Stand-up comic Mike Dorval doesn’t make “fat jokes’’ in his one-man show, but he does talk about his life-long battle with food and his weight.
G FORCE | MIKE DORVAL
Lost and found
Stand-up comic Mike Dorval doesn’t make “fat jokes’’ in his one-man show, but he does talk about his life-long battle with food and his weight.
Boston comedian Mike Dorval has been doing stand-up for a decade, but this Tuesday he’ll take a new leap. He opens a six-performance run of his one-man show “Death by Chocolate’’ at the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater. A longtime fan of Spalding Gray, Dorval has been working since last year on what he calls an “odyssey of cake, candy, and a few things learned between meals.’’ We recently spoke with Dorval, 34, about the show.
Q. How is this different than your stand-up?
A. It combines stand-up and theater. It’s funny but there’s an arc to it. There’s a story I’m telling - my story.
Q. What is that story?
A. My issues with food and my weight my entire life. I used to be 110 pounds heavier. I battled weight issues and food issues all throughout my childhood.
Q. There’s a picture on your website. It’s clear you were a fat kid. But I also want to mention an unfortunate haircut.
A. At the time, that was incredibly stylish. And if I could get away with it now, I’d bring it back. That was the super mullet. Richard Marx envied my hair.
Q. Tell me about being the fat kid.
A. Oh gosh. If you’re the fat kid, it’s always OK to give advice to the fat kid, make fun of the fat kid. I went to Catholic school and the nuns made fun of me because I was fat. We had swimming one day and I was laying on the edge of the pool and the nun said, “Push him back into the pool or he’ll drown.’’
Q. That’s not really funny is it?
A. It’s really difficult and that’s one of the things that make you funny. If I’m talking you can’t talk and say anything about me. It’s kind of acceptable for a girl to have issues and go through with that. If you’re a boy, you’re supposed to be jolly about it.
Q. How much did you weigh at your peak?
A. 338 pounds. That was 1999.
Q. What did you do?
A. I talk about it in the show. I don’t give diet advice. My big thing is it’s different for everybody. For me it was a real drastic adjustment of how I eat and how I live. I haven’t had candy in 5 years. I had to go to the gym, which I still hate.
Q. Is it hard now to be as funny as when you were fat?
A. It’s easy. I was never comfortable with being fat and I never made fat jokes in my act. When I lost the weight, my act didn’t change a bit.
Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com 
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