By Nick A. Zaino III Globe correspondent,Updated November 18, 2021
Sometimes when comedians reach a certain level of success, they like to shake things up to keep from getting into an artistic rut. Maybe go back to their roots in the clubs, or try acting. After a string of well-received Netflix specials and selling out venues internationally, Vir Das is taking the concept of going back to square one to the extreme for his new show, “Manic Man,” which he brings to the Wilbur Saturday for a sold-out date, and then to Foxwoods in March.
“I sold my house,” he says. “Two months ago, I sold all my possessions [from] the last 10 years. And I’m just traveling the world for the next year and a half with kind of, eight T-shirts and two pairs of pants. And just learning how to be funny again. So conceptually, that’s the show.”
Das has made a career out of restlessness. He was born in India, studied theater and economics at Knox College in Illinois and acting in a program at Harvard for four months. If he looks familiar to some Bostonians, they might remember him playing his guitar on the streets of Cambridge while he was here. He cut his teeth on stand-up in Chicago before going back to India to carve out a career in television and Bollywood. Around 2014, he began to get back into stand-up, and in 2017 released “Abroad Understanding,” the first of four specials currently streaming on Netflix.
But as his reach expands, he is feeling anxious. “I’m always suspicious of four or five years of success,” he says. “I’m always like, alright, something’s about to go wrong. So I’m going to beat the universe to it. Just kind of shake up my own life. I felt like the pandemic put me in a new place comedically, and [I] feel like I came closer to my voice. And then when you start to feel like yourself, like truly yourself, for the first time onstage, you want to put yourself through new experiences.”
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