One-man show

Mike Birbiglia’s offbeat life shapes his comedy act.

Every night before dozing off, comedian Mike Birbiglia climbs into a sleeping bag spread out across his bed, and binds himself and his wife inside a cocoon of fitted bedsheets. Birbiglia takes no chances now, even if a decade has passed since he sleepwalked out the window of a second-story La Quinta Inn and nearly killed himself. He received 33 stitches for gashes in his legs.

“I sort of look like a more relatable Hannibal Lecter now,” Birbiglia says of the “fitted sleep sheet” he says he invented recently to prevent sleepwalking-related injuries. “I’ve even cut out a hole [in the sheet] for my head. There are details in my life that are both complete setups and punchlines. This is a completely true thing I’m describing to you, and yet on stage people will just laugh.”

Speaking by phone from his in-laws’ home in Palm Beach, Birbiglia says the “sleep sheet” is invoked during his one-man show “The New One,” appearing tonight at Parker Playhouse in Fort Lauderdale. These painful sleepwalking episodes are well documented. His struggles with REM behavior disorder, a dopamine deficiency in which sleepers literally act out their dreams, were first chronicled in 2008 on the public-radio series “This American Life.” It spawned the movie “Sleepwalk With Me,” (co-written and -produced with Ira Glass), an insider’s view about Birbiglia’s disease but also about how standup comedy demands tough true mettle.

“All jokes are offensive to somebody. Comedians are not our friends. They’re social satirists,” Birbiglia says during our interview. “As comedians, we find a grain of truth in things, and then spin it into a punchline. But we’re living in strange times now with our current president, where the setup is so hyperbolic that the punchlines have to be even stranger.”

Birbiglia will reveal few details about “The New One,” a deliberate move on his part to market the show. But first-time parenting will be a strong theme, he says. His daughter, Oona, is 3. Birbiglia’s popularity has soared since the release of his acclaimed 2016 comedy film “Don’t Think Twice,” which means marketing the shows with scant details has gotten easier, he says. To promote his current tour, which will culminate with a string of off-Broadway dates in July and August, Birbiglia released a podcast series last December titled “The Old Ones With Mike Birbiglia.” On it, he revisits old comedy albums, mainly his own, with the help of Judd Apatow, Glass, his wife, Jen Stein, and other friends.

Birbiglia is also working on a new comedy film, partly inspired by ideas from his wife.

EVAN SUNG/COURTESY Mike Birbiglia says some details of his life are both complete setups and punchlines.