Brody to offer humorous take on the martial arts, humanity

Award-winning playwright and humorist Dylan Brody will present "More Arts/Less Martial" at 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 16, in Bernhard Theater at Skidmore. Admission is free and open to the public.

For more than two decades, Dylan Brody has been making people laugh around the world. He has evolved into an artful anecdotalist with an engaging style all his own. This solo show, which premiered in January 2009 to a standing ovation, takes Brody and his audience on a poignant and often hilarious journey from a childhood of bullied insecurity to an adulthood of martial arts study, personal growth and ultimately true mastery of storytelling and taekwondo.

A thrice-published author and a regular contributor to the Huffington Post, Brodyhas emerged as a radio raconteur whose witty and profound tales of his life are unique - yet utterly recognizable - to everyone, earning him a reputation as one of America's fastest rising storytellers.

Brody's new CD, A Twist of the Wit, his third withStand Up! Records, was released last February. The last two full-length CDs were released in 2009 by Stand Up! following a sold-out launch event at the Comedy Central Stage. Brevity, a compilation of pieces originally produced for radio, and True Enough: Dylan Brody - Live. His stories are heard on Sirius-XM Satellite Radio's LaughUSA and RawDog Comedy channels, and have appeared on KYCY Radio in San Francisco, WBAI Pacifica Radio in New York and KPFK Pacifica in Los Angeles. His CDs were included in the premiere Comedy Catalogue for Pandora. Last March he began providing interstitial comedy content for Yahoo's streaming radio system and CBS interactive, his short comedic rants acquiring more than 1.5 million individual impressions each day.

Brody's earlier performances included appearances at the 2010 George Carlin Tribute at the New York Public Library, and, in 2007, a six-month run of Dylan Brody's Thinking Allowed, on the main stage at the Hollywood Improv.

Brody began performing stand-up in New York the summer after he finished high school. During his sophomore year at Sarah Lawrence College, the world-famous Improvisation in Hell's Kitchen accepted him as a regular performer. He also studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London while he worked London's comedy clubs and developed a loyal following at the Canal Caf Theater, where he performed weekly. Returning to America, Dylan worked venues from New York to Los Angeles. He has written for dozens of comedians, including Jay Leno, who has used Brody's work in his monologues on NBC's The Tonight Show.

Brody wrote his first play while still in grade school, and went on to become a prolific writer and novelist. His novels, A Tale of a Hero and The Song of Her Sword and The Warm Hello, were published in 1997 and 1999, respectively, and his novella, Heroes Fall, was published in 2009. A collection of his stories, Xenophobia and the Jewish Druid and other stories - a prequel to future works, was released in 2010.

Brody's work has been published in periodicals ranging from TSR's Adventure Fantasy magazine, Dragon, to Harvard Press' scientific humor magazine, Annals of Improbable!Research.