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Comedian Dat Phan brings
laughs to Lunar New Year celebration
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Vietnamese music played and an array of color was cast on a screen for the crowd to view as they anticipated the entrance of comedian Dat Phan on Sunday. The event was scheduled to celebrate Lunar New Year, a Vietnamese cultural tradition that starts the new lunar period with a fresh and positive beginning.
The evening opened with traditional female dancers called Chiec Ao Ba Ba. Then other dancers, called Mua Lan-Lion Dancers, who were dressed in ornate costumes such as dragons, came on stage. One dancer with a mask interacted with the audience. The performance was exhilarating, and then the action shifted to humor. Tommy Darrell, a very funny comedian from Ohio, hit the stage.
After Darrell’s set, Dat Phan finally appeared. His comfort level with the audience was obvious, as he had most members in the palm of his hand. He started by telling onlookers how he was down South and that someone mistook him for a Mexican. He joked about cultural differences and goofed on William Hung. He made jokes about himself and generated comedy from his upbringing, constantly mimicking his mother’s accent and allowing the audience to be wrapped up in his hilarious routine.
Phan led into his experience with dating and continued to draw jokes about his ethnic background. He imitated how his father moans as he smokes, and eventually detailed his recent success in show business. Phan talked of movie and television roles and mentioned how he won last year’s comedian reality television show, “Last Comic Standing.” Phan caused an explosion of laughter from the audience when describing his experience with potty training a child and continued comically about the cultural differences between Asian and Anglo-Americans.
Phan spoke of growing up in a large Vietnamese family, being one of only two boys in a family with ten children. He reminisced about growing up in San Diego, attending a two-year college, and then realizing that stand-up comedy was his calling. He moved to Hollywood, and when his mother visited him, she didn’t realize that it was a gay neighborhood.
When the stand-up comedy portion of Dat Phan’s performance ended, he put on a video that portrayed the transformation that had taken place in his life within the last couple of years. It illustrated how Phan appeared on “The Tonight Show” and Colin Quinn’s cable program, “Tough Crowd.” After the video, there was a question and answer session, where Phan became emotional and deep.
He answered his questions from the heart, and when an audience member asked if show business was worth it, he said he would do it all again without hesitation.
Thom Garzone
Culture Writer