By Foster Nicholas | Editor-in-Chief
Dressed in a black suit coat and a brand-new Baylor shirt purchased at the bookstore earlier in the day, Baylor alumnus Jeff Dunham delivered a personalized homage to his time at the university in his first performance in Waco in almost 40 years, Friday night at Foster Pavilion.
Meticulously cracking jokes about real-world issues and relatable back-of-mind experiences, Dunham fulfilled audience expectations in a laugh-filled two-hour comedy and ventriloquism act featuring five of his most popular puppets. All the while, performing in a place that ordinarily wouldn’t match his style of witty social commentary stand-up.
“I’m actually stunned I’m here,” Dunham said as he opened the evening. “I went to Baylor. I went to chapel … I was at the student union movies when they had to bleep things.”
Throughout the show, Dunham linked everything back to his experience at the university. Whether it was joking about how he failed five language courses at Baylor or letting the audience in on how he came up with the idea for three of his puppets while living in the now-exhausted Bear Grounds apartment, Dunham tied back to his roots.
“I said, ‘What am I going to do tonight, because I’m not quite sure how my act fits at Baylor,’” Dunham said. “And they said, ‘Jeff, we don’t wanna clip your wings … just do your show, just please don’t drop the F-bomb.’”
Dunham held to his word, straying from profanity (mostly), while navigating politics, race, personality and, of course, “ball jokes at Baylor”, through his dummies to rousing laughter.
Waco resident Jayne Tooker, who checked off a bucket list item of attending one of Dunham’s events in person, donned a brand-new Peanut shirt following the event. The performance was a night she will remember as she “hasn’t laughed that long and hard in decades.”
“He’s just a great entertainer,” Tooker said. “I love his humor, that slapstick humor, and even though some of it was a little raunchy, it was so funny and I enjoyed it.”
After talking through his experience at Baylor, Dunham brought out his first puppet, Walter, an elderly man based on two men fittingly named Walter that he met at the Waco Airport hangars while in college. Walter stared, primarily focusing on politics, including a bit about former President Joe Biden cutting the ribbon when Baylor was founded in 1845, as well as a wig styled to resemble the hairdo of President Donald Trump.
After Walter talked about his experience with a marriage counselor and how he initially thought pickleball was a “personal problem,” Dunham displayed beer-loving redneck Bubba J. With his belly out, Bubba J and Dunham had the crowd in tears, questioning why everyone in the venue knew nothing was under a Barbie’s clothes.
“I think it’ll be another 40 years before they have us back,” Dunham said following banter with Bubba J, where the puppet misunderstood the word horror, instead hearing a word resembling a woman of the night.
At the midpoint, Dunham provided a backstory of how his character, Achmed the Dead Terrorist, was initially conceived as a comedic figure meant to “take comedy and help people” one year after the events of 9/11. Since debuting the character in 2002, he has become a mainstay in the act, wearing a Santa hat during his portion of the show.
His act centered around physical comedy as his body parts fell off in between jokes about FOX News hosts and a classic “that’s what she said.” Before being put away, Achmed’s arm was placed in a position that allowed for a “five-fingered weiner” bit, to which Dunham responded that Baylor may be forced to take his degree back after that one.
“We don’t give degrees to folks who are going to hell,” the puppet joked.
To close the evening, Dunham’s most popular puppet, Peanut, centered jokes around accents with José Jalapeño on a Steek. They tossed around jokes about an increase in deportations before Peanut dubbed José Jalapeño on a Steek as “José Jalapeño on a Hockey Steek” after a move to Canada.
Dunham saved the best for last, according to Tooker, improvising with Peanut about what it would be like to have a puppet without a tongue. And as the lights went down on Peanut, he made one more crack to connect with the audience.
“How does it feel having Jeff’s hand always up your butt?” Dunham asked during a section of audience questions directed toward the puppet.
“Like Waco traffic,” Peanut said. “I just count to 35.”
The Foster Pavilion endured a two-day transformation to become a premier event venue, according to Vice President for Marketing and Communications and Chief Marketing Officer Jason Cook.
The performance marked the first time alcoholic beverages were sold at Foster Pavilion. When bantering with Bubba J, Dunham joked about Baylor not having alcohol at the event, to which louder audience members shouted back, “Yes, we do!”
“The goal is to have different shows for different people,” Cook said. “For Jeff Dunham, we are [selling alcohol]. It’s a different audience and more of a Waco crowd.”
Dunham’s “ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE” tour will stay on the road for six more months with 50 more shows, including stops in Tulsa, Okla., Saturday and Las Vegas on Sunday. To stay up to date on Dunham’s comedy, he recommended subscribing to his YouTube channel, which currently has 4.7 million subscribers.
