Local Comedian Sensation & America’s Got Talent Finalist Ryan Niemiller Loves to Entertain
So after graduating in 2006, he packed up his car and drove to L.A. When he arrived out west, he did an internet search on “how Being born with short arms, one might to get started in stand-up comedy” and went expect that Ryan Niemiller would be selffrom there. At just 24 years old, he claims conscious about his disability and do his the “ignorance of youth” helped him push best to blend into the background. However, past his fear of failure. ever since he was young, he has gravitated toward the spotlight. “I think I’m wired backward to the way most Writer / Christy Heitger-Ewing Photography Provided
“I watched a ton of stand-up comedy in high school and always wanted to try it,” Niemiller says. “But I mistakenly thought that you could only do it in L.A. or New York. I didn’t know you could start here in the Midwest.” His dream simmered on the back-burner as he studied theatre at Indiana State.
people are,” Niemiller says. “I just had this feeling that it would all work out.”
He enrolled in an eight-week comedy class, which provided the basic foundation for stand-up. Mining material for his sets has always come easy.
“When you have a disability, a lot of stuff happens for you,” he says. He does what he calls “observational comedy” in which he “I love theatre, but I was getting tired of observes how people treat him or others and telling other people’s stories,” Niemiller says. works it into his set. He notes that stand-up “I was ready to tell my own.” comedy is one of the few art forms in which
JULY 2020
