Comedian Kyle Cease entertained UNCW students during a standup performance hosted by the Association for Campus Entertainment. Cease left the audience with sore jaws and stomachs by seamlessly weaving humor into real life stories.

You may have seen Cease in “Not Another Teen Movie” as the slow-clapping kid who never gets his timing right. He also played the awkward rich kid Bogey Lowenstein in “10 Things I Hate About You.”

Due to a lack of advertising for the Sept. 24 show, the seats at the Burney Center were more than half empty, but Cease made the most of it. He jumped onstage with an excited smile. His casual demeanor was complemented by a worn-out backwards cap and a shirt that said “I Highly Recommend This.”

“I feel like I’m at an AA meeting,” said Cease about the small size of the audience. “You never know what to expect. I’ve performed in colleges with several hundred people in the audience.” 

He thanked ACE for the unenthusiastic introduction and for giving him permission to say anything he wanted.

Cease used fast-paced, narrative comedy to guide his audience through the milestones that brought him from a laugh-loving teenager to the standup stud he is today. Sarcastic anecdotes about his family left the audience in tears.

“My mother was named Bambi because she was a stripper-and because her mother was killed by a hunter,” said Cease.

But the most memorable segments combined humor with life lessons. Cease revealed that positivity and creative thinking are the keys to success. He called on statistics and scientific studies to prove his point.

In one of these studies, 32 depressed people were required to stand in front of a mirror. They had to do this for 30 minutes a day for 30 days. They were asked to fake the stature and facial expressions of a confident person. At the end of the experiment, the symptoms of every patient were either cured or significantly improved.

The comedian also described how humor helps people.

“When you’re laughing at something, you’re not thinking about the stressful parts of your life,” said Cease. “You’re not thinking about that girl who cheated on you nine years ago or that job you didn’t get. You’re just laughing, and losing that negativity helps people think clearly.”

Cease also revealed the clever strategy he used to win the Comedy Central Standup Showdown. During the contest, the public was able to vote online for their favorite standup comedian. Options included television icons like Dane Cook, Daniel Tosh and Jeff Dunham. Despite his lesser fame, Cease had the brilliant idea of hosting a daily podcast in which he thanked every person who voted for him by name. This strategy won him more than 200,000 votes, enough to oust Jeff Dunham in the final hours and earn Cease an avid word-of-mouth following.

Cease’s new CD is sarcastically named “I Highly Recommend This.” And if you are a fan of fast-paced, narrative standup, I highly recommend this. You can also follow Cease on Twitter, Facebook and his personal website.