Over the past year, comedian Sean Patton has toured nearly nonstop all over the world — including stays in Asia and the U.K. — starting with a trip to the Melbourne Comedy Festival in Australia, which he notes didn’t actually feel all that foreign.
“Yeah, they drive on the opposite side of the road and they have some odd eating habits and they drink like they’re trying to prove something,” he says. “But ultimately it feels very American and very similar. They’re also very tolerant there.”
And now, Cincinnati audiences will get a chance to see the comic perform at Go Bananas, with showtimes slated Thursday through Sunday.
Known for his dry and sometimes dark humor, Patton’s routines have been featured on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Conan, TruTV’s Comedy Knockout and Comedy Central’s This is Not Happening and Live at Gotham, among others.
Originally from New Orleans, he says he moved to New York City and then Los Angeles to pursue his career in comedy. With fellow comic Jay Larson, he returned to NOLA to film an episode of The Best Bars in America, which ran for two seasons on Esquire Network.
“Jay had never been to New Orleans, and he was like, ‘How are we even in the United States? I feel like we’re in another time and in Europe.’ It’s a beautiful city and it has that Southern charm,” Patton says. “You really don’t have to do anything, you can just walk around and have drinks, go to cafés and restaurants and you’re entertained.”
Though he relocated, the comedian notes that the stand-up scene in the Big Easy has taken off recently — with shows nearly every night and a theater dedicated solely to stand-up, sketch and improv. While many of his stories are drawn from his New Orleans upbringing, others delve into personal experiences, with topics ranging from living with obsessive-compulsive disorder to more crass material, like playing a marijuana clarinet.
“It’s helpful and also hurtful that I try and stay away from topics I know other comedians might go after, which is a lot,” he says. “My material comes through experiences and from places people maybe aren’t looking.”
Of that, he says touring in different parts of the world has helped cement his approach to comedy. Last fall, he toured China, with stops in Shanghai, Beijing and smaller cities like Chengdu. But it came with a bit of culture shock.
“It was interesting culturally, because it really felt foreign,” he says. “When you go to Europe, particularly England, it takes you about a day to say, ‘Oh, this all makes sense.’ You get used to it and roll with it, which makes it more interesting.”
In China, that process took longer. He says he didn’t have the same freedoms that he has in the West in terms of what he could joke about.
“That was the thing I liked the least about being over there,” he says. “Over here you’ll talk to a friend that reads a lot of blacklisted websites or goes down a lot of rabbit holes. They talk about how America is losing freedom of speech, and I say to them, ‘Go spend a week in China where they actually don’t have freedom of speech.’”
For instance, he notes that before comedians go onstage in China, they’re given topics they can’t talk about, which include Tibet, Taiwan and Tiananmen Square. Since material has to be reviewed beforehand, he says the sense of improvisation doesn’t exist as it does elsewhere.
When he performed in Melbourne, critic Steve Bennett noted his New Orleans drawl and laid-back demeanor, writing that Patton creates an “intimate atmosphere” in his work.
“At the risk of evoking the Louisiana stereotypes he hates, you can envisage him telling this story on the porch, nursing a bourbon as the sun sets on another humid day in the swamps,” the review reads.
Ultimately, as Patton notes in his bio, he wants to share himself with audiences — whomever and wherever they are.
Sean Patton performs at Go Bananas (8410 Market Place Lane, Montgomery) Thursday-Sunday. More info/tickets: gobananascomedy.com.
This article appears in Feb 13-20, 2019.