Nemr Abou Nassar is widely known as “Lebanon’s
King of Comedy.” By far the most famous comedian in his country, Nassar —
who’s often billed as simply “Nemr” — regularly performs for crowds all
over the world. He’s recorded five standup specials, been on the Axis
of Evil Comedy Tour and graced the cover of Rolling Stone Middle East. His show A Stand Up Revolution
was a ratings juggernaut for the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation, but
ended after one season beecause of incompatibility with the network.
While his notoriety has spread across the Middle East and into Europe,
Nassar is still being introduced to American audiences. Eschewing
overtly religious or political material, Nassar aims to bridge cultural
divides with humor.

Westword caught up with Nemr
ahead of his one-night-only special headlining engagement at Comedy
Works South on October 12 to discuss his comedic influences,
 introducing himself to American audiences and finding unity in
laughter.

Westword: Will there be your first trip to Denver?

Nemr Abou Nassar: Yes, sir. Never been before. I’m very excited, to be honest.

After
fleeing civil war with your family, you spent part of your childhood in
the States. I know you were pretty young, but do you have any memories
of this period?

Of the time I spent in America, you
mean? I left America when I was eleven, so I definitely have a lot of
impressions of that time because it was very formative for me. But if
you’re asking if I have any memories of the civil war in Beirut, I was
two, so obviously I don’t. But I remember when I did get to San Diego.
My earliest memories are not happy ones, I can tell you that much. When I
think back on it, and I’ve been asked to often, it feels like a bit
blocked off. Not like a trauma or anything, but I could tell that my
parents weren’t happy. When you’re around a household that doesn’t have
happiness, when there’s a lot of stress, it kind of makes things dark
for everyone else around, you know what I’m saying?

Do you remember your first encounter with standup comedy?

That’s
one of my earliest memories. When I was four or five years old, I
remember seeing them laughing happily, and I discovered it was because
they were watching this thing called standup comedy. I mean, they were
laughing a lot. And so they started recording every HBO comedy special
on VHS, and I would watch them, memorize them and recite them. When I
was a kid, maybe like five years old, I used to always say that I when I
grow up I’m either gonna be a Ninja Turtle or a standup comic. And to
be honest, I still haven’t given up on the Ninja Turtle part. It was
ironic, but if the civil war hadn’t driven us away from Lebanon, if I’d
never come to the U.S. and gotten such a strong connection to the
positive emotions it inspired, I don’t know if I’d be doing standup
comedy.

Who were some of your early inspirations?

Dana Carvey. The first comedy set I ever memorized was from Dana Carvey. And I would go around and recite it to everyone.

Is that the one with “Chopping Broccoli?”

No,
it was before that. He used to host a show on HBO where he would bring
up other comics; he’d open with jokes and then do these bits. I remember
one that he did was about George Bush Sr. when he went to Japan and
threw up on their prime minister. It’s a hysterical bit, because from
the perspective of the Japanese people, this projectile-vomiting
president is like Godzilla. It’s a classic bit that only Dana Carvey
could nail. I watched tons of other comics, too, but I was too young for
anyone else to make an impression.

A couple years later
on, when we went back to Beirut, I found my mom’s stash of cassette
tapes from when she was a kid in London. She’d recorded Woody Allen,
Steve Martin, even some Lenny Bruce. She had this whole stash, and so I
started listening to them. I had never known that Woody Allen was a
ferociously funny standup and a hysterical storyteller. So that was my
education. In terms of the comedy world, that’s where it started, with
those kind of comics. They’re who I consider the pillars of the
industry, you know? Steve Martin, Lenny Bruce — she even had some early
George Carlin. Listening to that stuff when you’re young and really into
it,  that’s the comedy world I knew. And it developed from there. When
the Internet became a thing, I started getting easier access to comics
like Chris Rock, Pablo Francisco, Dave Chappelle, Lewis Black and all
these other comics, and they started making a big impression on me. And
that was pretty much it. When I did standup comedy in the Middle East,
there were no comedians, not even any comedy clubs to draw from. My
comedy inspiration was all from videos and cassette tapes. So we built
the scene. The first time I ever stepped into a comedy club with other
comics was in 2009, when I had already been doing this for six years.

