Katt Williams brings the laughs to Macon on latest tour

Known for his animated performances and quick wit, comedian Katt Williams will be bringing his latest tour, “Conspiracy Theory,” to Macon tonight to further his goal of continuing a national conversation about the absurd current events filling the news headlines.

Not wanting to give away too much, Williams, who is making his first visit to Macon, has hinted that current events would provide the breeding ground for this particular tour. He suggested that his topics would cover events ranging from the divide between evolution and creationism; America’s space program; the differences, if any, between Jared Fogle and Bill Cosby; and police brutality in the wake of Ferguson and Baltimore.

Despite the serious nature of most of those topics, Williams relies on his gift for making people laugh.

“Everything that I wanted to joke about was somehow a hot-button topic, which means we have this list of eight to 12 things that all of our conversations are boiling down to. I went back as far as I could to try to figure out how long we’ve been trying to get answers to certain things. It’s not that it’s an homage to conspiracy theories, but generally those are the first benchmarks you reach when you might be headed to new information,” Williams said in a recent email interview.

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and raised in Dayton, Williams emancipated himself and then moved to Florida, where he began supporting himself as a door-to-door salesman. His first stand-up performance came in his teens, and Williams never looked back.

Still, Williams sees the chance to help facilitate national discussions through comedy.

“Comedy goes two ways: We can either get together and we can talk about absolutely nothing for an hour, or we can make the attempt to have a little deeper conversation while still getting those same laughs in. That’s the goal,” he said. “If I had better answers, I wouldn’t be a comedian anymore. I would be a civil rights activist or some type of leader or something.”

Despite his penchant for covering difficult topics with his standup, Williams does not feel that he has a particular duty to discuss race -- or any other topic.

“Comedy is hard without all of that. Nobody expects Jim Gaffigan or Louis C.K. to do that. Nobody feels that Jeff Dunham should put those puppets down and really hit these hard notes. You’re not going to get the benefit from doing that unless that’s really what you do,” he said. “At the end of the day, these people are paying you to hit those endorphins in the right way so you get the release. The end goal is their laughter.”

The “Conspiracy Theory” tour is focusing on bringing the hard questions to the audiences that already have the difficult conversations, which is why he is starting in South Carolina.

“We keep getting to certain points where everybody knows what the conversation is going to have to be,” Williams said. “(South Carolina) has been the place where the conversation has been brought to the forefront on multiple occasions in the past 12 years, whether it was a police brutality conversation or whether it was a confederate flag conversation. It keeps coming back to this flash-point place.”

Comedian Katt Williams

When: 8 p.m. Oct. 9

Where: Macon Coliseum, 200 Coliseum Drive

Cost: $38-$75 plus applicable ticket fees

Information: www.maconcentreplex.com, 800-745-3000

This story was originally published October 8, 2015 at 8:21 PM with the headline "Katt Williams brings the laughs to Macon on latest tour ."