Open up and say ‘ha’ – here comes the comic doctor

I got a fever. And the only prescription is … more comedy.

Vien Phommachanh’s heard all the jokes. The Sarasota-based Ear, Nose & Throat doctor, who has a not-so-secret second life as a standup comedian, gets kidded constantly about his bedside manner. “Why am I doing comedy?” he rhetorically asks during his act. “It’s because I’m a terrible doctor.”

Not the case. Phommachanh (PO-mah-chan) has been a successful ENT since he started his practice in 2010. He’s served as President of the Sarasota Medical Society, on the Medical Society Board of Governors, as a delegate to the Florida Medical Association and as ENT Section Chief at Sarasota Memorial Hospital.

But he’s got the bug, all right. Phommachanh is also one of the busiest Florida-based standups on the circuit. Catch his infectious act May 22 at the Palladium Theater Side Door Cabaret in St. Petersburg, as part of the White Collar Comedy Tour (the other comics are attorney Mark Christopher and schoolteacher Mike Rivera).

Phommachanh, who was an infant when his parents emigrated from Laos in the late 1970s, said that sure, he went to medical school and all (“Asian parents, they were all for the whole doctor thing”), but what he really craved was the ability to make people laugh.

“I was one of those kids who grew up in front of the TV,” he recalled. “My parents worked a lot, so I just watched everything. And in the ‘80s – when my brain started to function – there was just a lot of comedy. Evening at the Improv, Comic Strip Live, the late-night comedy shows. I don’t think I even understood it at the time; I just watched it because it was on. And I think it imprinted in my brain.

“Fast-forward to my late 30s, early 40s, I sort of rediscovered it. Became a big fan of people like Brian Regan, Jim Gaffigan, John Mulaney … as a physician, we give these medical lectures sometimes. And I was just an awful speaker. So there were two desires. Number one was just to have confidence onstage – they tell you to do comedy or improv just to build it.

“And I always just wanted to give it a shot. I’ve always been a funny person, in the O.R., talking to my staff (you have a captive audience) or just joking around with people.”

Onstage, he devotes about a third of his material to doctor-type jokes. “I have a family, I have a culture, I have a career, and those three things are probably evenly divided,” Phommachanh said. “I make fun of my upbringing, I make fun of my wife and my kids … well, I don’t really make fun of my kids that much … but it’s an even split between what makes me what I am.”

He has performed in Los Angeles, Chicago, Nashville, Asheville, Boston, Toronto, the Bahamas and even Adelaide, Australia.

He makes a point of being in the office four (and a half) days every week, unless it’s unavoidable (like that Australia gig, for example. “I think you make stuff work that you really want to make work. I own my own practice, so I can work as much or as little as I want. And at some point I decided that it was worth carving out time to do this. There’s a loss of income as a result, but that was my choice.”

Phommachanh considers his comedy work cathartic and cleansing. Not to mention a whole lot of fun.

His inner comedian just had to come out.

“Being a doctor is so intense, and it’s so academic and so scientific, and there was that living, breathing part of me that wouldn’t die,” he explained.

“Most doctors, I think that part of your soul just surrenders and then you become this broken, sad pulp of a human. I think that living, breathing, funny, creative side just fought back. And so I became a bipolar schizophrenic, doing two things now instead of one.”

As for his bedside manner, “I’ve always been a kind, compassionate person. So I’ve taken naturally to talking to patients.” He insisted he doesn’t joke with them too much.

“What I hate is when people expect me to be like Patch Adams, like all hokey. That’s not the case at all. I separate these two lives because comedy is my solace, my peace and my joy, and medicine is my work, my obligation, my profession.

“But I found out that patients really like finding out, at the end of the day, that I’m a human. That I have a sense of humor. That I cultivate that side of me.”

And yes, the name White Collar Comedy Tour is a play on Jeff Foxworthy’s famous Blue Collar Comedy Tour.

It was Phommachanh’s idea. “I said ‘Why can’t we do this with professionals? I have a funny life.’”

Find tickets to the May 22 performance at this link.