So did you just go straight to big theaters?

I
did, because in 2001, I used to perform and host concerts. So I started
doing comedy in that setting, but I didn’t go professional until like
2006. That’s when I started charging people to come see me. So in a way,
I did spend five or six years developing my craft just like any amateur
comic would, but the stages were always very unconventional. I’d always
shove myself into other events, like a concert or some other kind of
event, where I’d host in order to a) practice hosting and b) do comedy
in front of people. It wasn’t until people really started to like me
from those gigs that I could announce my own show and have people come.
About a year after that, I was doing theaters. I had to grow up in front
of the crowd, in a way. I didn’t get to retire to a small club and work
on fifteen minutes here and there; I had an hour or an hour and a half
every time, but it was worth it. I think it made me a unique kind of
comic with a unique set of skills.

I’d imagine those concert crowds really make you work for it. They want music.

Oh,
God, yeah. I had to learn crowd manipulation on an epic scale. When
you’re talking to a bunch of Lebanese or Arab people, you realize that
they’re not impressed by anything. You have to be really, really spot-on
to even get them to listen. So it was never something that came easily,
but it made me better.

I’ve noticed that in your specials, you really do put on quite the
show. You’ve had dancers and models; I saw a video where you were doing
crowd work with a vocoder. Is that showmanship something that came from
performing for such big crowds?

Every time I do a special, I like to follow a theme. When I did Epic,
which is what that vocoder clip is from, the theme was to do a bunch of
things on that epic scale. I wanted it to have the feel of a spectacle,
to make people say, “I’ve never seen anything like this.”  And if
you’ve seen that whole special, I open up with a band, I play guitar —
it was clearly more than a typical comedy show. A year later, when I did
Victorious Secret, I brought out all these Victoria’s Secret
models because it was a fun play on words and for every show, I like to
have a little something extra. It wasn’t until the special that I’m
currently touring, which is just called Nemr, that I considered going
back to the roots of standup. I walked on stage without music and walked
off stage without music, just putting all the focus on my material. I
just like to experiment every time and take the crowd with me on a
journey, so I’ve always done something unique and special. The fact that
I didn’t do anything big this time was ironically very unique and
special for me and everybody there.

So is there much of a comedy tradition in Lebanon?

Standup,
no, but we’ve always had sketch comedy and TV comedy. Troupes, I’d call
them, where you have four or five comics doing scenes together. That
was there already, but it was all political and religious. When I came
along, I was the first — and probably still only — performer in the
region who wasn’t all about political and religious issues. I’m just
funny.

So is that a deliberate thing, or do you just not find that sort of commentary funny?

It’s
a very deliberate thing. I feel like dealing directly with politics and
religion can be very weak and short-sighted. So, if I make jokes today
about Donald Trump, that’s easy. You get what I’m saying? What I’ll do
is make jokes about the underlying reasons why a man like that might get
elected. Which I think is much more difficult and much more dangerous.
Now, take that logic and apply it to the Middle East. I won’t name
specific politicians or make fun of Islam, Christianity or Judaism. But I
will discuss how stupid it is that religion could divide us. Things
like that are the underlying reasons why certain politicians are so
popular. Jokes like that can actually be a lot more dangerous, but
you’re kind of like a ninja because no one realizes what you’re doing.
The reason that I do that is because I want to get my message across and
I don’t want people to be turned away when I start talking. When you
keep it neutral, you’re actually filling up a room with people from all
over, from different backgrounds, different ethnicities and uniting
them. I used to have a stamp on all my posters that said, “No politics,
no religion, one love” — and that’s what brought a lot of people
together. I think everyone was hungry for entertainment that brought
people together instead of dividing them up.

Do you think you’d have managed to draw crowds of up to 5,000 fans if you hadn’t taken that approach?

