New York-based comedian and writer Natan Badalov will be bringing his one-man show — and his unique perspective on his Jewish identity — to Sunken Bus Studios in Pittsburgh this Saturday.
Badalov, an Uzbek-American, debuted his one-man show “Connect the Dots” at the New York Comedy Festival last November. Now he’s taking it on the road with a stop in Pittsburgh this week.
The show deals with Badalov’s difficulties growing up in the American Jewish community as a Bukharian Jew. After emigrating to the United States in the early 1990s, Badalov grew up in New York City, immersed in Jewish education and community — but he still often felt like an outsider.
“I was raised in an American Jewish community, I went to a yeshiva, and it’s mostly Ashkenazi American Jews. It’s kind of a different thing culturally,” Badalov said.
Bukharian Jews, who come from Central Asian countries like Uzbekistan, are a small minority in the Jewish diaspora, while Ashkenazi Jews make up the majority of the current American Jewish population.
This caused a conflict for younger Badalov while he was in search of a religious and cultural identity and didn’t always feel accepted.
His show, “Connect the Dots,” started out with him examining his feelings about his mother wanting him to get married to a Jewish person, Badalov said. “It’s a pretty common immigrant experience. … I think that’s probably one of the most common pressures to get from immigrant family. Marriage is like a goal or an accomplishment, something like that.”
He found himself looking to his past to examine why the prospect made him uneasy. “It kind of caused me to have to come to grips with the things that I went through in my upbringing. … I was trying to figure out why I was apprehensive towards dating Jewish people, and it wasn’t really about Jewish people.”
As he’s gotten older, Badalov has found himself more able to forge his own path toward identity within the context of Judaism. “When you’re an adult, you choose where and when you want to be for most of your life.”
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“When you’re a kid and you go through a religious school, there’s just so much attached to that religion,” he said. On the advice of a friend — and fellow Bukharian Jew — he has started to spend time in the Jewish community “hanging out” and doing more secular activities.
His show is about looking back at his childhood and relationships, but also about forming more positive associations.
While comedy is a factor in helping him “figure himself out,” Badalov balked at the idea of calling it “therapy.” That’s this current stereotype that comics use — ‘the stage is therapy’ — when, if they’re honest, the stage never solved anything. Never did and never will. If I talk about being broke for an hour, after I’m offstage, I’m still broke. It doesn’t really change how much I joke about it,” he said.
“To some extent it is about me opening up,” he added.
During his adolescence, he enjoyed getting to “hang out” and “talk crap” with his peers, which he sees as a precursor to his eventual work in comedy. After college, he spent a lot of time going to stand-up shows and open mics to watch other comics before he started trying it for himself.
He has written two web series — “Park West” and “Heartbreakers” — and appeared at multiple comedy festivals. Comedy is still a part-time gig for Badalov, but he’s hoping to perform “Connect the Dots” as much as he can.
“It’s always just trying to work hard and book as many gigs as you can to try to … fill the calendar, gain a following,” he said.
“Connect the Dots” will be performed at Sunken Bus Studios in Ross this Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Comedian Andrew Steiner will open. To learn more and get tickets, visit sunkenbus.com
Alexis Papalia is a TribLive staff writer. She can be reached at apapalia@triblive.com.