Local comedian making a comeback after brutal on-stage attack

After a comedian in South Carolina was recently beaten during a show, KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson caught up with another Seattle-area comedian making his comeback after he was attacked on stage.

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In 2015, Dylan Avila was running an open-mic night in Renton when an audience member assaulted him.

“We were four comics into the night and as I was introducing the next guy, (the attacker) jumped out and hit me twice with a metal baseball bat. Once across my left jaw and left ear and over the right side of my head,” Avila said. “I was millimeters away from death. Luckily, he was dumb enough to do it in front of an audience with the lights on me and a microphone in my hand. A lot of friends and comedians jumped to my rescue.”

Avila said he had previously banned the guy from the open-mic night for doing a particularly inappropriate routine several weeks in a row.

“It was just really awful and awkward,” he said. “He had already been banned from some other comedy shows as well by this point. I guess that’s what kind of set him off.”

The attacker received 10 years in prison with no parole, plus three years of house arrest after that. Avila, however, said he’ll be dealing with his injuries for the rest of his life.

“The titanium plates are never going to go away. That dent’s always going to be in my head,” he said. “I’ve always been pretty hard-headed though. I wasn’t going to let this stop me.”

Avila said the attack was particularly hard on his three kids, who were ages 6, 5, and 3 at the time.

“It’s challenging, but I have a really good support around me. My wife is an amazing person,” he said. “The comedy community itself is really kind of like a gang. They always got your back no matter what. Even if they don’t really know you personally, if you’re a comic and some tragedy happens to you, a lot of them will just come to your aid and do benefit shows and donate and put you on stage.”

Comedian comeback

Three years after he was assaulted, Avila is launching a one-man comeback show called “My Turn at Bat.”

“It is a story about my life and around this attack. What led to the attack and what gave me the strength to get back up and get back on stage. It goes through my life up to the point of that night and all the aftermath after that,” he said.

Despite the trauma of the attack, Avila said he doesn’t get flashbacks of it while he’s doing comedy.

“I just feel comfortable up there. If I’m gonna die on stage, then I guess that’s what’s gonna be my fate,” he said. “Most of my PTSD comes from when I go to my kid’s little league games. I’m around a bunch of 6-year-olds swinging metal bats. That messes with me a little bit.”

Listen to the full interview with comedian Dylan Avila here.