Sketch icon featured at Comedy Attic

Whether through Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch,” stoner sitcom “That ’70s Show” or sketch comedy group The Kids in the Hall, you may have seen or heard Kevin McDonald.

The Canadian comic performed Thursday night at the Comedy Attic and is performing again 8 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. today and Saturday, alongside Full Frontal Comedy, IU’s longest-running improvisational comedy troupe.

“We’re always looking to book the most interesting thing we can find,” Comedy Attic owner Jared Thompson said. “I couldn’t be more excited about what this show is going to be.”

McDonald is a veteran in the comedy field — he helped found The Kids in the Hall in 1984 after working at the Second City Training Center. Though the group’s TV show ended in 1995, he has appeared with them several times since and keeps in touch.

The group has frequent phone meetings is are currently planning a reunion tour and possible miniseries, McDonald said.

McDonald said he will forever be a “Kid in the Hall.” His standup act is a nod to those years of sketch comedy.

“I do a sneaky kind of standup,” he said. “It’s a sketch show pretending to be standup. I am basically playing the character of a guy who is doing standup for the first time.”

McDonald said he has known he wanted to be a comedian since fifth grade, when he realized it was what he was good at. He enjoys writing comedy the most, though he said he is better at performing.

“You’re lucky when your talent is comedy, because you get a noise,” McDonald said. “When you’re good, people laugh.”

McDonald said he thinks less in terms of jokes and more in terms of character and theme in his humor. He said Woody Allen, Steve Martin and Jerry Lewis are among his many influences, as well as “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” In addition to live-action movies and TV, he has also done a great deal of voiceover work for cartoons like Nickelodeon Studios’ “Catscratch,” “Invader Zim” and “Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness.” McDonald described the voiceover work as tiring.

“I end up screaming and jumping around a lot,” McDonald said. “The characters I play always fall out of a tree or down the stairs.”

McDonald’s standup routine may not include screaming, but it will include some singing and a Q&A session with the audience.

“It’s comedy all the way through from beginning to end,” McDonald said. “I’m nothing if not energy.”

Despite the energy and laughs after years of working in comedy, McDonald said he finds the world of stand-up comedy especially lonely. He texts his girlfriend before he goes on stage, but sometimes it makes him feel lonelier. What makes the loneliness worth it to McDonald?

“There’s this magical feeling when you’re on stage,” McDonald said. “No matter how bad your life is, when you go on stage, it all disappears. There’s no pain.”