Mark Normand's Thanksgiving tradition? Dinner and a show in New Orleans
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Mark Normand is a New Orleans-born comedian. Photo: Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images for Food Bank for New York City
Everyone's got Thanksgiving traditions and Mark Normand is no different, only his trip home includes a stand-up performance that's only gotten bigger and bigger with time.
Why it matters: Normand is a New Orleans-born comedian whose profile has risen steadily thanks to a Netflix special last year, his own podcasts, and guest appearances on nightly talk shows.
Zoom in: Normand returns home again this week with a stop at the Orpheum on Saturday — and a seat at the dinner table of his mom, Southern Food and Beverage Museum founder Liz Williams, for Thanksgiving.
- Get tickets (for the show; you're on your own for dinner).
You could say Normand has been perfecting his craft since at least high school.
- He was voted Class Clown at De La Salle before he graduated in 2001, he tells Axios New Orleans, and was soon performing on stages locally before he failed out of UNO. ("I was a booze bag," he explains.)
- Eventually, Normand found his focus, and it took him to a yearlong film program in New York City.
- "I loved it. I was doing standup at night, and I'd go back to New Orleans but there's no scene, no comedy club, no open mic," he says. "We'd drive to Lafayette, Baton Rouge, but I [realized] if I want to really make it, I've got to go to New York."
State of play: So, that's what he did.
- It's been about two decades since Normand made the move, and it's paid dividends.
- He paid his dues in clubs around New York and started getting noticed. By 2011 and 2012, he was on up-and-comer lists from Comedy Central and Esquire.
- His homecoming shows at Thanksgiving have changed too, he says, from the "heckle fest" days when his friends would give him a hard time at Howlin' Wolf to filling a much more elegant room at the Orpheum.
Yes, but: The comedy game has also changed a lot over Normand's still-growing career as streaming services and podcasts have become commonplace, and it can be hard to keep up.
- "It's good and it's bad," Normand says. Current events mean "there's a wealth of comedy fodder, so it's great for that. You can keep writing and keep producing funny stuff and be topical, but it never ends and it just keeps coming."
- "There's all this material out there but it used to be you could write one hour [of jokes] every five, six, seven years and now you're writing P. Diddy jokes like you're 'The Daily Show.'"
What we're watching: Normand's got two TV show ideas in the works, he says, and the material from his current tour will likely feed another hourlong special for release next summer.