By all accounts, Kahlil Ashanti has every reason to forget his childhood. He describes a military father who was mentally and physically abusive.

Instead, the 36-year-old actor/comedian has spent the last seven-plus years traveling the world performing his one-man show, “Basic Training,” a theatrical comedy that chronicles the story of his decision to join the U.S. Air Force to escape a painful past.

Beginning Tuesday, Oct. 12, Ashanti will perform 12 shows at the Stage Door Theater, sponsored by the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center. His final Qcity performance will be Sunday, Oct. 24.

Ashanti now lives in Vancouver, Canada, with his wife and son. During the one-hour show he plays 23 characters. No props. No costume changes.

Oddly enough, Ashanti say his mother told him on the night before he was to ship for military duty that the man who had tormented him was not his real father.

I caught up with him by phone last week for a Q&A. His answers were edited for brevity and clarity.
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Q. What can an audience expect going to see the show?
It depends a lot on what the audience brings to it. On the surface it appears to be a show about the military… but it’s actually a show about family that happens to be placed with the military as the setting. It’s a story about a kid who’s trying to leave his past behind. He keeps trying to run from it, and the more he runs from it the closer he gets to facing it. It’s a mix of irony with some comedy, as well as some pretty earth-shattering secrets. It’s a comedy with a punch. You’ll laugh a lot, but you’ll cry a lot. It kinda makes you pay for laughing.

Q. How did your father abuse you?
As long as I can remember, this guy was my dad. My childhood was hell on earth. I didn’t come home from school and drop my bags and watch cartoons. We were washing walls. I used to have to wash his truck in snow. He used to pick me up by the neck and throw me down the stairs. I just thought, ‘Man, this guy is really mad at something.’ I didn’t know it was because I wasn’t his. There was just hatred in his heart. It was a broken spirit. Of course, I can see that now as an adult. When I would ride home on the bus from school and the bus would pull up to the front of my house, I would have a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I felt like I was going to vomit. That’s how it felt for me to come home.

Q. Where is he now?
He passed away.

Q. Have you made peace with it?
I don’t think I have. Forgiveness is a funny thing. I don’t know that I ever had the courage to forgive him. I’m a Christian, I was raised in the church and my grandmother always said you’ve got to forgive, but I just don’t know that I’ve gotten there yet. That’s a tall order, man. I’ve come to peace with it as much as I can at this point.

Why put this story out there?
It wasn’t my choice. I wish I could sit up here and pretend like I was brave enough to put this show out there to inspire people, but that’s not how it started. I wrote this show in an acting class with Jeffrey Tambor -- he’s a famous character actor. I was living in L.A., working four jobs, living out of my truck on and off, and I took this acting class like most actors do in L.A. And in this acting class we had to do a monologue; you’d have to tell him a story through different characters. So I get up there and I start being funny. I’ve been a stand-up comedian since I was 14. So I start telling this funny story about me being in the Air Force… and he stopped me in the middle of my monologue and said, ‘We don’t need any more funny black people in Hollywood. Is that all you want to be…just another funny brother? Is that it? Have a seat and tell us why you joined the military.’ So I started acting it out, and it just kinda hit me. It just kinda came to me. Each week I brought another scene to class. And that was it. It just started snowballing from there.

Q. Would you call “Basic Training” a comedy?
I would say it is a comedy. It’s a theatrical comedy. Now, you’re not going to see me standing up there with a microphone. There are so many ways to do a one-man show. It’s a theatrical show with a comedic punch.

Q. I hear there’s a surprise ending.
Absolutely. You don’t see the ending coming. It’ll leave you with something to talk about.

Q. Why do you think pain and comedy are so closely linked?
Laughter is a great way to hide. It’s a way to release. There are exceptions to every rule. There are the Will Ferrells of the world who are amazingly funny and talented and had a great upbringing. But I think the great comedians, the ones that you and I admire – the Richard Pryors, the Robin Williams and the George Carlins – they had to go through something to get somewhere. And comedy is just a great way to communicate that without making people feel guilty.

Q. How long have you been performing the show?
The first time the show was performed was May 2003 in Los Angeles. Back then it was called Father's Day. It was much longer and had more characters. It wasn’t as tight.

Q. Where else have you performed?
I performed at the Montreal Fringe Festival, the Vancouver Fringe Festival, where it sold out, and then from there it went to Edinburgh, Scotland, where it won the Fringe First Award, then back to L.A. My goodness, I’m trying to remember everywhere it’s been. Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), a 14-city tour of Australia, off-Broadway in 2008. It got the New York Times Critics’ Pick. It’s just been me and my chair, man. To sit in Dubai and do a show about an American who was in the military going through child abuse and receive a standing ovation…that’s exhilarating. It’s taken me places I never thought it would.

Q. How is it for you personally to relive this several times a month?
Ah, it’s painful. It’s seriously painful. Reliving these moments is not something I would choose to do, or any sane person would choose to do. Being able to shake people’s hands at the end of the show is the only redemption I get.

Q. Did you ever figure out why you step-father was so angry?
Because he was abused himself. His mother made him sleep under the house when he was 6 and 7 years old. His birth mother died at an early age, and his step-mother was just evil. It was just a cycle of hatred and broken spirits. There’s never an excuse for abuse, especially abusing an innocent child, but it starts somewhere, doesn’t it?

Q. How did you break the cycle?
Prayer. By just making a promise to myself as I lay in bed as a 14- year-old. You know one of the things that helped me make that promise? I had some floor plans of my dream home. I could always draw as a kid and I wanted to be an architect. And that was my promise to myself, that I would be a better husband than he was, a better dad than he was, and just a better man. That along with a lot of prayer just really helped.

Q. Did you ever meet your real father?
Oh, yeah. For anyone who’s coming to the Charlotte show, he’s actually going to be there, but I can’t tell you when. What I do after the show sometimes is I do something called "the talkback." I come out and talk to the audience and answer questions for about 20 minutes. So for four of those shows, he’s going to come out and answer questions with me and you get to hear the story right from him.

That’s not the surprise ending, is it?
No.

Q. When and how did you two meet?
I met him in March of 2004. The acting class I was in actually bought me tickets to fly and go see him.

Q. How did you locate him?
My Uncle Tony was on Classmates.com looking around and said, ‘Hey, guess who I found.”

Q. And did you ever build that dream house?
Still working on it. Still got the plans. I guess I’ve been called to build something different for now.
 

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