A Young Comic Joins an Exclusive Club

Philadelphia: At the start of his stand-up set at the Wells Fargo Center here, Aziz Ansari thought he heard an ominous rumble from the rafters high above. This allowed him an opportunity to explain to his 9,000 or so audience members why he had been wary of playing big arenas.

A curtain falling on him at an intimate theater, he explained, would feel like being covered in a comfortable blanket. If something fell on him here, he said, "this would kill my head."

These are the kinds of unfamiliar scenarios that Ansari, 31, is grappling with as he prepares for his first appearances at Madison Square Garden. When he plays two scheduled shows there on Thursday, for about 10,000 people at each show, he will be one of only a few comedians to have headlined the Garden, joining an eclectic club that in the past 25 years has welcomed Andrew Dice Clay, Chris Rock, Eddie Izzard and Kevin Hart.

For Ansari, a spirited, fast-talking comic who plays the likable schemer Tom Haverford on NBC's "Parks and Recreation," these dates offer more than a feather in his cap and material for a new concert special he will film there. They are a chance to prove that he belongs in the top tier of contemporary stand-ups - a roster of more seasoned peers like Sarah Silverman and Louis C.K. - and Ansari is hyper-aware of the enormousness of this moment.

"It is a big statement," he said from his dressing room before the Philadelphia concert, with equal parts anticipation and anxiety.

Having spent the summer developing his arena show, Ansari said, "You have to be the one to come up with it. There's no magic person that's like 'You should do this.' It's on you to figure this out."

He said he understood that performing at this scale required ambition and imagination: eye-catching images to display on a giant digital screen behind him, and a stage entrance set to Ennio Morricone's theme from "For a Few Dollars More."

But he also grasped that this sizable occasion comes with sizable questions. What status does playing there convey, and what does he do when it's over?

As Rock, a friend and mentor to Ansari, explained in a telephone interview, a comedian may perform in bigger and bigger spaces, "but none of these things mean you're great."

"Guys get hot," Rock said. "Balloons inflate. That doesn't mean they're skyscrapers. I always tell guys: 'Don't get too caught up on how many seats you're playing. Think about the jokes.'"

That was precisely what Ansari was doing on a Tuesday night in August at the Comedy Cellar, the claustrophobic club in downtown Manhattan where he began his stand-up career in 2001.

Having just made a surprise appearance (following a surprise appearance from Ray Romano, the veteran stand-up and "Everybody Loves Raymond" star), Ansari discussed his future Garden set, which he was gaming out like a military campaign.

"I have an hour and a half that's solid," he said confidently. "I just know it's tight. I can put that out, and I'd be fine."

"But it's a dangerous trap," he added. "I feel like the stuff is strong, but what could it be if I let it marinate a bit?"

At these shows, Ansari was working out material that would be more fully realized at the Garden. Among them was a joke comparing the fortitude of his parents, who immigrated to South Carolina from India a couple of years before his birth, to his own courage flying from New York to Chicago with a malfunctioning iPad. He said bits like that reflected his growing ability to take "the things that really consume your head, the ideas that are really deep down, and figure out how to talk about them."

Whatever he has achieved today, Ansari said, "it's all because 35, 40 years ago, my dad was like 'I want to move to America,' and my mom was like 'OK.' I don't think a lot of kids think about that or thank their parents for that sacrifice."

He was also working on a routine in which he asked women in the audience to describe experiences of being harassed or followed by strange men, and asked men to explain how they would defend women in those situations.

Ansari said he wanted to express his own astonishment at everyday dangers that women face and to show how helpless he would feel as a bystander. ("The only thing men can do is not" masturbate in public, he said, using different words, "and not follow women around.")

He said there was a danger that this topic could be more antagonistic than humorous, but the challenge seemed to entice him.

"When you start doing stand-up," he said, "you're like 'What can I talk about to get laughs?' And now, I'm like 'What's something that's really interesting to me, that I want to talk about?'"

This aptitude for exploring topics that are authentically part of his world - pop culture, Internet mores, whether the rapper 50 Cent knows what a grapefruit is - has built Ansari a loyal audience who have grown up with him.

"People need their own comedians," Rock said, "and in this weird, brownish-beige, mixed-up, what-is-your-nationality world we're starting to live in, who is better than Aziz to be the new Jerry Seinfeld?"

His popularity is not limited to the trendiest fringes of Brooklyn or Silver Lake, California. Ted Sarandos, the chief content officer of Netflix, said that Ansari's online comedy specials like "Buried Alive" had been worldwide hits.

Though his company does not share specific viewing data, Sarandos said: "He is among the very few stand-ups who are international. His shows have been an event in most of the territories where we operate, so he transcends language and certainly transcends culture."

Geof Wills, the president of Live Nation Comedy, said he had booked Ansari on this summer's Oddball Comedy and Curiosity Festival (a tour that also featured Amy Schumer, Silverman and Bill Burr, among others) because of his fan following as well as his relentless work ethic, a point with which Rock agreed.

"Aziz is very inquisitive," Rock said. "He's like the kid in 'Jerry Maguire.' He has no problem asking you to help him with a joke."

But Wills, whose company is also promoting Ansari's Madison Square Garden shows, was not yet ready to declare that the comedian belonged in the highest echelon of his industry.

Compared with performers like Dave Chappelle or Louis C.K., Wills said, "he doesn't have enough backlog yet.

"He doesn't have the same legacy that those guys have. But he's also relatively young in the game."

Ansari said that on previous tours of New York, he had reached about the same number of ticketholders he would at the Garden, through a combination of shows at the Apollo Theater, Carnegie Hall and the Beacon Theater. "But no one cares if you did that," he said.

Ansari said he had weighed the possibility of playing the Garden for some time, worrying that the arena was too big. "A theater is so much easier," he said. "You just show up, it looks beautiful, and you're done."

But, he said, "to have started out doing comedy in New York, and then to do the Garden, it's such an insane thing that you never think would happen."

Executives at the Garden were somewhat cryptic about why comedy shows were rare events there. "We've got a history of supporting talent across all different genres," said Bob Shea, its executive vice president of bookings. "Comedy is no exception."

Shea added that the Garden welcomed Ansari because "he's a star across many different entertainment platforms."

Dane Cook, who played at the Garden in 2006 and 2007, said that those shows were a high-water mark for his career, though perhaps not as hard as playing a college campus. "Go to Quinnipiac when they're having rushes," he said. "Trust me, Madison Square Garden looks like a cafeteria show at an elementary school."

The true challenge for the performers who have reached this achievement, Cook said, comes in the weeks and months afterward.

"You start saying, 'Given that I was able to create that event, what else do I want to do?'" he explained. "It's that fear artists have: 'Now what?' But it's a good place to be."

So far, Ansari did not seem to be grappling with this level of insecurity. He was proud to have lessons (and cautionary tales) from his career that he could share with rising comics like Hannibal Buress and Jerrod Carmichael, the way Rock had worked with him.

"I try to look out for them," Ansari said, "and I'll yell at them the same way Chris yells at me."

Beyond that, he said his only aspiration was "to keep doing great material, keep changing people's expectations of what my bits are supposed to be."

"That's what propels your career," he said. "I'd rather do stuff that I'm really excited about, in really small venues, than do garbage at the Garden any night."