Traveling on a tour bus through the heat of Arkansas is the love that Kurtis gives to his comedy. “This tour has been a long time in the making,” Kurtis explains of his current North American tour. “Obviously, because COVID slowed everything down. It’s been incredible. It's my first theater tour, which has been f--king nuts. Like, playing in 100-year-old theaters, playing in brand new theaters…”
For Kurtis, performing in theaters is completely different than performing in comedy clubs, which is what he's used to. In comedy clubs, comedians get negative hecklers and an abundance of audience interaction, which often spurs viral social media videos. However, in a larger theater crowd, hecklers are mostly positive — and, as you can imagine, it's only amplified when you have such a large fanbase. “There's people that are just excited, and sometimes I feel bad being like, ‘Shut up,’” Kurtis jokes.
“These are the jokes that I've spent the last two years really working on to make sure that they're really good, and then there's a way that I want to say them, and there's a timing to it. When people are yelling stuff, it obviously throws that off.”
But he’s handled his fair share of hecklers, which is why playing in a theater to positive shouts is so different. “I've had to deal with the other side of bad hecklers when I first started doing comedy. I was doing open mics, so I will take this form literally every time over the other types of heckles that I used to get when I started doing comedy,” he says.
That’s not the only thing that’s different about this tour for Kurtis. He’s also traveling around doing comedy with his best friends, Jacob Sharpe and Dean Hebscher.
“To be on a tour bus with them together, it's f--king crazy. Every day, whenever we're about to do a show, it's crazy. And the crowds have been incredible. Like, so much fun. The people we've gotten to meet have been so kind and just excited," he tells us. "It's just been a dream come true so far.”
And for those international fans, Kurtis is looking towards hopefully touring in Australia and other countries in the next few years.
