky. The resulting images went viral.

Braunohler was born in Grand Rapids, but his family moved away from Michigan when he was 2. He makes his first trip to Lansing Thursday for a show at Mac’s Bar. With last year’s demise of Connxtions Comedy Club, Lansing has no true comedy club. But Fusion Shows has recently tried to fill some of that void, bringing Kyle Kinane to the Loft in May and Braunohler to Mac’s Bar. Braunohler has no reservations about bringing his show to a music venue.

Braunohler, whose standup routine ranges from observational humor to stories of injecting bizarre humor into everyday situations, has difficulty pinning down his style of comedy.

“I always find that a difficult question to answer. It’s like describing to someone what you look like,” Braunohler said. “Your idea of yourself is probably pretty different from what other people see you as. And that’s a fascinating thing about standup. You’re trying to figure out how people view you when you walk on stage and how to use that. It’s an interesting mirror.”

Braunohler, who was raised in New Jersey, moved to LA a few years ago. But the bi-coastal comedian has never felt the need to tailor his act to Midwestern audiences when he tours.

“I don’t think its about the location, it’s more about if that city supports a comedy scene,” Braunohler said. “For instance, I went to Lexington, Ky., last month, which is a tiny town. When you drive in, it looks like the saddest place in the world. But they happen to have a pretty good comedy scene, guys who are doing weekly shows there, so they’ve generated this audience that is a very comedy-literate audience, and it was an amazing show.”

(Editor’s note: The “tiny town” of Lexington is roughly the same size of Lansing in terms of population. Metro Lexington boasts 25,000 more residents than Metro Lansing.)

In addition to a busy touring schedule, Braunohler also hosts his own podcast, “The K Ohle with Kurt Braunohler,” is a frequent guest on Comedy Central’s “@ midnight,” has a variety of TV and film appearances in the works and maintains an active social media presence. And while outlets like podcasts and social media have opened up more opportunities for comedians, it has also created a crowded field of contenders for the public’s attention.

“It’s great that there’s all these shows and podcasts. But now everyone in America has a podcast. That’s a statistic I read recently,” Braunohler joked. “You have to constantly be generating content as an artist. So it’s good in that aspect. But in another aspect, there’s just so much noise. Sometimes there’s a difficult signal-tonoise ratio.”

But even with all the competition, Braunohler said he owes much of his success to these outlets.

“Most people come to my shows because they’ve either listened to my podcast or have seen me on ‘@midnight’ or are familiar with my earlier show, ‘Bunk!’ that was on IFC a few years ago,” he said. “I think there’s more avenues, and it’s good.”

Even with all of his projects, performing standup comedy on stage is still the most rewarding thing for Braunohler.

“The main thing that’s exciting — that I’m happy I suffered through the years of rejection to at least get to the point where I can hold a microphone and speak into it — is that I can always make something,” he said. “It doesn’t require a big budget and it doesn’t require anybody’s approval. It just requires a room with people in it and a microphone. That’s such a minimal requirement to make something, these days. I’m very lucky to have that as the way I make my living.”

Kurt Braunohler

With Dan Currie and Mark Roebuck 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 10 $15/$12 adv. Mac’s Bar 2700 E. Michigan Ave., Lansing (517) 484-6795, macsbar.com