Mohanad Elsheiky checks his phone again. We're about midway through an exit interview—a Mercury tradition with comedians leaving Portland for bigger and brighter things. Elsheiky has lived in Portland for five years, and he's become one of the city's most beloved comedians. He recently performed a killer set on Conan, and his contribution to last spring's Pop Up Magazine tour—the core of which was that being carjacked is still better than having your Uber driver make small talk—was my favorite part of the whole show.
Elsheiky moved here from Libya in 2014, and received asylum in 2018. Now he’s moving to New York to be a digital producer on TBS’ Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. Elsheiky’s farewell performance at Curious Comedy just added a second showtime for the Mohanad Elshieky Going Away Show, after the first sold out.
The day of our interview is also his first day working on tweets for Full Frontal. “Do we need to wrap this up? Do you need to write comedy?” I ask. “No, no,” Elsheiky says. “Let me just reply really quick. They're asking me to do jokes about Sean Spicer and I want to get my first joke in.”
Later, Elsheiky screengrabs the tweet and shares it on Instagram: “We can’t wait to see how flexible Sean Spicer is on Dancing with the Stars since he had his spine removed years ago.” Social media is a large part of Elsheiky’s career, and he credits it as a major factor in the reach and rise of his comedy success. It’s a point of advice he offers other Portland comedians, between bouts of gushing about how funny he thinks they all are. “Portland comedians don't take social media seriously," he says. "I'm like, do you realize how much this can impact your career? Social media kind of leveled the ground, and people can get their start just from tweeting stuff.”
After Elsheiky replies to his new employers, we get back into the interview.
MERCURY: What's interesting to me about your career is that you worked on a political radio show in Libya. If you don't think it's too far in the past, I'd love to talk about that show. There seems to be such a clear correlation with your focus on political humor.
MOHANAD ELSHEIKY: Yeah, that was in 2011, when the Arab Spring was happening and whatnot. There was a lot of media coverage, but we thought the coverage was either exaggerated or not true. So we started this radio show. We broadcasted all around the city, but we also streamed online so people who were interested in hearing what was happening in Libya—Benghazi, specifically—could tune in. We'd take phone calls from the city or through Skype, and people could talk to us, ask us questions, give us hot takes, or whatever.
The show didn't have much structure to it. It was like, “Okay, what's happening this week? There's a transitional government or something. They're trying to work on a constitution. Let's talk about that.” And we talked about it, mostly riffing on it. The radio show was very fun.
Were you doing the show right up until you came to the US?
No, what ended up happening was we were getting a lot of death threats at the time—because we were literally making fun of everything. "Oh, religion! that's funny!"
Making fun of everything in the middle of a war.
Yeah, there were a lot of militia groups and we were just making fun of them. Going super hard on them. They would send us threats and we were like, "Oh my god, they're listening. That's so cool."
I can really relate to that.
Yeah, and then the radio station was burned down.
“I try to do more challenging material once I have people on my side. I can’t just go up there like, ‘Guns! Fuck them!’ People would be like, ‘Dude, fuck you.’”
What?! Was it in an isolated building or a bigger building?
It was in a bigger building. They didn't burn the whole building down. We were on the second floor and the room that the station was in was burned into ashes.
Do you know what happened?
Someone came in at like 3 am and just set it on fire. There wasn’t security or anything. I mean, they said they were gonna do that and we were like, "Okay, let's just keep doing it until they do." We were just living on the edge and hoping for the best.
Was that the reason you came to the US?
No, that was in 2012. I didn’t hear about the student exchange until like 2014. I had a friend who saw this program on the Tripoli embassy website. They were looking for people that were socially active in their home countries, who wanted to work on projects and nonprofits. So I wrote essays, sent them a résumé, and did an interview, thinking, "We’ll see where this goes." And a month later I got accepted into the program.
There were five universities involved in the program, and one was Portland State. They picked the school. We spent 5-6 weeks taking classes at Portland State, learning about conflict resolution, and working on a project with Mercy Corps. Of the students I was with, maybe one person was from Libya. Everyone else was from countries from all over the Middle East and North Africa.
During that time, things for me started getting worse. My plan had been to return to Libya at the end the program—I had my tickets and everything—but I started hearing a lot of talk about me being a US agent or something.
Because you went to the US?
It had to do with how easily I got a US visa. When I was accepted to the program, the whole background check thing had been part of the application, so there wasn't the need to do it again. So I got my visa in two days. And that was like impossible for an average Libyan citizen, to get it in two days.
So the quickness with which you got your visa made people suspicious?
Oh, absolutely. Like, you're leaving to do a program with the Department of State, and the plane lands in Washington DC first, and then travels here? They're like, “This guy definitely works for the US government.”
Had the death threats mostly stopped before they started up again over the visa?
They really never stopped. I just never cared. I got my car shot at twice before, and I was like “Oh well.” Until I moved to Portland, it never struck me how crazy it was back home.
But these threats were more intense.
Yeah, I talked to the Department of State first. I was like, “Hey, I'm getting death threats. They came to my house twice asking for me. My family says I shouldn't go back. What do I do?” And Department of State was like, “I don't care. Go fuck yourself.” They wouldn't even tell me about the option of asylum. But there was one guy in the Department of State who helped me, and a professor at Portland State who knew immigration lawyers.
So you were studying at PSU and figuring out the asylum process. How did all this lead to stand-up?
A professor from a public speaking class asked if I did stand-up. He actually told me about [Portland comedian and Mercury contributor] Alex Falcone’s class, which I took. If I'm being honest, that helped a lot, because I wanted feedback from people in a smaller context versus just trying it on stage. I wanted to feel comfortable enough to make mistakes and actually get feedback, as opposed to people laughing or not laughing.
Then I just kept going, and doing as many open mics as I could, and staying for the whole mic because I wanted to watch everyone. I also probably watched every YouTube video of Portland comedians doing comedy. I was in college, so I treated it like a research project. I wrote notes on them. I studied the structure, studied everything.
At what point did stand-up become the focus of your life? Is it the focus of your life?
Oh, absolutely. It didn't become my main focus until maybe a year in. I did it all the time, but I wasn't sure where to go with it. I didn't take it really seriously until I did my first show in LA, which [former Portland comedian and former Mercury contributor] Ian Karmel hosted. It was my first crowd that wasn't an Oregon crowd, and the set went really well. And I was like, "Fuck yeah, man."
How would you describe your comedy?
I try to make my comedy as personal as possible. I have subjects I'm interested in, politically. I care about social justice. I try not to just give a hot take on something. I always have a personal anecdote that leads to the subject. If I wanna talk about gun control, I won't just say, "This is crazy” and say a bunch of statistics. No, I'll talk about myself. I have this joke about that guy Kevin.
Oh yeah, Kevin from the internet.
The joke is technically about gun control, but it's mostly about me and people yelling at me on social media. I've done comedy in Indiana and Texas—places that are not that liberal and love guns—and when I do jokes this way, it's about gun control, but it's also about me.
I try to do more challenging material once I have people on my side. I can't just go up there like, "Guns! Fuck them!" People would be like, "Dude, fuck you." That's the thing people don't realize. It's good to drive your point through, but no social change has ever been caused in a comedy set. I've never been like "Oh yeah, my tweet is gonna fuck them up." It's just something I want to say. And my goal is to make people laugh.
The Mohanad Elshieky Going Away Show is Wed Sept 25 at 7:30 (sold out) & 9:30 pm at Curious Comedy (5225 NE MLK). Tickets available here.
