Nataly Aukar is bringing her distinctly personal brand of stand-up to Cleveland for the first time when she performs at Hilarities Fourth Street Theatre on Sunday, September 13. Lebanese-born and currently based in New York City, Aukar has built a growing reputation for comedy that finds the funny in the uncomfortable, the vulnerable and the thoughts most people would probably prefer to keep safely inside their own heads. Her résumé already includes appearances at the Netflix Is a Joke Festival, Don’t Tell Comedy and the short film Sofa So Good, which was featured by The New Yorker.
That résumé got another notable addition in 2025, when Aukar was included in Vulture‘s “The Comedians You Should and Will Know of 2025,” a list spotlighting comedians poised to make an even bigger impact.
A graduate of the American University of Beirut, Aukar worked as a writer at a production house in Lebanon before moving to New York to pursue stand-up. Since then, she has performed throughout the United States and internationally and opened for comedians including Ramy Youssef, Mo Amer, Hasan Minhaj and Gad El Maleh.
While Aukar hasn’t been to Cleveland yet, she has already heard enough to make the trip.
“I heard good things. This is why I was like, ‘Let’s do it.’ I’ve also heard good things about Cleveland, but I don’t remember what they are.”
What Cleveland can expect is comedy that is considerably more interested in the human psyche than in pointing out that buildings are weird. Aukar describes her material as a place where audiences can recognize some of the thoughts and vulnerabilities they might not normally admit to having.
“I would describe it as if you have a lot of dark thoughts and frustrations that you don’t always find the words for, I’m probably your gal. I’m going to validate a lot of your darkness, I think. I think that’s how I would describe it. And also your little vulnerabilities. I’m not going to talk about how weird buildings are, but I will talk about my deepest, darkest thoughts that I can only say out loud if it’s in the scope of a joke or else it would be scary.”
That willingness to turn uncomfortable territory into comedy has been a major part of Aukar’s rise. Her Netflix Is a Joke Festival appearance came in 2022 as part of the inaugural “Introducing…” showcase, giving her a major platform and, perhaps more importantly, her first experience with a filmed comedy performance.
“It was really fun! In 2022, I did the introducing, it was their first introducing show at Netflix as a Joke, and that was my first ever taping. And yeah, it was really cool. It was a big room. They filled it up. It was very nerve-wracking because it was my first time taping my stuff, and it was a lot of letting go of the control and putting it in the hands of a production that you have no say over, so that’s a little scary, but it was such a fun experience, and they were great, and it was really nice to be with the other comedians who were all really funny and who’ve done such great things since. I went back in 2024 to headline my own show. It’s fun to be part of something that is so big.”
Aukar’s work extends beyond the stage, too. She and her best friend Monica Hanna host Please Continue, a comedy podcast built around the pair’s tendency to talk, validate each other and apparently refuse to take the hint when people tell them to stop. The weekly show touches on everything from relationships and friendship to frustrations, family and their experiences as Arab women, with the hosts approaching their conversations with the same mix of honesty and affection that Aukar brings to her stand-up.
The idea for Please Continue came partly from wanting to create a connection with fans who don’t necessarily get the opportunity to see Aukar perform in person.
“Well, there’s two things. The first one is I just felt like I wanted to reach out and be more in contact with my audience that I can’t get in front of physically all the time because I can’t be. There’s some cities that I haven’t gone to, some countries that I haven’t gone to, and I know that I have fans in those places and I thought I want to create a space where we can both access each other a little bit more. That was the first and nicer response to this. The second and less original response to this is that Monica and I are best friends and as most best friends do, we think our conversations and our love for each other is like no one else’s. And we were like, ‘We have to let the people in. We have to let the people into this magic.’ And that’s where it came from.”
The podcast also gives Aukar another outlet for the kind of emotional validation that has become a recurring element of her comedy. Rather than approaching every topic as a setup waiting for a punchline, Please Continue allows her and Hanna to simply have the conversations they would be having anyway.
“I think our favorite topics to address are kind of the same things that we love to do when we’re together. It’s just kind of like we have a tendency to always support and validate each other through everything. We are part of a larger group of friends that always raises their eyebrows at us, but we never do at each other. And this is kind of what we try to do on the pod, have those moments publicly just in case there are other people who can relate to that. And yes, I think that’s very similar to my standup where in my standup, I try to touch on topics that I feel like will make people feel maybe a little bit seen when it comes to topics that they’re not necessarily comfortable saying how they really feel about or come in touch with parts of themselves that they didn’t fully realize was feeling what they were feeling.”
As for where Please Continue is ultimately headed, Aukar’s ambitions are refreshingly straightforward.
“To make us millionaires so we don’t have to leave the house anymore. There’s no plan. It’s just to keep doing it and having fun and just try and find a different audience, and also find a different way to entertain and give people a fraction of my brain that’s not necessarily always in the form of a setup, a punchline, and a tag.”
Aukar’s international background has also translated into an extensive amount of travel for comedy. She has performed in places throughout Europe and the Middle East, including Lebanon, as well as countries such as Belgium and Canada, giving her plenty of opportunities to compare the experience of performing for American audiences with crowds elsewhere.
“It feels like performing abroad is a little bit easier. Crowds abroad are easier. It feels like they’re nicer; they expect less, and it does feel like there’s less tension in the crowds. I think sometimes in the crowds in America, you feel a little bit of tension because some people have an expectation or just don’t want you to address certain things. It just feels like the political environment in the country here makes the room for a standup comedian a little bit more like, ‘Okay, what am I going to get this time?’ Whereas it feels like abroad, specifically in a place, let’s say in Europe, if I were to be in a random room in Brussels, for example, it’s just about sitting in the room and having fun. It feels like there’s less overarching tension amongst the audiences, but that’s not to say that this is an absolute truth. There’s plenty of shows and rooms in America that I’ve done that I just felt like it was just good vibes and happiness, but it just feels like in a lot of places abroad, it’s a little bit more relaxed and more just like we don’t get as many comedy shows, so we’re just here for the good vibes and say whatever you want kind of thing.”
Her experiences as a woman working in comedy have also informed how Aukar views the industry’s progress. While she has seen a noticeable increase in the number of women entering and succeeding in comedy, she says there is still work to be done behind the scenes as well as onstage.
“I think it’s great. I think I’m noticing the last five years that there’s a lot more women in the industry and they’re growing and they’re taking over, and it’s awesome. I think there’s definitely always room for more. There are a lot of hoops that we have to jump through. It is, at the end of the day, a predominantly male field, just like it feels like almost every field or most fields are predominantly male. And it’s hard, I think, as a girl, just to be in a room backstage and be the only one amongst many men to be viewed as up here, even if you have as many, if not more credits than the rest of the men in the room, it’s hard to feel like you’re being treated or looked at or just talked to the same way you are with the rest. I’ve just kind of gone like, ‘I’m not going to look for that validation from them, and I’m just going to keep focusing on myself.’ I think as long as we do that, this is how we start moving it forward.”
For Aukar, that approach seems to be working. From Beirut to New York, from Netflix Is a Joke to Vulture‘s list of comedians to know, she has steadily built a career around saying the things people might think but don’t necessarily know how to articulate. Cleveland gets its first chance to see that approach in person.
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