“Socially Inept: Roast of Silicon Valley,” a comedy show that regularly sells out its monthly performances in Mountain View, has its roots in the Northwest.
Before former Microsoft employee and comedian Austin Nasso left Seattle in 2018, he organized a goodbye roast about the tech scene there, with fellow comedian Jesse Warren performing as well.
They did not expect the roast to sell out.
“Imagine you are setting up a party for your friend and you’re, like, ‘Oh, some friends and maybe some other people will be there, and they might be interested,’” Warren said. “That’s what Austin and I thought when we set this up, and then we showed up and there was a line wrapping around the venue.”
After the success of their first show, Nasso said they continued the experiment to see if it could become an ongoing tour, and time after time it sold out. Their comedy show toured the country from Mountain View to New York, with Nikita Oster joining the team in 2019 to help hone their creative vision. While they had a few roadblocks during 2020 due to the pandemic, they are back and able to continue their tour.
Nasso, Warren and Oster run the Socially Inept troupe with Lee Yang, the only core member who does not perform comedy but uses his prior theater and startup background to run the shows and handle logistics. The team has additional comedians who help as needed.
Comedy can be a hard profession to pursue, according to Nasso.
“Comedy is a very challenging art form,” he said. “It’s very much so you have to learn from your peers and get an understanding by sort of seeing all the possibilities that are out there and seeing what people are doing.”
Oster said their goal is to be as specific and concentrated as possible and look for the “innately roastable” qualities of tech corporations. With smaller companies, they tend to keep the discussions lighter compared to the larger companies that typically have darker histories to delve into.
“We all have either a direct background working in tech or a very personal interest in technology and sort of technological progress,” Oster said. “We have spent years thinking about and interfacing with these technologies, and just the culture of tech in general.”
Technically funny
Socially Inept’s shows, Warren said, typically start with an open conversation with the audience, known as “crowd work,” as a sort of icebreaker.
“We have this at the beginning, because it would be a lot to just come on stage and be like, ‘You suck, you suck’ – just roasting everybody right out of the gate,” Warren joked. “So, we were kind of easing them into it, lulling them into this state of hypnosis. Then, right when they don’t expect it, (we get right into it).”
The Socially Inept team then chooses a few people who work at local tech companies that are representative of the place they are touring, and roast them, Warren said. At the end, the audience witnessing the roast can volunteer to be roasted themselves on the spot.
“We really enjoyed being able to talk directly to the tech companies that are present in the room, and we usually also have data on what companies are going to be represented in the audience,” Oster said. “So, we found that talking to them directly, as if it’s this creature we’re interacting with face-to-face, is a lot of fun, and gradually went from a more stand-up-centered approach to a more improvised conversation.”
Socially Inept’s next local show is scheduled 8 p.m. Aug. 19 at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, SecondStage, 500 Castro St. No one under 18 will be permitted. Tickets are $29-$33.
For more information on Socially Inept, as well as a schedule of future shows, visit sociallyinept.io.
