‘King of Rant’ returns to alma mater for final tour

More than 50 years ago, an anxious Lewis Black stepped onstage at Cat’s Cradle and proceeded to embarrass himself.

The Carolina undergraduate was trying his first stand-up comedy set at the request of a good friend, and his nerves showed. His jokes fell so flat, as Black tells it, that a cocker spaniel wandered onstage because it could sense the comic was “in danger.”

This first performance could have also been his last.

“What was amazing was I went back the next week,” Black said, chuckling. “After you’ve been crushed and you see yourself die on stage, if you get up again and do it, then chances are you may end up doing it for a long time.”

After that disaster, Black went on to have a long and fruitful comedy career, winning two Grammy Awards and earning the moniker “King of Rant” for his loud, lewd and often angry delivery. Black is a longtime contributor to Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” and voices the character Anger in Pixar Animation Studio’s “Inside Out” movies. Black also played a college dean in the 2006 comedy “Accepted’ and performed on three USO Christmas tours during the Iraq War.

Now 76, Black is embarking on “Goodbye Yeller Brick Road, The Final Tour.” Fittingly, the tour will bring Black back to the same town where his comedy career began. As part of Carolina Performing Arts’ 2024–25 season, Black will perform at Memorial Hall at 7:30 p.m. April 29. Tickets are available on the CPA website.

Chapel Hill remains a special place for Black, who had an apartment close to Franklin Street for many years until the COVID-19 pandemic struck. The opportunity to perform at Carolina during both his final tour and CPA’s 20th anniversary feels like “kismet,” he said.

“A portion of the show will be going down my feelings about being in Chapel Hill, and I think it’ll be a funny look back at my time there and where I see it now,” Black said. “And then I’ll talk about what’s happening in the world.”

Back where it all began

Though he’s best known for his comedy, Black graduated with a drama degree from Carolina in 1970 and aspired to become a playwright. He spent the next two decades pursuing that goal, buying and running a theater with friends, serving as playwright-in-residence for theater companies and festivals and writing 40 plays — all while doing stand-up comedy on the side.

In 2022, Black donated all his plays, television scripts and comedic materials to the Wilson Special Collections Library, an honor he said meant more to him than his two Grammys.

Black is retiring from touring to shift his focus back to writing. He expects to spend more time at his alma mater, including Wilson Library.

“Everything I’ve written is in that library,” Black said. “I think there’s about 12 plays I haven’t read in 30 or 40 years. I want to look those over again and possibly write about them in a book. I want to write another play, and all of my writing has been done down there.”

However, don’t expect Black’s comedy to disappear. His satirical, politically charged “Back in Black” segments continue on “The Daily Show,” and he hosts a regular “Rantcast” podcast about audience-submitted topics. In the country’s divided political climate, Black said he thinks satire is just as important as ever.

“It’s important to allow people to stand back from what’s occurring and get out of the middle of it and laugh about it,” Black said. “In the end, what satire provides is insulation from the madness.”