Chad Daniels performs intimate set in Bovee Rotunda

Comedian Chad Daniels performs his comedy stand-up routine for students Saturday night in the Rotunda room at the Bovee University Center. Daniels has previously appeared on television shows such as Comedy Central and Conan O’Brien. (Zack Wittman/Staff Photographer)

Chad Daniels didn’t need a microphone to entertain his audience Saturday night.

Due to technical difficulties, Daniels performed most of the set without his microphone, which made for a more intimate setting between Daniels and his audience.

“Every time I’m about to swear, this mic goes out,” Daniels joked early on. “This microphone is a Christian, we have a Christian microphone in this college.”

The event, sponsored by the Central Michigan University Program Board, packed 210 individuals into the Bovee University Center Rotunda.

Daniels, along with being featured on Comedy Central’s “Live at Gotham,” has been on “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson” and appeared on “Conan.” In 2009, Daniels was named comedian of the year by the Minneapolis news publication City Pages.

The event was called the first major event of the spring semester by Program Board Director Damon Brown.

The audience was impressed by how Daniels interacted with them throughout his set.

“I love how he played with the audience,” Grosse Ile senior Zackery Kowalski said. “He was very personable.”

Daniels spent a portion of his set making fun of a college student who attended the event with her parents.

“When he said that the one girl’s parents had sex all the time, the look on her face was just priceless,” Kowalski said.

Daniels followed the exclamation with an observation on growing old.

“I used to assume that if you had gray hair, you weren’t having any sex,” Daniels said. “But they’ve got the kids out of the house, they have all the time in the world.”

Another one of Daniels’ targets was a group of four women with whom he bantered throughout the set. They earned the nickname “Mount Shushmore” when Daniels joked the group was talking too much and he needed to see four quiet, stone-like faces.

Brionna Hardin, a Bath sophomore, said she enjoyed the show more because of Daniels’ interaction with her group.

“We did not expect to interact with him this much when we came here,” Hardin said. “… I really enjoyed how he talked with the audience throughout the show, though. It was entertaining.”

Program Board’s Comedy Chair De’Yonko Thomas said Program Board picked out the more intimate UC Rotunda over Platcha Auditorium because of Daniels’ style of comedy.

“We look at all of our comedy acts, and we looked at how he would perform in a larger venue or how he would perform in a smaller area,” the Sterling Heights sophomore said. “We thought that this was the best venue for Daniels.”