Ramy Youssef is a Muslim and Arab-American creative who seems to always be creating something new. He’s an Emmy-nominated director. He’s starring in the new HBO film, Mountainhead. He's also the creator of a new animated series on Amazon Prime called, “#1 Happy Family USA.” And Youssef still found time for a nationwide stand-up comedy tour.
Youssef is performing in Milwaukee at Turner Hall this Sunday night, July 13. He talked with WUWM’s Jimmy Gutierrez about what the audience can expect as he takes the stage.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Youssef: I think the thing that I've really just been appreciating lately that I can't quite capture [with] stand-up is the value, more than ever, of just being together in person.
I think that so much of what's happening right now is creating a lot of isolation. And I think the experience of being at home, watching a lot of these things happen on a variety of screens — this show is going to be the opposite of that experience. It's a phone-free show, every night something different happens, because for me it’s about being really present in the room that I'm in.
And so it's such a great way to travel the country and to meet people and to just connect with people.
WUWM: It kind of reminds me of COVID [lockdown] when all of a sudden people remembered how important it was to connect, and the role that art and storytelling played.
And there's a thing that comedy can do, and storytelling in general can do, which is it allows us to get into [tough] topics – Islamophobia, Palestine, humanizing immigrants. What is the role that comics play in being able to center those conversations and to humanize those conversations?
Look, I think that a lot of what ends up happening in the type of discourse that we're dealing with is all very heady. I mean, literally with the news people are called like talking heads, right? And so I think that these spaces are just about pressing the emotional buttons.
And for me first and foremost, [my] show is just stupid, it's like dumb fun. It's about where we can still be thoughtful but also really stupid.
I'm always really careful with vulnerable subjects, but it's about trying to handle them with a sort of idiotic care and to try to, at least for an hour [at the show], it's gonna be a little less dreadful.
What have you seen from the people who leave your show — are they walking out a little lighter? Is this a place of healing? Is it a place of connection? And what is the importance in having spaces like this in times like these?
I'm kind of technically really in a position where it's not like I have to tour, [but] I wanna do it. I wanna do it because I personally need that in-person connection.
And so, I think that to not have that when so much of what we're dealing with right now are these kinds of big existential questions, you don't want to be thinking about them and sitting alone in your room, right?
And I do think that the ability to kind of get together with the reality of knowing, hey, unlike online, where you think you can kind of internet comment your way to some sort of solution, which doesn't happen, here, the goal is not about solving anything, it's just about being together. Getting the opportunity to just be really stupid and dumb.
