Demetri Martin stands beside an easel propped upon the stage, holding a sketchbook purchased in the Syracuse University Bookstore just hours before. Hands fly up into applause almost immediately. Shrugging, he smiles at the crowd and flips back the first few sheets of paper. He points at a felt marker doodle, a complicated-looking figure that suggests a page of schematics.

‘This,’ he proclaims, ‘is a baby silencer.’

And the drawing slowly becomes discernible, particularly the outline of a child encased in some unknown device.

He flips the sheet rapidly, as if pulling the top off a silver platter to reveal his gourmet masterpiece. Revealed was a sketch of a diamond ring.

‘And this,’ he declares, ‘is a girlfriend silencer.’ The audience erupts. Lung-crushing hysterics give way to deafening applause, and shrieks and foot-stamping rush like waves through the crowd.

Martin raised an infectious enthusiasm in Goldstein Auditorium when he performed on Wednesday night. ‘An Evening with Demetri Martin’ was presented by University Union Performing Arts and the Syracuse University Panhellenic Council. The $5 tickets available to SU and State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry students and faculty sold out last Thursday.

‘This year, he just seemed like a good fit. We were happy with the level of performer that he is and, clearly, the students were happy, as the event was sold out,’ said Rob Dekker, a senior in the Bandier Program for Music and Entertainment Industries and the president of University Union. A total of 1,500 people purchased tickets to attend the show, he said.

Mixing a quirky combination of anecdotes, musical stylings on the piano and guitar, conversational banter with the audience and his famed sketchpad, Martin fuses together a comedic style that is far from dull. His delivery, planned or spontaneous, had the audience roaring consistently from minute to minute through the night.

‘He relates to a lot of everyday events and just makes them so funny,’ said Holly Faulkner, a sophomore environmental biology major at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

But despite the energy he arouses in audiences, Martin is surprisingly thoughtful, often introspective, in his dressing room. It’s a sharp contrast from the quick-to-the-trigger persona that the audience sees onstage. While he often has an answer to one of his audience members before they finish speaking, he deliberates before talking in the quiet room.

‘I like games a lot,’ he admits at one point. Mind puzzles like perceptual shifts, for example, fascinate him, and one can see a connection between this attraction and his humor. Martin’s comedic stylings often involve re-examining the routine and commentating on it in a new light.

‘A tree house is really insensitive,’ Martin remarked onstage. ‘It’s like killing something and making their friend hold it.’

He also remarked on subjects such as the true meaning of idioms such as ‘Don’t let the bedbugs bite’ and the over-repetition of big T-shirt sizes: large, extra large, extra extra large and beyond. Audience members delighted in the relevance of Martin’s humor, along with the comedic way that he frames the ordinary.

‘He’s so analytical, and the way he thinks is so different,’ noted Nick Line, a senior health and exercise science major that came to the show. ‘He’s completely unique to any other comic that I know of.’        

ggriccar@syr.edu

Published on October 12, 2011 at 12:00 pm