Come on Charlyne

In the 2009 romcom Paper Heart, Charlyne Yi asks a gang of bikers at a Texas roadhouse their feelings about love. Yi cowrote and coscored the fictional documentary about her quest to understand romantic relationships while beginning a faux-mance with Michael Cera. In this typical Yi-out-of-water moment, we expect the motley crew of toothless, bearded bikers to eat her alive. Instead, not only do the guys answer her questions honestly, they strap the pint-size performer on the back of one of their hogs and take her for a ride. The setting isn’t an unfamiliar one for Yi, 24, who was born and raised in Fontana, California, a town she describes as full of “dirt and bikers, truck drivers and NASCAR.”

With her hair perpetually tied in a ponytail, her chirpy voice spilling out “ums” and “you knows,” and whatever scenery she’s surveying reflected in her chunky glasses, Yi cuts a figure of the picked-on math geek. Even with a handful of films under her belt (Cloverfield and Knocked Up among them), the awkwardness has stuck. “I have my moments of being shy,” she says via phone from her L.A. pad. “I have a bit of trouble articulating sometimes, so in social situations I’m not the most outgoing.”

In grade school, the shy pupil found outlets in writing and acting. While at the University of California in Riverside, Yi discovered the Improv in nearby Ontario and decided to give stand-up a whirl. “I was definitely terrible,” Yi says. “I had never used a mike before on stage and so when I pulled it I hit my mouth and everyone was laughing. I think they couldn’t tell if it was an act or not.” But the Improv’s manager encouraged her to stick with it. “He was like, ‘You know, you’re really funny. I know you didn’t really know what you were doing up there, but keep doing it.’”

Yi eventually dropped out of college, quit her job at Walmart and moved to L.A., where she started performing regularly at venues like the UCB Theater. Steering clear of standard joke telling, Yi, who appears Thursday 18 through Saturday 20 at Zanies, often incorporates magic and music into her comedy act and, as in Paper Hearts, blends fact and fiction. In her version of The Dating Game, for example, she puts prospective bachelors through the wringer, but the twist is that the winner gets an on-the-spot date with Yi that may include an assault on the unsuspecting bachelor by a fake ex-girlfriend. In another bit, she offers audience members money to strike her. “I purposely try to be obnoxious sometimes on stage,” she says, “just because I’m, I don’t know, a kid.”

Yi says marching to the beat of her own awkward drum—and that of her influences, including Harpo Marx, I Love Lucy and old-time variety shows—has worked against her. “It’s hard because I don’t really do traditional stand-up,” Yi says. “But if you say you do anything else, you sound pretentious or like a hippie.” She recalls being the only female comic on the roster one night and watching the room completely empty out after her name was called. And she finds her Kewpie-doll look occasionally undermines her prowess at the mike. “Because I don’t look like a grown-up per se, people don’t take me seriously.”

Well, some people do: Currently, Yi’s waiting to hear back from Universal on a script she cowrote for Judd Apatow; she’s developing a project for HBO with her Paper Heart costar Jake Johnson and its director, Nicholas Jasenovec; and she has other writing projects in the works as well. Not bad for a nerd.

Yi performs at Zanies Thursday 18 through Saturday 20.

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