Azhar Usman’s website quotes Dave Chappelle as calling Usman a “comedian from the future,” and that’s true enough. A big-bearded, believing, yet “secular” Muslim of Indian descent, who puts himself in the “brown” racial “bucket” and affects hip-hop idioms when it suits him (“Yooo . . . whatsup? ISIS in the house!”), Usman is well situated to appeal to just about every segment of America’s postwhite posterity.
Usman is much more compelling when he leaves us to our thoughts and focuses on his own instead. He does a clever riff on identity vis-a-vis the Superman/Clark Kent conundrum. Another connects the biblical fall from innocence to modern advertising.
Through 9/25: Tue-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat-Sun 4 PM Silk Road Rising 77 W. Washington 312-857-1234 ultraamerican.org $25, $15 students
