Stand-up comic Kumail Nanjiani has been getting mad heat lately: in addition to his usual performance bookings all over the city, he made an impression on Zach Galifianakis earlier in the year and opened several times regionally for the cult alt-comic, auditioned for Montreal Just for Laughs and the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival, performed at the 2007 D.C. Comedy Fest, is part of the burgeoning comedy group Blerds, is booked to open for Arj Barker later this month, and is starring in the very first commissioned show of the Lakeshore Theater, Unprounceable, which chronicles his transition from Shiite Muslim to atheist.

His life story and comedy career path is humble enough, with dashes of molten lead and uber-chastity thrown in for effect, and now he's beginning to reap the awards of patience and hard work. Microsoft Word will probably never learn his name, but that's a small price to pay for the world.

Give us a brief breakdown of your recent history: move from Iowa to Chicago, specifically. Why Iowa, and why Chicago?

1978. Get born in Karachi, Pakistan.
1997. Move to Iowa.
2001. Move to Chicago.

Iowa is awesome. Go there. You would love it.
Chicago to pursue stand-up.

We'll be able to hear all about your move to the U.S. as a youth at Unprounceable, the Lakeshore Theater show, but could you give readers the synopsis of that story?

I am going to leave out random words to whet people's appetite and not give too much away. Come see it!

I came to ------ and got into the high class world of ------- ring dancing. It was lucrative and satisfying, but could not support my designer ------- habit. I quit one night on a crazy binge, wandered the streets and ran into world class entertainer and talk show host ----- Winfrey, who begged me to believe in myself. I followed her advice and then had the idea to design a giant shiny bean. But where to put it? how about ------enium park? So I did. Then I had that short stint as the point guard for the --------- Bulls, but an argument over late night burritos with ---- Gordon led me to exclaim "It's me or him!" to the Chicago ------ GM. I was fired. And then wrote a One ---- Show about it. It's at the --------- Theatre. Wait, that part I can say. It's at the Lakeshore Theatre. Get into it.

How did the show at the Lakeshore even come about initially? Are you and [Lakeshore producer, director of The Aristocrats, and now director of Kumail's one-man show] Paul Provenza BFFs now? What is it like working with him?

Chris Ritter [executive producer and co-owner of the Lakeshore] watched me perform a couple of times and said he wanted to give me my own slot. But he didn't want it to be just stand-up; he wanted a show I wrote specifically for this thing. And I had had this idea for a one man show for a while. I pitched it to him, he liked it, he said July, I said yes, and then "Fuck! It's real -- I gotta write the damn thing!"

The Provenz and I are super BFFs now. I am his new Penn Jillette. (Shot of me and The Provenz on a roller coaster together. Shot of me trying to buy cotton candy, but The Provenz swoops in and pays the guy before I can. "Put your money away," he says. We laugh and high five.)

It's been great working with him. He has really pushed me to expand the show well past the scope it was originally going to be. And he had given me a lot of confidence in the thing.

Can you detail some of the time you've been spending on this show? Like, what should one expect if they were to launch their own one-man show? Time for writing, rehearsal, etc. What does a typical day getting ready for something of this magnitude look like?

It is a massive fuckload of work. At least 3 to 4 fuckloads of work I would say. I started writing at the end of April and basically have been writing all the way up until this past weekend. I spend about 3 hours writing in the morning, then an hour or so at night changing everything I wrote that day. That sounds like only 4 hours a day, but you're thinking about it all the time. And then you have to memorize over an hour of new material. Sooo...give yourself more than two months if you are working on a one person thing. At least 4 months.

I gotta say, I have a lot of great folks helping me. Andy Ross, who wrote the Demon show with us, has been reading my drafts and giving me a lot of great feedback. Paul Thomas, who has a lot of great one-man show experience, has been doing the same for me. If it was just me working on it, it would be me going insane and the show itself would be a real shitball.

In writing this specific material, that of a highly personal nature, and infusing it with your own unique brand of humor, what were some of the more challenging aspects that you encountered?

Deciding what to keep in and what to pull out. What about my life would be interesting to anyone but me? It's hard to know what is or isn't objectively interesting when it's your life, so The Provenz has been a good filter for that. A lot of my trips to the grocery store got cut out of the show. For some reason, a good part of the show was detailed descriptions of every grocery store trip I ever went on.

It's also been tricky really taking all this personal stuff and making it funny and taking all these real people and kind of making them characters in your show. That part is super weird. "Well if you tell the story of this person at this point it would really help the arc of the show." But this person is not a character I created! It's a real person! With feelings and favorite ice cream flavors and such. Weird.

You are also BFFs with Zach Galifianakis, and are opening for him on his Chicago date [tonight] at the Vic Theater. what in the...? how did you land THAT one? what's your history with him? have you always been a fan of his, or is that a relatively new development given your recent history with him?

I opened with him at the end of last year at the [Drag City] People Under Stares show. Will Oldham hosted that show. (Yeah, I know.) So I met him there and then he asked me to open for him. I said fuck yes, then deleted the "fuck" part of my response just before I emailed him.

He is my favorite comedian, and has been for a while, so it' pretty magical opening for him. He is the best right now. No doubt.

And yes we are BFFs. (Same shot as earlier of me and The Provenz on a roller coaster, except this time Zach is sandwiched awkwardly between us. Shot of me trying to buy cotton candy, the Provenz swoops in to pay for it. Camera pans back to reveal cotton candy is actually Zach's beard. We laugh and high five, but end up slapping Zach in the face.)

Besides being a stalwart in the alt stand-up scene in Chicago, you've launched shows such as the VERY BELOVED Demon Who Never Appeared! Anything else in your repertoire of this caliber? Anything coming up? DISH!

I worked with a bunch of awesome folks, Andy Ross, Jared Logan, video wiz Steve Delahoyde and producer prodigy Mark Geary on a pilot that is going to be in the Chicago pilot contest in July. Pete Grosz is in it. Real funsies.

Bastion Photographer Krystle Gemnich is dying to know: how DO you stay in such great shape? Most comics here have beer bellies. What's the secret?

I invented a de-fatter that sucks the fat out of everything. I could make millions of dollars off it, but I kinda wanna keep it to myself so that the rest of the world stays fat but I continue to be in perfect shape.

Anyone who's seen you in action, especially with a rowdy crowd, will likely remark on your abilities to interact with your audience, how you can assuage any hostility, do it with tact and humility, AND turn any situation into one of utmost hilarity. You also have an amazing ability to spin the most minute environmental disturbance into a winding and wonderful bit for the audience at large to enjoy. Do you think you'll be able to translate this ability to the "big stage", or is that such a non-concern as to be unremarkable at this juncture?

What do you mean by "big stage?" Life? Hmmmm...I improvise bits all the time. We all do. We call them conversations. I like to talk to the crowd if I have to, but in a big show I just wanna do my material and would rather not have to deal with someone who's got "points" to make.

What's next Kumail? After you grand-slam July out of the park? What are your short- and long-term plans?

Probably rework the show a bit, do it again, get it to a point where its something I can be proud of beginning to end, and then get it booked at places. Moving to New York at the end of the summer. So it's a big exciting summer coming up. Lots of changes, lots of fun projects. I'm excited/nervous/terrified/hiding under a blanket to keep the world out.

Watch Kumail's Blerds video "He-Man" below:

You can catch Kumail tonight at the Vic Theater, where he'll be featuring for Zach Galifianakis, and tomorrow night for the premiere of Unprounceable. All photos by Krystle Gemnich.

- Kristy Mangel