Aziz Ansari: Feeding the Comedy Beast Without Serving Leftovers

HALFWAY through a 90-minute set late on a recent Friday night at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater here, Aziz Ansari did something radical for a stand-up comedian: he sat down.

If Mr. Ansari, a 27-year-old performer with a bearded baby face, was irresistibly drawn to the plastic chair where he completed his routine between sips of tea, it was understandable. This was his third show of the evening, during a weeklong marathon in which he was refining material for a new tour and his hosting gig at the MTV Movie Awards (which will be shown live on Sunday night). All while, by day, he had been shooting episodes of “Parks and Recreation,” the NBC sitcom on which he is a co-star.

Mr. Ansari made no apologies to the crowd at the theater, where the $5 tickets were cheaper and the jokes more meandering than they would be at those future gigs. As he had said that afternoon over lunch at a vegan restaurant in the Silver Lake neighborhood, “I even tell the audience, ‘You’re getting an inferior version of the joke so, I can work on it myself.”

(PARKS AND RECREATION SEASON 2 EPISODE 24 AFTER THE JUMP)

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