No,
no, no. A show with 5,000 people is so huge it’s scary; it makes every
other show look weak. But think about it: The entire population of
Lebanon is four million. A crowd of 5,000 in a population of four
million? Per capita, in the U.S. that would be like doing a show for
300,000 people. It was big enough to send shockwaves throughout the
entire country. A guy who might be our next president was at the show;
so were ministers and politicians. It’s become a thing; it was one of
the biggest events in the country, if not the whole region. Nobody’s
done a show for 5,000 people anywhere in the region.

Do you mean standup specifically, or music too?

If,
for instance, Drake comes to Yas Island in Abu Dhabi, I’m not going to
be able to compete with that. But those shows bring in maybe 10,000 or
12,000, with huge sponsorships and tons of promotion from the industry.
My shows don’t have sponsors or anything. It’s literally a grassroots
underground movement that has become so mainstream because it reflects
the real will of the people, which is to be united and have a great
time. To reject all the extremism and hate so that they can just enjoy
being together. That’s really what it’s about.

When
you perform in the States, how do you adjust from being the most famous
comic in Lebanon to working smaller, club-sized crowds who may not have
even heard of you?

Yeah, nobody knows who the hell I
am — especially when I first started here. But that was the main reason I
came out here. I felt like I had done everything there is to do in the
Middle East. And I always used to do small venues in the Middle East to
keep my skills sharp. To me, standup is like a martial art: You’ve gotta
keep training, gotta hit that dojo. So with the skill level I had, I
was afraid of staying in the Middle East. People there adore me, and I
love them for that, but when I get up on stage, they already know what
they’re there for. There are jokes where I don’t even have to finish my
sentence before they start applauding. I want to always get better, I
want to be the greatest ever. And that’s not going to happen if things
are too easy.

So
in a way, now that I’ve conquered the Middle East by uniting people, I
think we need to unite two parts of the world that couldn’t be further
apart right now. So I figured I’d come here and stand up in front of
American crowds to do what I do best, and it’s been going great.
Americans, Canadians, I was just in England on September 25, and it’s
really been resonating. It wasn’t difficult, it was humbling, and that’s
exactly what I came out for. I’d walk onto that stage realizing that I
had to work from scratch. I had to make sure these people found me funny
without any background. And I wouldn’t make it easy for myself. I’d
tell people to introduce me by saying, “This guy’s from the Middle East;
his name’s Nemr” — and that’s it. I don’t want you to list my credits, I
don’t want them to know anything. I want to figure out how to stand in
front of a crowd completely naked and walk away being their champion.

How do you build an act when everybody recognizes you at the dojo, to continue your martial-arts metaphor?

What
I’ll do in Lebanon is I’ll book small shows at clubs that are really,
really classy, like 400- or 500-seaters, and work out my material in
front of those people. When I started touring around the Middle East,
I’d work out material in other countries — like if I’m in Jordan, I’ll
try two new jokes. Now that I’m doing club shows in the U.S., I’m
working out material constantly. My bits are so much better, the
material I’m writing is more on point. I really did level up; that was
the whole point of coming here.

Sure, you gotta come to Shaolin.

Yeah,
to keep with the dojo analogy, I’m a great martial artist, but I’m not
the best. So I came to fight with the best. In the Middle East, a lot of
the time my competition was war. I’d be doing shows when ISIS was
bombing. And if there’s not bombing, the entertainment value is so high
I’d be competing with people like Snoop Dogg. Now I’m competing with
other comics, which is a whole new challenge. It’s very unique, but it’s
narrow. You have to be good. You have to be. If you’re good, people
will show up. If you’re not, they won’t. It’s that simple.

Have
you encountered much censorship in your career? Beirut is pretty
cosmopolitan, but what about more conservative places like Riyadh?

