The Oak Cliff comedian and winner of the 2019 Funniest Comic in Texas kicked off the year with his network debut performance on NBC's Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. A month later, comedian and TV star George Lopez unwittingly goosed his fame and fandom on Steve Treviño's OMG Hi! podcast, and now Barbosa is taping his first feature-length comedy special for Netflix.
Kessler Theater artistic director Jeff Liles confirmed that Barbosa is shooting scenes for his untitled Netflix special this week, Wednesday through Friday, with six shows at the West Davis Street venue at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. each night. The venue originally booked him for two shows on Thursday and Friday, but the demand for seats pushed the comic and the Kessler to add more shows. The 9 p.m. Friday show is already sold out, according to the Kessler's ticket page.
"Netflix came through," Barbosa said on his Instagram page last month. "It's right across the street from the old barber shop where I used to work and used to get my haircuts."
Taping a comedy special for a platform the size of Netflix must already be a huge undertaking, but Barbosa also has a schedule jam-packed with shows across the country. The week following his taping at the Kessler, he'll perform eight dates in Chicago at the famed Zanies Comedy Club, according to his website. A month ago, the Oak Cliff comic opened for Dave Chappelle with Brandon Marshall and Mohammed Amer on the main floor of the American Airlines Center.
If you can't get tickets for his Kessler taping, don't fret. Barbosa will also spend his New Year's Eve at the Addison Improv, Dec. 28–Dec. 31, but you better get your tickets now because five of those shows are already sold out.
Barbosa has performed stand-up comedy in Dallas and the rest of the state for years and got his first big break in 2019 when he won the Funniest Comic in Texas competition in San Antonio. He also went on the road and won the New York Latino Film Festival's Stand Up Comedy contest. Talent scouts spotted his act and laid-back style and booked him on HBO's second annual HA Festival Comedy Special: The Art of Comedy, filmed in San Antonio alongside five other "up-and-coming Latinx stand-ups": Lisa Alvarado, Dave Jay, Chingo Bling, Jessica Keenan and fellow Dallas comedy native Steve Treviño, according to the press release from Warner Bros. Discovery.
Then like manna from the heavens, fate delivered Barbosa a gift in the form of a pissed-off George Lopez. Treviño interviewed Lopez on his podcast in February and played up Barbosa's rising fame and talent. Lopez responded for some strange reason, "But nobody knows who that motherfucker is, why are you saying his name, man?"
Everybody's gonna know Barbosa's name very soon.
