When Brad Bonar steps onto the stage at Strings Bar and Grill on Saturday night at 8:30 p.m., he knows what to expect from his audience.
It’ll be at least the third time since he’s played the room at a Deaf Puppies Presents show and getting the chance to provide entertainment to a community that doesn’t have as many options for it is something that the longtime comic relishes.
“Those shows are more fun than a lot of regular comedy clubs because they’re intimate – people know each other,” Bonar said. “It’s always a full house and that makes a big difference in the dynamic.
“Those hometown shows – the smaller shows – are where you find people that appreciate entertainment more because it’s not as available and that makes for a great night.”
Tickets for the show at Strings Bar and Grill – located at 680 N. Main Street – can be purchased at the restaurant in advance for $15. All presold tickets include a reserved table seat, and a limited number may be available for purchase at the door the night of the show.
Local comic Mike Betancourt will be serving as the featured act and will be recording his 30-minute set – a testament to the unique charm that the bar area of the restaurant provides and how much comics enjoy coming to perform there.
“I’m actually getting requests from people who want to come out and perform at Strings – it’s kind of strange, actually,” said Chris Teicheira, who will be opening a comedy club in Manteca soon. “That’s a testament to the room – it’s dark, it’s intimate, with those low ceilings – as well as to the people who come out to these shows.”
While Teicheira was hoping that this would be one of the final Deaf Puppies shows at Strings before the Deaf Puppies Comedy Club opens on N. Main Street, he’s currently working through the planning process with the City of Manteca to welcome in crowds sometimes this fall.
“I was thinking this was going to go the way it would have back in 1951 – I would just shake the Mayor’s hand and open up a club because I bought the building,” he said. “I found out that there are people who have to answer to other people, and I have to have meetings with those people.
“I know that I’m not the only project that they have going on in town, but I sure want to be.”
While the laughs closer to down might be delayed for a while, Teicheira said that he’s happy that people like Bonar and Betancourt are willing to bring the people of Manteca the kind of entertainment that they’ve showed they desperately crave.
And Bonar knows just how powerful laughter can be.
Five years ago, the longtime comic found himself committed to a psychiatric facility for the first time in more than five decades of life after his longstanding depression got the better of him.
Getting the chance to laugh, Bonar says, gives people like him the chance to develop the brain chemicals that don’t necessarily come naturally, and it spurred him to start “One Degree of Separation” – a mental health awareness event hosted by comics that know what it’s like to deal with the issues that most people don’t like talking about.
Bonar has since brought the format – where four comics do five minutes each of family-friendly comedy before coming back out onstage as a group to answer five questions about mental health in their lives – to schools throughout California, and hopes to grow it into the future to show people that laughter truly can be the best medicine.
“Every comic that has done it has all said that same thing – it’s so much fun making drunk people laugh, but it’s far better to use the comedy and skills that we have to make a difference,” he said. “After every regular show you’ll get somebody that comes up and wants to take a selfie and then that’s it, but at these shows there are lines of people – every comic has a line of people – that want to talk about what they connected to and how it affected their lives and spoke to them.
“It gets people to come out and would have never come out to a mental health lecture, and it gets them laughing – laughter produces serotonin and that dopamine that people like us don’t produce enough of. If you can laugh at something painful, it gives you power over it, and it becomes less than what it was.”
Tickets for the Deaf Puppies Presents Brad Bonar and Mike Betancourt show can be purchased in advance by visiting Strings Bar and Grill – located at 680 N. Main Street – during normal business hours. Tickets are $15, and the show is scheduled to take place on Saturday, July 9 at 8:30 p.m.
To contact reporter Jason Campbell email jcampbell@mantecabulletin.com or call 209.249.3544.
