Comedian Dylan Adler Makes Provincetown Debut at Red Room
by Steve Desroches
January 31, 2025 was a turning point for Dylan Adler. At the time, legendary comedian Margaret Cho was the Vanguard Artist-in-Residence at Joe’s Pub, a famed cabaret space at Manhattan’s Public Theater, which invited her to program performers of her choosing, focusing on largely up-and-coming acts. The pioneering comic began with Charlene Kaye’s Tiger Daughter – or How I Brought My Immigrant Mother Shame, followed by Margaret’s Children, featuring stand-up comics Nori Reed, Robin Tran, and Sabrina Wu. Come the end of January it was time for Margaret’s Sons, which featured Adler and Sam Oh, each given 30 minutes to perform their best material to a sold-out room—an opportunity to make it in New York City.
“Oh man, it meant the absolute world to me,” says Adler. “I’ve been a fan of Margaret’s since I was a teenager. I was a shy, bullied teenager and her albums and shows were a life saver. She’s my favorite comedian. She’s a trailblazer for Asian-American comedians. We were so lucky. She’s very supportive of young, gay Asian comedians. It was a huge night.”
Born and raised in San Rafael, California, Adler had only been performing standup for eight years—actually a bit less counting the obvious disruption of the pandemic. So, to receive the Midas touch from a comedy legend like Cho was a dream come true for the relative newcomer. Adler found comedy while an undergraduate at New York University, where he’d gone to study music composition at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. There he took an acting class as an elective, and one day after class the students decided to practice newly learned skills at the People’s Improv Theater’s (PIT) open mic night. Then and there Adler became “addicted” to comedy, and the trajectory of his life changed forever, while his identical twin brother continued on in music becoming an oboist in the Tucson Symphony Orchestra.
Adler continued to perform at the PIT as well as with the Upright Citizen’s Brigade and getting a gig as a writer on The Late Late Show with James Corden, all amazing signs of early success. But come 2022 a daring collaboration helped propel Adler’s career even further when he created the live comedy show Rape Victims Are Horny Too with fellow comedian Kelly Bachman. Adler and Bachman had met on the New York comedy club circuit and in particular at Bachman’s show Rape Jokes by Survivors, which had been featured at the New York Comedy Festival. Bachman was also still managing a burst of global attention from 2019 when during a set at the Downtime Bar in Manhattan she noticed Harvey Weinstein in the audience and confronted him via her material, coming out as a rape survivor and calling out the disgraced film producer to his face. Adler and Bachman bonded over a shared comedic antidote to their respective sexual assault traumas.
“We were both at a club doing jokes about healing from rape trauma,” says Adler. “Kelly had just had this big moment; she went viral for confronting Harvey Weinstein. We said to each other that we should do a live show, and we just really hit it off. We wrote this one-hour musical comedy and recorded an album. It was one of the most healing experiences for us. We wanted to show that while a serious subject you can use comedy and joy to heal from trauma. It was beautiful. I still hear from people who tell me that album helped them heal. That survivors felt it helped them to talk about it.”
The success of that show and recording put Adler in the spotlight, leading to that night at Joe’s Pub where he killed. And not long after another Asian-American giant of comedy gave him a leg up when Atsuko Okatsuka invited him to open for her North American and European tours. But now it’s time for Adler to go solo as he’s looking beyond New York City and touring with his show Haus of Dy-lan, with which he’ll be making his Provincetown debut on July 2 at Red Room. After visiting for the first time on vacation in 2022 Adler knew Provincetown was a date he needed to book. And he’s preparing himself as usually, like a lot of other LGBTQ comedians, his jokes need to be set up for predominately straight audiences. But in Provincetown, he’s anticipating a gay majority crowd, a real rarity for a gay comic. And shortly after leaving here he’ll be heading home to the Bay Area as he’s going to be taping his first full comedy special in San Francisco for YouTube, a platform that has become one of the most effective tools for stand-up comics striving for the big time.
“Oh, one-hundred percent, YouTube and Instagram have become the launch platform for comedians,” says Adler. “It used to be the Just For Laughs [Comedy Festival] in Montreal. That was where you wanted to get booked as it propelled so many careers. But now, it’s YouTube and Instagram, no doubt about it.”
Dylan Adler performs Haus of Dy-lan at Red Room, 258 Commercial St., July 2 at 7 p.m. Tickets ($41.50/$51.50) are available at the box office and online at redroom.club.