Saudi
Arabia, sure. Kuwait more than anywhere. In Kuwait, you can’t even say
that you wanted to ask a girl out because there’s no such thing as a
girlfriend. So I would encounter censorship, but at the end of the day
it was nothing crazy. The censorship is mainly political. If you’re
going to speak out against the king of a country you’re visiting, yeah,
you can’t do that. But I don’t talk about politics anyway. Why am I
going to go into a country and make fun of their leadership? Like, who
am I? I can make fun of Lebanon every day of the week, but if a Saudi
Arabian comes into Lebanon and starts criticizing my country, I’m gonna
be like, “Bro, shut the fuck up.” That’s a natural response, even in
America. If I came up on stage and started making fun of the U.S., it
would seem hostile. If you’re respectful, you won’t have problems. I
mean, sometimes they’ll ask me not to cuss and I won’t, and there’ll be a
huge backlash from a crowd that wanted to hear me cuss. Especially in
more conservative areas, like Saudi Arabia; they want the dirtiest,
filthiest shows possible. It would shock you. It’s ridiculous. I keep
saying this: All these countries in the Middle East, the ruling parties
and the people on the ground couldn’t be further apart. It’s night and
day. When I do the shows in Saudi, they’d be illegal. We’d be doing the
show without the permission from the government. We’d do them on foreign
ground, like a consulate, and 3,000 people would show up through word
of mouth, without any marketing — which shows you how much hunger there
was for genuine entertainment. And they would sit among each other, men
and women, and it would be like a celebration. Then when they leave the
venue, the women put on their hijab and walk with their male sponsor
back to the car they can’t drive and go home. The reality on the ground
is very different than how it’s been portrayed.

A lot of American people view the whole region as a sort of monolith.

I’ll
do interviews on the radio here, and to say that people are misinformed
is an understatement. But at the end of the day, I would be just as
misinformed as they were if I was an American talking to an Arab. If
we’re not going to communicate a different message about the Middle
East, that it’s actually a really great place with beautiful ancient
cities and rich culture, how the hell are you going to know? Can I
really expect you to spend your time googling Beirut, Lebanon and
navigating through the political confusion of the Israel/Palestine
conflict to understand Saudi Arabia’s importance to OPEC? Really? You
have a family, you’re married, you’ve got kids. You have a life, a
career, deadlines to meet. I have to expect you to go above and beyond
all that to learn about a country you barely heard about in school, that
hasn’t sent a movie or even a single entertainer to reach out and make
it seem friendly?

I think I’m the first Lebanese artist
from the past forty years who’s actually targeted American audiences.
I’m also American, so it comes naturally to me, but I think that says a
lot. It’s partly our fault that ISIS has come to define one of the most
ancient cultures in the world. The Phoenicians traded with American
Indians over 2,000 years before Christopher Columbus and invented the
alphabet we use today. It’s been a center of religion, sciences,
mathematics for centuries — and today we’re defined by 17,000 people
called ISIS. Whose fault is that? As an Arab, I’m telling you that it’s
not Americans’ fault. That’s why I want to get famous over here, so
people will have seen my comedy and they’ll no longer have that excuse
to be misinformed. Because I’ve reached out, I’ve put it out there. I’ve
sat down with very racist people who’ve told me awful things to my
face, but at the end of our sit-down, we’re hugging each other. I’ve met
a lot of angry, racist people who usually turn out to be scared and
misinformed. That’s a dangerous combination, but the way to fight that
isn’t by saying “You’re a racist, fuck off.” If you try to understand
their fears, you can change their perspective.

Like an ambassador.

Yeah,
it’s a responsibility. And it’s not a responsibility toward Arabs, or a
responsibility toward Americans. It’s a responsibility to the world.
People are dying, man. I come from the thick of it. There are people
losing their lives because of ideological misconceptions. It’s infecting
the world. At the end of the day, these wars cannot be won with
weapons. They have to be won in the mind. So I’m an ambassador for
myself, for my children, my friends and family. I know that we have the
power to change the world because of what we did in Lebanon. ISIS
couldn’t infiltrate our spirit because we had spent the last fifteen
years strengthening it. We were part of that; we united people and
spread a powerful message. If I could do a show for 50,000 or 60,000
people from all different backgrounds and ethnicities and get them all
laughing together, we’ve just done something no one ever thought
possible. And that’s my goal.

See Nemr Abou Nassar at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, October 12, at Comedy Works South. Tickets are $30 to $35 on the Comedy Works events page.