By DORIS RUBENSTEIN
It’s nice to have a local boy as the headliner for this year’s Twin Cities Jewish Humor Fest, held at the Minnesota JCC’s Sabes Center in St. Louis Park and Capp Center in St. Paul, from Feb. 22 to 25. Although he’s been living in Los Angeles for years, Eli Leonard is a Twin Cities guy through and through.
What’s his claim to comedic fame?
Whether or not you have cable TV, it’s hard to have escaped hearing about the critically acclaimed series Curb Your Enthusiasm, created by and starring the immensely talented Larry David. The show is about to air its final season, but for six years, Eli Leonard was David’s right-hand man.
David is famously irascible, and in an interview last year with the Jewish Journal (Los Angeles), Leonard admitted, “I was sweating through my clothes even talking to him. He’s actually a really nice guy. To see him come into the office every day, work hard and have that drive, was inspiring. I mean, he’s done it all already. He doesn’t need to work. Seeing that makes you want to push yourself and see what you can do.”
Growing up in Minneapolis, his parents — Todd and Beth — sent him to the Minneapolis Jewish Day School (in its pre-Heilicher days), where there was not yet a stage or school plays. Neither did the stage call to him during his high school years at Breck. It was his Herzl Camp counselors Jason Shapiro and Jake Lieberman who opened his eyes to his latent talents and a career possibility in comedy.
By the way, Leonard is still in touch with those early mentors who are in L.A., too. “Herzl Camp shows up in my shows every now and then,” Leonard said.
Leonard said that being Jewish is an inseparable part of his identity. He said when he gave a d’var Torah at his Bar Mitzva at Adath Jeshurun Congregation, he made jokes about his brothers.
It was as a counselor at Herzl Camp that Leonard first dabbled in comedy in the vaudeville tradition. He got even more serious about it at the University of Michigan where he chose screen arts and culture as half of his double major. (The other half was international relations. Can humor bridge the Israel/Palestine gap?)
He headed out to Los Angeles almost immediately after graduation. The job with Larry David took a while for him to snag.
How did Todd and Beth Leonard feel about this deviation from the Jewish professional norm in the Twin Cities? Eli Leonard said, “They told [me] that they’re proud. But when I started out, they’d call every couple weeks and say, ‘Come home. You don’t have to do this to yourself!’”
It took a while for him to gather the material for his own shows. He’d been doing camera work on the Curb set.
According to the Jewish Journal article, “Leonard hadn’t seriously considered stand-up until he met comedian Elon Gold, … a successful stand-up comic. Leonard had thought about trying stand-up but hadn’t made the leap. Gold told him it was time to jump.
‘I’d always wanted to do it, and I had been working in improv, sketch and every type of comedy besides it,’ Leonard said. ‘The real push came from Elon, who was getting on me to start doing stand-up. He had me for Shabbos and put me on his My Funny Quarantine show. He took me under his wing and gave me gigs opening for him. He just put me into pressure situations. I guess that’s how you do it.’”
Leonard did — and still does — improv; he took classes in clowning to expand the physical comedy in his gigs. But what about his material? It appears that most of Leonard’s comedic inspiration and mentoring have come from within the Jewish community.
“I definitely use a lot of material about being Jewish, but I don’t consider that to be my only audience. I’ve had a wealth of opportunity to work with Jewish comics and at Jewish venues,” Leonard said.
That appears to be true. While Leonard has performed at many Jewish events, his recent appearance venues include the Elysian Theater in Los Angeles, the Ann Arbor Civic Theatre and Sisyphus Brewing and the Phoenix Theater in Minneapolis.
For the Twin Cities Jewish Humor Festival, Eli Leonard will present his one-man show, “Good Showbiz.” He described it as “a show that’s also a business; a journey through the history of Jewish showmanship from Shakespeare to the present day. Funny, physical theater show at its core, but it’s also my business. The audience has the opportunity to be a part of showbiz and participate in bringing the show to life. Anyone who participates in the show gets compensated.”
That’s another reason to come see Eli Leonard at the Twin Cities Jewish Humor Fest.
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Eli Leonard performs “Good Showbiz” as part of the Twin Cities Jewish Humor Fest, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 22, at the Sabes Center, 4330 Cedar Lake Rd. S., St. Louis Park. For tickets, click HERE. For information, contact Riv Shapiro at rivs@minnesotajcc.org.
(American Jewish World, February 2024)
