Ryan Hamilton, known for his clean comedy and Netflix special, "Happy Face," warms up the crowd with some new material, but then shares that he was hit by a bus a year ago, writes Meg Walter in a new profile.
The crowd, aghast for a moment, erupts in laughter.
Hamilton's ability to transform the mundane aspects of life, including car accidents, into laughs has been decades in the making.
The Ashton, Idaho native says that ever since asking his local newspaper if he could write a humor column, he has continued to obsess about comedy, including during his time at Ricks College, where he studied before his mission in North Carolina for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After his mission, Hamilton transferred to Brigham Young University, where he studied public relations.
On the day he took his last BYU final, Hamilton called Johnny B’s comedy club in Provo, and asked if he could get on stage. And later, when the comedy club Wiseguys opened in West Valley, he started spending every evening there, then eventually got on stage and performed.
After taking and later leaving a job at a prestigious Salt Lake City PR firm, Hamilton decided to devote himself to a career in comedy. A successful show at a Seattle stand-up competition led to meetings in LA, followed by performances, and finally a full-time gig, in New York City, where he rose in prominence, eventually sharing the stage with some of comedy's biggest names — that is, until he got hit by a bus in January 2022.
But now, the comedian has incorporated the traumatic event into his stand-up set and is booked through the spring of 2024, including a November show at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City, his largest performance venue to date.