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Aaron Naylor

Dry, absurd one-liners delivered without a hint of salesmanship.

1 special · 2023

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Aaron Naylor works almost entirely in brief, detached jokes. He steps up to the microphone, drops a deeply strange premise into the room, and stands completely still while the audience catches up. There is no salesmanship in the delivery. When he talks about whales or the absurdity of knowing how to read, he uses the flat tone of someone explaining a minor traffic accident. He relies on a strict setup-punch structure, breaking the tension only with a slight shrug when a weirder bit takes an extra second to land.

Specials

  • Born Illiterate

    A lean half-hour set of highly written, deadpan one-liners.

    YouTube

On stage

He is a fixture of the indie festival circuit, regularly playing rooms where audiences care about joke structure more than big act-outs. He is the kind of writer other comics watch from the back of the room, moving from midwestern basements to headlining dates on the strength of his material rather than crowd-work clips.

The material works by taking a historical event or a basic animal trait and reducing it to an everyday annoyance. His sole impression is of Julius Caesar, which consists of him saying “ow” once and then informing the crowd he just does that twenty-two more times. He avoids sprawling autobiographical stories, preferring to pack a set with short, surreal observations. This gives the show a start-and-stop momentum by design. If a joke misses, he does not try to save it with charm; he simply moves to the next premise.

He built his act in the Kansas City scene, winning the city’s Funniest Person contest in 2021 before relocating to Chicago.

Turning points

  1. Named Funniest Person in Kansas City

    Naylor won the 2021 Funniest Person in Kansas City title awarded by KC Magazine while co-founding the Fountain City Comedy Festival.

  2. Release of Born Illiterate Comedy Special

    Naylor filmed and released his first stand-up comedy special Born Illiterate, directed by Chase Crawford and produced by Four by Three Productions.

At a glance

On stage
since 2013
Style
surreal, one liner, observational
Breakout
Born Illiterate
Topics
Elsewhere
Wikipedia

A clip to start with

15 Hilarious One-Liners - Aaron Naylor

3 min · 270K views · on Comedy Juice