‘The Book of Moron’ is next chapter in comedian’s irreverent humor

Actor, writer and comedian Robert Dubac began his career in theater, and although he admits he never got into the art form of the musical, he owes some gratitude to Trey Parker and Matt Stone for creating the musical The Book of Mormon.

Before that, Dubac says, he had the title for a new show in mind: The Book of Moron.

“I came up with the title before the musical came out,” he says, “but I thought it would be seen as an offense to the Mormon religion.”

Then The Book of Mormon became the first Broadway mega-hit of the current decade and won scads of awards. Dubac saw that as carte blanche for his own show. “The musical came out and now it’s acceptable.”

The Book of Moron makes its North Texas debut July 27-31 at McDavid Studio, presented by Performing Arts Fort Worth. The weekend before, Thursday through Saturday, he performs stand-up at Hyena’s Comedy Nightclub in downtown Fort Worth.

“It’s about a guy who has lost his memory and he doesn’t know what’s smart and what’s not smart,” Dubac says. “It’s an expansion of Freud’s idea of psychoanalysis. … It’s about our lack of critical thinking.”

The Denver Post called it “a brain-injured TED talk” and “clever and acute, especially for audiences who lean to the left.”

Moron is the follow-up to his popular one-man show The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron?, which has been staged several times in North Texas and across the country since it was created 15 years ago. That show can be seen this August at the Eisemann Center in Richardson, preceded by a weekend of stand-up comedy at Hyena’s in Plano.

“I do this more often when I can, with a stand-up comedy gig before one of my shows in the same city,” he says. “There’s a divide between people who go to comedy club and people who go to theater, so hopefully I’m capturing both audiences. And maybe the comedy club folks will come to the theater.”

Dubac’s comedy and theater work is inspired by humorists and solo performers such as Mark Twain, Robin Williams, Andy Kaufman, Lily Tomlin and Eric Bogosian. Like the work of the latter two, The Book of Moron has multiple characters, with Dubac using accents, posture and vocal techniques to distinguish them.

If you go to the stand-up and Moron, don’t expect to see the same jokes.

“There’s maybe a 10 percent crossover of similar material,” he says. “With the comedy material you can go off on tangents, and you’re breaking the fourth wall [that imaginary wall between performer and audience]. With the theater, there’s a beginning, middle and end, there’s a lot of character work.”

Next he’s working on a show called Stand-Up Jesus, which he calls “an irreverent look at irreverence.” Sounds like he owes The Book of Mormon more than just license to stick with a clever title.

This story was originally published July 18, 2016 at 5:03 PM with the headline "‘The Book of Moron’ is next chapter in comedian’s irreverent humor."