E-Mail This Article to a Friend Home-town classic Tony V’s laugh therapy BY TED DROZDOWSKI

"Performing for people who love you and see you regularly — where’s the challenge in that?" asks comedian Tony V. "I do a lot of shows for my own entertainment."

That includes a recent lunch-time gig at Raytheon where a troupe of Japanese kodo drummers opened. "They had their big-ass drums and were twirling sticks. I talked one of the drummers into hanging around, and instead of giving me the classic rim shot after a joke, he’d do a big ‘BA-DUM-BA-DUM-BA-DA.’ It was great."

Then there was V’s Worcester Centrum Harley-Davidson-appreciation weekend gig. "Hypnotist Frank Santos opened, and there were Civil War re-enacters right next to the stage, which was huge with maybe 800 chairs in front and about 21 people in them. In the other half of the Centrum, which was cordoned off, there was jousting on motorcycles. That’s where most of the audience was. Honestly, if you could see the comedian or jousting on motorcycles, where would you be?

"But my favorite nights are when you’re forced on people. You’ll be at some club where everybody’s drinking and a guy gets up and says, [growling] ‘Hey, we got a comedian!’ "

V, who grew up in Somerville and lives in Charlestown, looks like a classic regular guy on stage. He carries some extra pounds, and he usually wears a T-shirt under an unbuttoned work shirt, chinos, and sensible shoes. His voice has a touch of gravel. But his storytelling balances real-life details, pure wit, edgy satire, and a gift for weird extrapolation. He’ll start talking about the dangers of climbing Everest, and by the time he’s done, the mountain has morphed into a big snowy stalker knocking at his door. He’ll recount teasing his devoutly Catholic mother about making donations "to the pedophiles," and he has a classic opening line: "Please pardon my appearance . . . but this is what I look like."

You might see V on the streets of Providence these days, where he’s working on the forthcoming Showtime TV series The Brotherhood, playing undercover cop Ralph Magno. It’s his largest dramatic role to date, but he’s no stranger to indie movies and the tube, where his many appearances include stand-up spots, a regular part on Bobcat’s Big Show, and a Seinfeld episode where he played "the umbrella guy."

He started in comedy in 1983, leaving a job as a mental-heath counselor working with troubled youth. "It was really stressful and sometimes really sad. But what drove me out was the bureaucracy of working for the state, trying to get what you needed to help people."

Before he took the stage himself, the local comedy scene was a refuge. "I was still a caseworker when I started going out to see stand-up and saw Don Gavin, Elaine Boosler, Steve Sweeney, and the other people working in town at the time. It dawned on me how therapeutic the laughter was, and how when you got caught up in it, everything else disappeared. It was the same way I felt when I was a kid staying up way too late to see Jack Paar on The Tonight Show or Steve Allen, or the Marx Brothers and Monty Python."

Although he performs on weekends at comedy clubs around the country, V is most easily found these days at the Comedy Studio in Harvard Square, where he hosts "The Tony V Experiment" on Wednesday nights. "It’s a place where comedians can suck. It’s designed to help people get to the next level. When I was starting out, you could get mike time in Boston six or seven nights a week. Now new comics might get on stage every two months. You have to perform constantly to be good. So the ‘Experiment’ is a chance to try new material, and the audience might help finish a punch line. The ego in it for me is that no matter what happens, I need to be funny every time so people who come feel entertained."

"The Tony V Experiment" | The Comedy Studio, Hong Kong Restaurant, 1236 Mass Ave, Cambridge | Wednesdays | 617.661.6507