Ben has a video short that makes the case for his comedy in less than a minute much better than I could by just typing the words “Trust me, Ben is a very funny guy” so just quick watch that here.
Ben took his new show “Apologies for the Late Reply” out for a test run at the Kansas City Fringe last year and ended up winning the Best of Venue encore performance there, and now he’s bringing the show back home to Minneapolis.
Description:
Stand-up comedy about salvaging sanity in our age of crazy presented by four-time Minnesota Fringe encore winning producer and Acme Comedy Co.'s Funniest Person in the Twin Cities title holder Ben San Del.
Venue - American School of Storytelling
Content Warnings - Adult language, Crude Humor, Mental Illness, Suicidal ideation/Self-harm
Genre and Content - Comedy, Solo Show
Ages 16 and Up
According to the press materials, Ben’s been on a bit of a journey since we last saw him at the Minnesota Fringe Festival back in 2017 (haven’t we all? and if you haven’t, good for you I guess :) As usual, Ben makes a better, more amusing, case for himself than I ever could, so I’ll just step aside:
“Floundering to hold himself together as the world falls apart, a four-time Minnesota Fringe Festival encore winner returns to the Minnesota Fringe Festival for the first time in nine years with a stand-up comedy show about maintaining mental health as so much chaos closing in.
After 12 years in the scene, Ben San Del walked away from stand-up comedy in 2018. Untreated anxiety, ADHD, and depression had taken their toll. Touring as a stand-up comedian was only making things worse. After quitting comedy to salvage his sanity, Ben found a job that provided health insurance and got himself some therapy and medications and started to get better. During the 2024 election season, Ben recognized the same signs of anxiety, executive dysfunction, and depression that he had been experiencing becoming increasingly common among the general population, particularly people whose mental health had been perfectly stable up to that point.
After seven years away, he decided to return to stand-up comedy and focus specifically on making people laugh about and amid the exhausting chaos and dark absurdity of post-Covid life. But with fart jokes. For Ben, for the first time ever, stand-up comedy became a salve for poor mental health, not a contributor to it. With this new mindset, Ben built an hour of material that he felt would be perfect for a Fringe Festival audience at this moment in time, and was determined to produce a show even if the Fringe lottery did not smile upon him.
This will be Ben San Del's 10th MN Fringe show, the first in nearly decade, and very first show produced as an independent producer. San Del is a past winner of Acme Comedy Co.’s Funniest Person in the Twin Cities contest. He has opened for Tig Notaro, Maria Bamford, Emo Phillips, and Ali Wong, among dozens of other national headliners. His one-person show "Spec" won "Best Storytelling Performance" by audience vote at the 2017 Victoria, Canada, Fringe Festival, and he's a four-time winner of a bonus encore performance at the Minnesota Fringe Festival, where he has previously produced and directed three plays and three stand-up comedy performances. For the last two years, he has taught "Stand-up Comedy for Beginners" for Minneapolis Community Education.
Oh, also, Ben's very sorry it took him so long to respond to your email and/or text and/or Teams message and/or Signal chat, and/or social media outreach, and/or all of the above. He foolishly allowed himself to get distracted by the impending collapse of civilization. It won't happen again. Until it does.”
If you really need more convincing to get out to the American School of Storytelling and see a show at an independent venue, here’s a link to a post with links to all my five-star reviews of all of Ben’s previous Fringe shows, whether he was doing stand-up himself or writing a hilarious play for other people to perform.
Ben was on my pre-Fringe Top 10 list all the way back in 2006 with his very first stand-up show at the Fringe, “Mittens for Fat Kids” and I’ve returned to his Fringe shows every year since because Ben’a an astute observer of the absurdity of every day life, and there’s a lot of that to go around these days. Might as well take a break for an hour, sit down and laugh about it all. Ben’s got you covered. I’m very glad he’s back.
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