Comedy News

Rising star comedian Ralph Barbosa sells out 6 Dallas shows for Netflix special

Dallas comedian Ralph Barbosa

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A Dallas comedian who's a rising star has landed his own NetFlix special: Ralph Barbosa, whose laid-back yet hilarious style has won him multiple awards and national TV appearances, is playing six sold-out shows this week at the Kessler Theater in Oak Cliff, where the special is being filmed.

The first two shows were on August 2, and the run ends on August 4.

Barbosa was the 2019 winner of the Funniest Comic in Texas competition, and the 2021 winner of the New York Latino Film Festival Stand-Up. His shows sell out at comedy clubs across the U.S.

His "Don’t Tell Comedy" set on YouTube, showcasing his delightfully droll delivery, has surpassed 4.4 million views. He's appeared on Comedy Central, HBO (HBO Max’s special "Entre Nos: The Winners 3," directed by Latina comic Aida Rodriguez), and made his late-night debut on "The Tonight Show" with Jimmy Fallon in January 2023.

"Young Texas boy made it to the Tonight show," he posted on Instagram with a photo of himself on stage, and in June, he opened for Dave Chappelle at American Airlines Center.

(He also got an unintentional boost thanks to comedian George Lopez, who inadvertently helped elevate his profile further in February by stating on a podcast that no one had heard of him — a comment for which Lopez has since apologized.)

Barbosa, who graduated from Mesquite High School and currently resides in Oak Cliff, deliberately chose the Kessler as the site for the Netflix taping.

Kessler Theater artistic director and talent buyer Jeff Liles describes Barbosa as "awesome, really different. Not a typical set-up/punchline guy."

"Ralph was a barber at the shop right across the street from the theater," Liles says. "When he got the deal to do the Netflix special, he wanted to do it here in his neighborhood. He has even done a couple of pop-up shows at the barber shop."

Kessler booking agent Curtis McCary originally slotted Barbosa in for two nights, but had to keep adding more shows, because all the shows kept selling out.

"When his tickets went on sale for this Netflix night, both shows sold out in less than an hour," Liles says. "Then we added another two shows the night before, and they both sold quick, too. So we added two more the night before that, and they also sold out in an hour, too."

Liles says they've never seen anything like it, and it's not like the Kessler has not hosted comedy shows.

"It's actually a great room for comedy," Liles says. "In the past we’ve done shows with Sandra Bernhard, Tig Notaro, Pete Holmes, the Broad City girls, Amy Sedaris, John Waters, Elayne Boosler, Harland Williams, Paul Varghese and Linda Stogner."

"But in 13 years, no performer has ever sold out six shows in a row here. It's insane," he says.

NetFlix has a big commitment to comedy including a series dedicated to Latin stand-up comedy. When they film a special, they typically film a few nights at the same venue so they can choose the best reaction shots.

A few words from Ralph Barbosa on social media:

"I'm not very big on the whole social media thing. People don't do strange things on there often, but sometimes they get a little too social and I'm out. I'll pull the plug on Instagram. And it'll be normal stuff, but it'll just be a little too weird for me. Like this guy messages me and says, 'Hey man I saw you posted some pizza and I wanted to ask you where'd you get that pizza at.' I didn't say anything right away, so he sent a follow-up message. He was like, 'Hey man, I hope you're not planning on ignoring me.' I was like, 'I wasn't, but ...now that you sent the creepiest message, I'm deleting my Instagram.'"

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Movie Review

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma gives horror a surreal twist

Photo courtesy of MUBI

Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

The horror genre really ramped up in the 1970s and ‘80s, bringing with it a new subgenre - the slasher - that gave audiences new visuals of gore, but also a reliance on sexism and homophobia that would come to define the era. The new film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma wrestles with that legacy in ways that are funny, thought-provoking, and downright strange.

Kris (Hannah Einbinder) is a queer filmmaker who has been hired to reboot the moldy IP that is the Camp Miasma franchise, one that was fresh in the 1970s but which numerous shlocky sequels have rendered irrelevant. In an attempt to get to know the property better, Kris has scored a meeting with the reclusive Billy (Gillian Anderson), the star of the original film who has shunned the public eye for decades.

Turns out that Billy lives deep in the woods at Camp Rivoli, which served as the location for the first film. As Kris tries to get to know Billy and convince her to be a part of the new film, she starts to fall under Billy’s spell and the lore of the franchise as a whole. That includes believing that the movie’s villain, Little Death - a transgender person who has an air conditioning vent as a head/mask - may not just be a character created for the movies.

Written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow), the film at first feels like it’s going to go the straight-up comedy route, with comic explosions of blood, a strange fascination with candy brands, and a production design that does nothing to hide that the two main actors are on a movie set with painted backdrops. This is backed up by Kris’ phone conversations with her girlfriend, Mari (Jasmine Savoy Brown) and her agent (Sarah Sherman), as well as numerous other details.

But the film starts to go down the surreal route the longer Kris stays at the camp with Billy, especially when they sit down to watch the original Camp Miasma. An extended sequence shows a good amount of that film-within-the-film, demonstrating why Kris and Billy have a love/hate relationship with the property. For Kris, though, the lines between the film and the real world start to blur, and Schoenbrun uses a variety of out-there elements to drive the point home.

The final act of the film can barely be described as Kris goes deeper down the rabbit hole, with Schoenbrun using her film to comment on the horror genre as a whole, its treatment of women and LGBT people, the movie industry, and more. All the while the “camp” of Camp Miasma maintains a presence, with candy wrappers showing up everywhere and the tongue-in-cheek references to Little Death (the French term La petite mort, which means “the little death,” is a euphemism for orgasm).

Einbinder, an Emmy winner for Hacks, is the perfect person to inhabit her role. Her established real-life and fictional personas color everything she does in the film, with her enthusiasm and curiosity shining through. Anderson leans heavily into another reference - Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard - to create a character that is as mysterious as she is alluring. Supporting actors like Brown, Sherman, Patrick Fischler, Dylan Baker, and Eva Victor keep the movie at the right pitch all the way through.

While other films have made fun of horror movie tropes before, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma finds a wholly unique way of doing so. It’s a funny and daring trip into the psyches of two women who may be victims of their own obsessions, and of the movies that made them that way.

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Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is now playing in select theaters

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