Comedy Wham LIVE: Carina Magyar's Kingdom, Volume 2

When we have a guest on for the sec­ond time, we like to call it ​“Vol­ume 2”. It’s a reflec­tion of the fact that we pre­vi­ous­ly delved into a comic’s life, learn­ing about their past, present and future; like a book you can’t put down, the sto­ry does even­tu­al­ly end, but you know that the sto­ry will go on, and cross your fin­gers there’ll be a sequel.

See­ing Cari­na Mag­yar take the stage at Fall­out The­ater for our sec­ond live Com­e­dy Wham pod­cast record­ing was like run­ning to the mail­box to dive into that sequel the moment it arrives. She grabs the mic and jumps to life, and it’s like you nev­er left her world behind; and make no mis­take, when Mag­yar is on stage, it’s her world you’re liv­ing in.

It’s a world she shares freely, giv­ing insights into expe­ri­ences and exer­cis­es (some­times lit­er­al­ly) that many wouldn’t oth­er­wise be exposed to. As a come­di­an who is trans­gen­der, her role first and fore­most is to make us laugh, but inher­ent in good com­e­dy are the thought exper­i­ments that twist our men­tal process­es and extract pleas­ant surprise.

Magyar’s gen­der trans­for­ma­tion cer­tain­ly offers ample oppor­tu­ni­ties to do just that. From bring­ing pre­scrip­tion dil­dos through TSA, to the upsides of expand­ing your sex­u­al hori­zons, she can eas­i­ly bring the room to uproar­i­ous laugh­ter. Look clos­er and you’ll also see, behind the smiles, the trade­mark signs of peo­ple pon­der­ing just what it was that evoked their reac­tions. It’s a unique style, one that gives your brain a morsel to enjoy and briefly pon­der, then leaves you to fur­ther con­sid­er the events that inspired the stories.

Mind you, some of the think­ing has to come lat­er, as Mag­yar keeps a rapid pace at the mic, as she does in her per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al life. Lead­ing up to our live record­ing, Mag­yar had not one but two mile­stones to talk to Valerie Lopez about.

Her first com­e­dy album, Issues, has just land­ed (see our review) on Sure Thing Records, and, despite feigned protest, she dropped a tease of one of the tracks in her set before the inter­view. ​“I had a list of super­fi­cial accom­plish­ments, and putting out an album was one of them,” she jokes about the achieve­ment. As art fol­lows life, it rep­re­sents mate­r­i­al and a time in her life where tran­si­tion was a major theme, and in a way serves to cap­ture some of the ​“before” time, to be enjoyed in its most sin­cere form for lat­er years to come.

“I had a list of super­fi­cial accom­plish­ments, and putting out an album was one of them.” Cari­na Magyar

Mag­yar is also no stranger to the writ­ten word, with arti­cles and pro­fes­sion­al con­tent to her name in Austin Month­ly, and as a cur­rent con­tent strate­gist in her day job. The sec­ond of the two mile­stones marks her first cre­ative pub­li­ca­tion, the children’s book For the King­dom, with illus­tra­tor Damien DeMarti­no. Although recent­ly pub­lished, it’s the cul­mi­na­tion of a 6 year project, with Magyar’s goal of cre­at­ing a kind of fairy tale where gen­der roles take a back­seat to the suc­cess of the quest. She describes the impe­tus as “[some­thing] I’ve always wanted…a fan­ta­sy book with a prince and a princess, but nei­ther one of them is the rea­son for the sto­ry.” It’s a tale of fam­i­ly, and tai­lored for young chil­dren like two Mag­yar her­self has, and is graph­i­cal­ly entranc­ing in addi­tion to its pos­i­tive messaging.

So should we expect a King­dom tril­o­gy, à la, well, every­thing pub­lished or filmed now? Mag­yar nei­ther con­firms nor denies, but does clear­ly sig­nal her ongo­ing pref­er­ence for com­e­dy and its imme­di­ate ​“release cycles” and feed­back. She’s as active in the Austin scene as ever, run­ning the com­e­dy com­pendi­um Last​Gas​.org, where you’ll find the lat­est shows and events for local and nation­al come­di­ans, and runs the standup show­case Live at Cold­towne every Fri­day night. Add to that a Fun­ni­est Per­son in Austin run­ner-up result (and ongo­ing com­pe­ti­tion appear­ances), open­ing for nation­al comics com­ing through Austin like Jen Kirk­man, and a pair of grow­ing chil­dren, and you have quite the full slate.

Amidst it all, Mag­yar still finds time to per­form, refine, and, luck­i­ly for us, appear on our pod­cast, along with the two she her­self hosts. Thanks Acad­e­my pairs a local come­di­an with an award-win­ning movie they haven’t seen, and pulls com­e­dy out of the expe­ri­ence (no easy feat, con­sid­er­ing Schindler’s List was one of the recent episodes). Weird Brunch brings togeth­er come­di­an Lisa Friedrich and Whit­ney Lemond to sip on bev­er­ages and dis­cuss cur­rent, absurd, or just plain weird, news of the week. You can find cur­rent and past episodes at Cari​na​M​ag​yar​.com, and, of course, on your favorite pod­cast sites and players.

Valerie has a gift (some might call it persistence…or stub­born­ness?) for being able to pin down even the busiest play­ers in the Austin com­e­dy scene, and it was a treat for us for Cari­na Mag­yar to carve out time to make this sec­ond appear­ance hap­pen. A day in her life is rarely dull, so we look for­ward to bring­ing you even more of her ever-expand­ing sto­ry in a future volume.

Until then, treat your­self and get out and see Cari­na Magyar’s sto­ries live. She has a packed cal­en­dar of upcom­ing appear­ances, includ­ing mul­ti­ple shows at Moon­tow­er Com­e­dy 2019, Mas­ter Pan­cake, Fun­ni­est Per­son in Austin, and more, which you can find Cari​na​M​ag​yar​.com.

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Spe­cial thanks to Fall­out The­ater for host­ing our event, Motern Media for the music, and Dustin Svehlak for record­ing and A/V mastery!