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Southern Colorado comedian from ‘America’s Got Talent’ to perform in Denver festival

When “America’s Got Talent” notoriously crusty judge Simon Cowell calls your comedy bit “brilliantly funny,” you know you’re doing something right.

Pueblo-based comedian Hayden Kristal, who goes by the pronoun “they,” realized their dream last month when they made it to the semifinals on season 17 of the NBC talent competition. They were voted off, but the experience will forever stick to the comedian who was born deaf into a hearing family that didn’t sign.

“Early on I found that comedy is a language everyone understands,” Kristal told “America’s Got Talent.” “If I say something and you laugh at it that’s a connection.”

Kristal’s first inkling they had a streak of funny came after entering a comedy writing competition and ending up a finalist. But doing stand-up at an open mic was too terrifying to consider. Until they found one in Nashville, six hours from home in Missouri, where nobody would know them if they bombed. Only they didn’t bomb even a little; they were chosen to do a regional showcase.

Kristal will perform Friday and Saturday at High Plains Comedy Festival in Denver.

College produced two degrees for Kristal — one in American Sign Language, which “seemed like a freebie,” they told “AGT” crowds, and the other zoo keeping.

“And Koko the sign language gorilla died four years ago,” they said. “So what I’m saying is comedy has to work out for me. My safety net is gone.”

And then there was the time she applied to work at the Gorilla Foundation during college and was rejected due to their hearing loss. The organization called it a liability issue.

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“Because if the gorilla were to sneak up on me I would not be able to hear it,” Kristal said in their “AGT” routine.

“I’ll toss this to the hearing people: What are y’all going to do differently if a gorilla sneaks up on you? I’m desperate to know what home field advantage you all have with your 2-second head start.”

Kristal calls themselves a deaf comedian, but says it’s not as binary as most people assume: “It’s more of a spectrum than can or can’t hear.”

They can hear well enough to know if the audience laughs at a joke or doesn’t, and crowd work is a harder skill to develop. But what presents the real challenge in comedy is the spaces where they perform, which tend to be inaccessible in general, and especially to those who are deaf and hard of hearing.

“They’re poorly lit, loud, crowded spaces that also typically serve alcohol, so lipreading is a nightmare,” Kristal said.

“Many places are unwilling or simply don’t have the budget for an interpreter, and even if they do, comedy is really difficult to communicate across languages and cultures.”

Contact the writer: 636-0270

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