Sheng Wang Delivers His Wry Humor at the Lebanon Opera House

Growing up, Sheng Wang never saw himself as a funny guy. Evidently, no one else did, either.

“It’s not a label I was ever given,” he said. “I was never the class clown or the life of the party.”

How times change. In 2022, Wang made his national solo debut with his critically acclaimed Netflix comedy special, “Sweet and Juicy,” produced and directed by his longtime friend and fellow comedian Ali Wong. On Friday, October 18, Wang will bring that same introspective humor about mundane activities to the Lebanon Opera House, just over the border in New Hampshire.

Wang’s ascendance has been decades in the making. In 2015, after years of working the West Coast standup circuit, he got a job as a staff writer and actor on the ABC sitcom “Fresh Off the Boat,” about a Taiwanese American immigrant family. But as he told Seven Days in a recent phone interview from his home in Los Angeles, Wang took the jobs in television writing and acting mostly out of a sense of obligation; he thought that was how he should advance his career. His real passion, he said, is telling jokes onstage.

In his two decades of doing standup, Wang, who grew up learning Buddhist teachings, has perfected the art of wry, Zen-like observation, such as how buying pants at Costco taught him to let go and begin his spiritual journey.

But first, he had to find parking.

“If I can’t find parking in under eight minutes, I drive away. Let it go, dude. Today is not the day,” he jokes in “Sweet and Juicy.” “I’m not gonna force it. I’m gonna respect it, like the ocean … Costco is bigger than all of us.”

Wang was born in Taipei, Taiwan, in 1980 and moved to Houston, Texas, with his family at age 2. When he wasn’t attending the art, piano and Mandarin lessons in which his parents enrolled him, he rode his bicycle and explored nature, both of which are still passions of his. His one claim to fame as a youth was attending the same high school as Beyoncé. (He was a year ahead of her.)

Compared to other standup comics, Wang was a late bloomer. The 44-year-old grew up watching “The X-Files” and science and nature programs on PBS but not sitcoms; his family didn’t have cable. In fact, Wang never saw a full-length comedy special until his sophomore year of college. That’s when he joined Theatre Rice, an Asian American group at the University of California, Berkeley, that encourages Asian students to participate in the performing arts. When a couple of other members pursued standup, Wang just copied them — and realized he liked it and was good at it.

“There was just something about being onstage, even if I never thought it out, that [gave me] a sense of thrill and electricity,” he said.

Wang graduated from UC Berkeley with a business degree but no clue what he wanted to do next. For a while, he worked odd jobs — in television production, retail and as an office temp — and wrote jokes in his spare time.

Then Wang caught a standup performance by the late Mitch Hedberg, whose routine featured dry non sequiturs and stonerish observations on life. Wang said Hedberg’s act changed his entire approach to writing and performing.

From there, he’s made the slow, steady climb from open mics to headlining at clubs and theaters to that first Netflix special, which Paste magazine described as an “utterly sublime hour,” noting that “he renders even a seemingly dull topic a comedic goldmine.”

To succeed in standup, Wang explained, you have to find that “sweet spot of delusion,” where you believe you’re funny enough to be onstage but not so deluded that you don’t recognize your own shortcomings.

“People ask me for advice all the time, and I say: Write every day, get up onstage as much as you can, pay attention and really get to know yourself,” he said. “It’s really cliché, but … to stand out and be something worthy, you have to be yourself.”

Wang hasn’t let his success go to his head. Though his shows routinely sell out, the comic said he feels a deep obligation to make sure that people get their money’s worth and leave happy. His upcoming performance in Lebanon will feature material for a second hourlong special, which he plans to record at the end of this tour next year.

Wang seems to be increasingly attuned to the passage of time and his own mortality. His new show dives into some of the themes he touched on in “Sweet and Juicy,” including health, wellness and living in the present, as well as the wisdom of age.

“When I was younger, I used to walk into a bookstore like, Look at all this stuff I’m gonna learn,” he said in his first special. “As a grown-up, I walk into a bookstore like, Look at all this stuff I’m never gonna know. It’s hard to see your ignorance alphabetized.”

This article appears in Oct 16-22, 2024.

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