Robert Mac in Gaithersburg, 25–27 February 2027

About Robert Mac

Robert Mac is a stand-up comedian with a career of more than thirty years, who started out at an open mic in Tucson, Arizona, and studied creative writing and media arts at the University of Arizona.

He won the Grand Prize in Comedy Central's national Laugh Riots competition, has appeared on Last Comic Standing and played the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal, and has recorded the Dry Bar Comedy specials Know More Robert Mac and Back to Lake Titicaca (2019), as well as Mac to School. He also hosts a free half-hour online show, the Mac matinee, for fans he calls Mactivists.

Steve Martin and Steven Wright, the first comedian he saw perform live, shaped his interest in carefully written jokes that make every word count. At his first open mic in Tucson he was too self-conscious to go up, so a friend told his jokes for him; the next week he took the microphone himself.

Beyond Just for Laughs, his credits include the San Francisco Comedy Competition and the Boston Comedy Festival, and he performs in comedy clubs, at corporate events and festivals and on cruise ships. For Mac to School he went back to perform at his own old school, Salpointe Catholic High School.

His clean act runs on carefully written wordplay, misdirection and details that come back later, delivered in an understated style.

He teaches joke writing in online classes, Secrets of Joke Writing Revealed, drawing on more than thirty years of writing and performing, and he broke down how jokes work with David Perell on How I Write.

Stand-up specials

Know More Robert Mac, Back to Lake Titicaca and Mac to School

Podcasts and books

How I Write

On screen

Laugh Riots and Last Comic Standing