A Dream Fulfilled: Island Comedian Brian Glowacki To Headline At The Wilbur

For Nantucket native Brian Glowacki, a long-held dream is about to be realized.

After 11 years on the stand-up comedy circuit, Glowacki is headlining his own show at The Wilbur theater in Boston on June 4.

“To be from a sandbar and get anywhere close to this, I’m super proud of that,” Glowacki said on Tuesday. “Anyone that starts in comedy around New England sees The Wilbur as the thing - it’s the dream to perform there, and to headline there without any television or movie credits, just grassroots? I asked for this imagining they would say no, but it’s always been the goal. This is it.”

Glowacki said the opportunity came about through his connections with the comedian Bob Marley - “the one from Maine, not Jamaica” - who he has opened for in the past. He fostered relationships for years with the same people who did bookings for Marley, and recently went to them with his idea.

“They started to take notice of my hustle, so when I approached them with it, they said ‘do you think you can do it’?” Glowacki said.

After grinding through more than a decade at comedy clubs all over New England and beyond, his answer was definitely “yes.”

These days, Glowacki is on the road most of the time, performing as many as 300 shows a year. His material is fine-tuned and ready for his headlining performance at The Wilbur. His only fear now, he said, is making sure he fills the seats. All 1,091 of them (yes he knows the exact number).

“All I’ve ever wanted to do is make people laugh,” Glowacki said in his announcement of The Wilbur performance. “On June 4th I will be the first ever local, unsigned, independent comedian to take a crack at the famous Wilbur Theatre in Boston MA and it would mean the world to me if you were there.”

At a time when stand-up comedians are reassessing the mantra that anything and everything is fair game for jokes - and some are even being attacked on stage - Glowacki said his material goes in a different direction.

“What happened with Chris Rock is such a freak thing, it’s hard to wrap my head around,” Glowacki said. “I don’t go into politics or anything that’s going to divide people. I want to bring people together. I want to make people forget about things in the news and have 90 minutes off from the real world.”

Tickets for Glowacki’s show go on sale at noon on April 13 at TheWilbur.com