Vertical Claps

Ryan Erwin commands a crowd like a theatre teacher who knows exactly when thirty seventh-graders are about to lose focus. He talks with his whole upper body, punctuating a near miss in traffic with overhead, vertical handclaps and walking through the specific humiliations of a junior high dance. His recounting of slow dancing to Eve 6, complete with hands hovering a quarter-inch off a girl’s waist and an accidental dry-eye tear, plays out with campy, theatrical precision.

Taped at the Dry Bar Comedy club in Provo, Utah, and released in late 2019, the twenty-minute set arrived while Erwin was still balancing stand-up with his day job teaching middle school drama. He had picked up a teacher of the year award from the Utah Middle School Teachers Association the prior year.

Under Dry Bar’s strict clean constraints, Erwin sticks to his Mormon upbringing, growing up with deaf parents, and his gay identity.