Steve Hofstetter has a name for a person who is not a medical doctor doling out medical advice: Idiot.
Pause. Sigh.
“Or Secretary of Health and Human Services,” the standup comedian quipped.
“We’ve got a Secretary of Education who thinks that AI is ‘A-1.’ We have a Secretary of Health and Human Services that is afraid of vaccines. We have a Secretary of Defense who texts out war plans,” Hofstetter said during a phone call last week to talk about his show on Tuesday, May 13, at 191 Toole. “We have the head of the DOJ who doesn’t know the first thing about due process. ... These are people who are wholly unqualified for their jobs. It is comical how unqualified they are.”
Comedian Steve Hofstetter returns to 191 Toole with a show that focuses on mental health, with a little political comedy sprinkled in.
Politics will undoubtedly be part of his show, but Hofstetter’s “Kill the Butterflies” tour takes us on a more personal journey with the comedian.
The show deep-dives into mental health, specifically his lifelong journey with anxiety.
“One of the early jokes in the set talks about using butterflies in your stomach as a euphemism for an actual mental illness and how ridiculous that is,” he explained. “It’s really about kind of my own journey with it and coming out the other side.”
Hoffstetter, 45, has been dealing with anxiety since middle school but only recently learned to understand it and treat it.
“My anxiety manifests itself in an eating disorder. It’s basically, I get extremely nauseous to the point where I’m compulsed to throw up,” he explained. “That’s my version of a panic attack.”
Humor has helped Hofstetter navigate his journey; he spends a big chunk of his show looking at mental health through a humorous lens.
“It’s only been recently that we’ve even started destigmatizing any sort of mental illness, which I think is a little ridiculous because we all face something,” he said. “Perfect mental health is impossible, and so for a long time when I went in to get seen for mine, no one even imagined it could be a physical manifestation of something mental. That wasn’t an option.”
During and after the pandemic, the issue of mental health moved from being something whispered about with the shades drawn to being discussed in the public square.
But it is still stigmatized, he said.
“Part of the idea of (‘Kill the Butterflies’) is to ... use humor ... to destigmatize it,” he said.
So how do you make funny something so serious?
“There’s humor everywhere,” he said. “And some of the set is self-deprecating. Some of the set is making fun of how backwards the medical industry can be when it comes to mental health. ...You can be funny about almost anything. There are premises that are off limits, but there are no topics that are off limits. There is humor in the darkest places.”
Hofstsetter takes the stage at 191 Toole, 191 E. Toole Ave., at 8 p.m. May 13. Tickets are $30 through ticketmaster.com.
