On Saturday night, Oct. 1, ETSU and Buctainment played host to famous comedian Dave Coulier in the D.P. Culp Center Auditorium as he brought giggles and glee to hundreds of students and members of the community with his hilarious stand-up comedy act.
Coulier is best known for his role as Joey Gladstone from the popular 90’s sitcom “Full House,” which ran for eight seasons and is still shown regularly through syndicated reruns. He now makes frequent guest star appearances on the rebooted Netflix series “Fuller House,” which will premiere its second season this December. Coulier has also loaned his voice talents to many animated television shows, including, “Scooby Doo,” “The Jetsons” and “The Muppet Babies.”
While he has long been famous for his acting career, Coulier continues to perform live stand-up comedy acts at venues all over the country, and Buctainment was able to book him for a show audience members will not soon forget.
Throughout the performance, which lasted a little over an hour, Coulier cracked jokes on every subject from John Stamos and Bob Saget to airline food and farts. He was able to keep the audience laughing while keeping the show semi-family friendly.
Coulier told the East Tennessean following the show, “Every comedian is different. We all have our certain boundaries that we like to push. There’s always certain jokes that push whatever your personal line is. Some comics don’t have a line. I kind of have a line that I just don’t cross, but I’ve always been that way. That’s just my style.”
Coulier said that performing live comedy gives him an adrenaline rush that prevents him from getting nervous before shows.
“I’ve learned over the years to kind of channel nervousness into just sheer energy,” he said. “Nervousness is usually because you’re not prepared or you’re not up for the challenge. I feel like I’m always up for the challenge, or I don’t go near a stage.”
Coulier said the size of the audience does not make much of a difference to him either but that ETSU’s auditorium was a comfortable size.
“This was a good sized audience,” he said. “We probably had about 500 here or more tonight. I’ve done shows in front of 75,000 people; they’re an audience, they’re a group. I never think of it as individuals out there. They’re a group that’s come to laugh. Larger venues, I think, are harder to play because people are further away from me, and a lot of the nuance and a lot of the subtlety are harder to do. But this [the Culp Center Auditorium] is a perfect sized room. It’s a really nice stage and the perfect size. It’s a really nice room here.”
While on the stage at ETSU, Coulier seemed completely at ease. He kept his performance conversational and flowing while still being able to sneak in a continuous string of knee-slapping jokes. He later told the East Tennessean a bit about his strategy.
“I bring a little pad of paper out on the stage, and I jot down ideas,” he said. “I kind of have a loose format of where I want to go, but if something happens in the audience, I like to key on that stuff because it is a funny moment. It’s a live show, so you can do that. Stand up takes a long time to get really good at. It’s never easy.”
Finally, before he left, Coulier graciously revealed a part of what fans can expect for the coming season of “Fuller House,” saying, “There is more [Joey in season two of Fuller House], and I direct our Christmas episode. I’m hoping to direct a lot more on the coming seasons. You’ll see me, and there are a couple surprises that my character is bringing in season two that I can’t say yet. But there will be a nice little surprise for people — something that you never knew about my character on Full House.”
