America’s Got Talent 2023 Preview: Comic Ahren Belisle delivers the funny ‘speaking’ with a phone app.
America’s Got Talent 2023 continues on Tuesday with the third week of auditions. One of the acts performing on Tuesday (June 13) is a comic who “speaks” with the assistance of his iPhone.
In a preview clip from NBC, Ahren Belisle, a 28 year old software engineer and mental health advocate from Northern Ontario with cerebral palsy, is mute and delivers his jokes with the assistance of a phone app.
He jokes with the judges that he “can’t dance” so he’s going to do stand-up comedy. He started doing comedy about a year ago after he made a bunch of comics at a comedy show in Portugal laugh. They convinced him to try it.
Judge and fellow comic Howie Mandel notes that comedy is all about timing. Ahren takes advantage of the silences that ensue while he’s typing, he says, explaining that the pauses build tension in the audience. “I think people enjoy watching me laugh at my own joke that I’m writing.” He points to his service dog off stage saying that he’s trained it to go for the vocal cords of hecklers!
His jokes are pretty humorous. He pokes fun at his disability, and his ethnic background (French!). It appears that his monologue is written in sections, which are queued up on his phone to be fired off. It actually makes a comic’s job easier, because he doesn’t have to spontaneously deliver a memorized routine. He also uses different types phone app voices as mimicry. For instances, he uses a female voice who he says criticized him on Instagram for calling himself handicapped. He also uses facial expressions and body language to add punctuation.
“Funny and Fearless,” says Simon Cowell who also likes his dog
Simon Cowell calls Ahren funny and fearless. “Your dog is beautiful!” he remarks adding, “It was just a great, great audition.” Sofia Vergara hopes that he is the one comedian who finally wins AGT. Heidi Vergara says, “I love how you found your way. I think you’re very clever. You’re cheeky And you really were really funny.”
Howie says, “I cannot believe you’ve only been doing this for one year,” adding, “You seem to have a grasp of timing and humor. You open up the conversation and normalize humanity and originality and you’re funny.” He finished by saying, “Sir, you’re not going to be doing engineering much longer. I think you’re going to be full time performing.” The comic naturally receives four enthusiastic yeses from the panel.
To see Ahren and the other acts. tune into America’s Got Talent on NBC Tuesday June 13 at 8 pm ET/PT.
