Comedian Brad Williams promises high-energy performance at the Macon Auditorium
Ahead of his show at the Macon City Auditorium on Saturday, Brad Williams promised Maconites they will go through every single emotion before his set ends.
Williams, who begins his “Growth Spurt” tour on Thursday in Charlotte, will perform in Macon for the first time on Saturday. Best known for jokes which center around the fact that Williams is a person with dwarfism, he promises the crowd that “they can come and laugh and just walk out there feeling good about humanity and not like the sky is falling and we’re all going to die,” he told The Telegraph.
“You can expect a lot of energy,” Williams said regarding what people can expect from his upcoming show. “But I tell you one thing that you don’t have to expect ... is political jokes. I don’t do them.
“I don’t care who you vote for, I don’t care what your race is, who you lay down with, or who you pray to. I want there to be just a room where everyone can go and have the same thought at the exact same time,” Williams said.
Williams said he started making jokes as a defense mechanism, explaining that he could never be the quarterback, “but I can be the funny guy,” he said.
Williams said when he talks about himself, it disarms people and makes them open up to him. But his comedic career began at the age of 19, when Williams was brought on stage by Carlos Mencia, another comedian, after he made a joke about people with dwarfism.
Although the room burst into laughter after Mencia’s jokes, the crowd near Williams did not laugh, Williams said. Mencia noticed the gap in the crowd that didn’t laugh and saw Williams. Mencia wanted to ask him questions. He answered Mencia’s questions honestly, not meaning to be funny, but the crowd laughed.
“He asked me what I did for a living at the time,” said Williams. “Not a joke, I just said ‘I work at Disneyland,’ and I heard some people chuckle ... and I said ‘shut up, I’m not one of the seven,’ and that made them laugh again.”
“That’s when I thought, maybe this comedy thing might be a lot of fun,” Williams said.
But his jokes about dwarfism aren’t the only ones he tells on stage. Williams guides the audience through his outrageous autobiographical stories and takes them through a range of emotions. He wants to make the crowd laugh, think and cry, so when the crowd walks out, they think of the show as an experience.
“No greater compliment than someone who comes in, is kind of unfamiliar with the work and then enjoys it,” Williams said.
And, if you’ve come across bits and pieces of his past stand-up shows through Instagram, he encourages you to watch him live. Williams cites many of his past crowds who’ve visited him after the show to tell him that his live shows are better than watching on YouTube or Instagram.
“That’s where you experience the full spectrum of what I’m trying to do,” Williams said.
Tickets for Williams’ show on Saturday were still available Wednesday. And, apart from his show, he encourages Maconites to try his new hot sauce brand, which includes flavors such as Carolina reaper, ghost pepper, jalapeno, pineapple habanero and mango ginger habanero sauce, which is his favorite.
