Nathan Ehrmann: You're Gonna Find the Funny

January 22, 2018

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A note from the editors:

This week’s episode is an inter­view with Nathan Ehrmann, record­ed in ear­ly Jan­u­ary. At the time Ehrmann was the Con­ser­va­to­ry Direc­tor at The New Move­ment The­atre (TNM).

On Jan­u­ary 19th, in a stand against the the­atre own­ers’ lack of res­o­lu­tion of sex­u­al mis­con­duct alle­ga­tions, Ehrmann resigned the Con­ser­va­to­ry Direc­tor position.

When the news came out about the alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct with­in the TNM com­mu­ni­ty, and fur­ther that these alle­ga­tions were ignored by the own­ers, we asked Nathan how he want­ed to pro­ceed with the release of the episode. Nei­ther of us real­ly knew the ​“right” way for­ward. It’s an extreme­ly crit­i­cal and sen­si­tive top­ic, that we want to ensure is includ­ed in the dis­cus­sion; at the same time, our pri­ma­ry focus is on the craft of com­e­dy, not social issues.

In the end, we are fans of com­e­dy and the Austin com­e­dy scene, so when some­thing hits this close to home, we felt that it need­ed to be aired as part of the over­all sto­ry. We’ve asked oth­er per­form­ers con­nect­ed to the TNM Austin Com­mu­ni­ty for their input as well, and sup­port any­one that wants or needs to make their feel­ings on the top­ic known.

No mat­ter the out­come of this tru­ly awful series of events, we take heart in know­ing the Austin com­mu­ni­ty will pick itself up, do the right thing and return to mak­ing us laugh, and pro­vid­ing a safe, nur­tur­ing, wel­com­ing envi­ron­ment for great­ness in the art.

We very much want you to hear his episode and want to pro­mote Nathan’s upcom­ing shows; as such, we’ve decid­ed to release the episode as record­ed, in its orig­i­nal spir­it before the recent rev­e­la­tions. We wel­come your thoughts and feed­back, and hope for noth­ing but the best res­o­lu­tion for those affect­ed by these events.

Nathan Ehrmann told us his com­e­dy has been referred to as a ​“milk soaked waf­fle”. Whether you agree with that assess­ment or not, you have to agree that his style has­n’t ham­pered the growth of his career one bit. Maybe we all secret­ly crave a way to sneak more lin­guis­tic dairy into our sweet, sweet break­fast pastries?

A South Car­oli­na native, Ehrmann moved to the Dal­las area for his high school years. He then took his math major and turned it into a pro­fes­sion Valerie Lopez can’t help but warm to: a high school math teacher. Ever on the move, he spent a cou­ple of years in Japan teach­ing Eng­lish before ulti­mate­ly land­ing in our fair city.

Ehrmann found him­self drawn to some heavy hit­ters in com­e­dy ear­ly on, play­ing the grooves off records like Denis Leary’s No Cure for Can­cer, John Leguizamo’s Freak, and Dave Chapelle’s Killing Them Soft­ly. (Fine, they may have been CDs, but you dig.) Despite his admi­ra­tion for these per­form­ers, it was­n’t until he walked into The New Move­ment The­atre here in Austin that he gave him­self the direc­tion and goal to attempt com­e­dy of his own.

Ear­ly on he faced the same demons so many of us wres­tle with: shy­ness, frag­ile self-con­fi­dence, set­ting a seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble bar. After he relaxed his inter­nal stan­dards and com­mit­ted to the fact that com­e­dy would be a long haul endeav­or, he start­ed throw­ing him­self into the stage life.

Going from host­ing triv­ia in a tiny bar in Japan to doing com­e­dy in Austin takes a cer­tain kind of deter­mi­na­tion, that Ehrmann has (or has devel­oped) in spades. His 28-year jour­ney cul­mi­nat­ed in start­ing improv and (after years of post­pon­ing them) open mics. As his devo­tion to the art grew, he also began teach­ing class­es at The New Move­ment, and has gone on to be a repeat semi­fi­nal­ist in Fun­ni­est Per­son in Austin, per­formed in fes­ti­vals like Out of Bounds Com­e­dy, and even added a bun­dle of film cred­its to his name. Ehrmann also cohosts the week­ly pod­cast Why Aren’t You Scream­ing, with locals Vanes­sa Gon­za­lez and Michael Foulk, and cre­at­ed and host­ed (until pass­ing the reigns to the very capa­ble Claude Ramey) the week­ly com­e­dy show­case at Hops and Grain Brew­ing.

Check out the inter­view to hear more about Ehrman­n’s jour­ney in com­ing out of his shell, how he is con­stant­ly work­ing to keep him­self (and the audi­ence) in the ​“flow”, and which of his many endeav­ors is his stand-out favorite.

Get out and catch Nathan Ehrmann at his next upcom­ing date, and fol­low him on dojour to keep up with his sched­ule in the future.

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Nathan Ehrmann
Nathan Ehrmann
@JustMadeByNate
@JustMadeByNate
Nathan Ehrmann