'A Clown With Words:' Sheng Wang Headed to WHBPAC in July

“I’m always trying to beat the system, even if it don’t make sense.”

That’s the admission that stand-up comedian Sheng Wang makes more than halfway through his popular 2022 Netflix comedy hour, “Sweet and Juicy.”

If you’ve ever used the office printer to print personal documents, had an existential crisis after making a purchase from the clothing section of Costco, or tried to write checks that your body can no longer cash, Sheng Wang’s comedy is for you.

The 43-year-old Los Angeles-based stand-up — recognizable to many by his long dark hair and glasses — is coming to the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center on July 13, bringing his trademark observational comedy to the East End of Long Island for the first time.

Wang has been in the business of making people laugh for more than 20 years, but it’s only recently that he’s earned wide acclaim, thanks in large part to the success of his Netflix comedy special, which was produced by his longtime friend, comedy superstar Ali Wong. That special catapulted him into a new level of fame, leading to his first major nationwide comedy tour, which has been going on for more than two years, with more shows being added all the time, almost all of them sellouts. Wang has also worked in television, as a writer for the ABC sitcom “Fresh Off the Boat,” and he was a featured stand-up on HBO’s “2 Dope Queens.”

In a conversation with The Express in early April, Wang still seemed to be absorbing the reality of a new and higher profile, one he arrived at after many years in the business.

His July show in Westhampton Beach is a must-see, both for those who have still not heard of him, and those who have already gotten in an ab workout from laughing while nodding in recognition after watching his Netflix special.

Wang is a master at taking all of life’s constant frustrations, unrealistic expectations and micro-injustices and playing them for laughs. Middle-aged audience members will find his humor particularly relatable. His delivery, in a low-key style with his particular drawl, perhaps a vestige of his upbringing in Houston — where he attended the same middle school as Beyoncé — add to the effect. Unlike a lot of other comedians, Wang isn’t working up a sweat with a lot of bodily on-stage theatrics, or going for maximum shock value with a litany of expletives, but the effect and the payoff are just as valuable, and the laugh-out-loud, tears-in-the-eyes moments are just as plentiful.

During the course of his tour, Wang has been delighting audiences with a whole new set of jokes and material that he put together after his Netflix breakout, meaning that fans of “Sweet and Juicy” won’t simply be in for a retread of that material. Wang said he has essentially retired the work he did in that show, and spent a year in Los Angeles writing new material before going on tour.

“It’s all different from the special, but it’s not a big departure from the mindset,” he said. “It’s a lot of personal observations of little mundane moments in life that I give extra thought to and try to make funny.”

That’s essentially what Wang has been doing for the last 23 years, since he first came up on the comedy scene in San Francisco alongside peers like Wong. While she had her own meteoric rise many years ago, Wang steadily kept at it, motivated by his pure love of stand-up as an art form.

“There’s a feature of stand-up that you might not have in other forms of creative expression,” he said. “There’s an audience there, in the moment, giving you an immediate or direct response. If you’re a painter or photographer, you might have a gallery show, but unless you’re there with whoever is looking at it, you don’t really know how they’re responding to it. With stand-up, there’s sort of an advantage that levels the playing field, and it’s based on some sort of meritocracy. It’s a very binary thing; do they laugh or not laugh?”

Of course, those laughs have to be earned, and Wang has certainly put in the work to earn them. He described his career as a labor of love when he spoke about his process of preparing new material for the tour.

“It’s an everyday thing,” he said. “You look at your notes, you try to sit down and write some new ideas, you tinker. It’s a craft, and you hone it habitually. Then you go to open mics and test things out. It’s like you’re working in the lab, making things better.”

The material he comes up with, and the specific kinds of jokes he makes reflect that process in many ways. And the fact that his big break came later in his career seems to have benefited him in the sense of sharpening his perspective, and giving him the kind of life experience that makes for the best kind of relatable comedy.

A career as a successful stand-up comedian was not a trajectory that Wang or many others would have predicted for him early on. He grew up in Houston, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, and said he was never the outgoing class clown, the kind of kid who seems destined to make a living out of telling jokes to an audience. He also wasn’t someone who voraciously consumed hours of TV sitcoms or late-night shows. Rather, he said, he spent most of his formative years outdoors, playing basketball with friends or “hanging out at the bayou catching tadpoles.”

Wang was enrolled in business school when he went to college at UC Berkeley. Eventually, he realized it wasn’t for him. He derives another joke out of what it was like explaining to his parents what he wanted to do for a living. Trying to describe the career path of stand-up comedian, he arrived at a new moniker for himself: “a clown with words.”

“No one was ever like, ‘He’s the funniest guy in class,’” Wang said. “I was never seeking attention in group settings. I was more of a one-on-one friendships kind of guy.”

The way he delivers his comedy on stage gives audience members a similar kind of feeling to a belly-laugh inducing chat about something ridiculous one might have with a bestie, another feature that makes his comedy fresh and unique.

Of course, with success comes more opportunities, and Wang has seen his fair share of those recently.

Mainly, what Wang hopes his audiences take away from his shows is simple.

“I want the show to be a joyful experience,” he said. “I still love doing stand-up comedy. That’s the most important thing to me. I find it super rewarding, and ultimately, for me, the most joyful thing is writing a new joke. I’m grateful to continue doing that. I feel very blessed and lucky that I’ve gotten this far. If this was the peak of it all, I feel blessed.”