Twelve year old Aedan Hepner steps up onto the stage, following yet another singer. Violet lights shine down on him as he sets up his props: a large pad of paper propped up and a wooden pointer.

He nervously faces the audience and starts his comedy act for the talent show at the wedding of family friends. With the wooden pointer, Hepner gestures to the pad of paper, talking about the good, the bad and the interesting things in life. Soon people are roaring with laughter, and his anxious feelings vanish.

To Grant sophomore Aedan Hepner, stand-up comedy is his life. Ever since he was little, he loved the attention of making people laugh. But it wasn’t until the talent show that Hepner really started to get serious about his stand-up comedy. He spends hours each week writing and practicing his jokes, and almost every Sunday he goes to the Curious Comedy Theater to perform.

“He’s the funniest person I know,” says his close friend Dylan Palmer. But sometimes, Hepner runs into trouble at open-mic clubs because of his young age.

“People think I’m just some stupid kid who is going to get up on the stage and sing the alphabet,” says Hepner. But he does a lot more than that.

Hepner was born on June 9th, 1999 in Aptos, California. Growing up in California, he and his older brother Coleman spent their time running around the woods by their house and playing dress up games. “We spent a lot of time in the woods with each other, we would play imaginary games outside a lot,” says Coleman Hepner.

When Hepner was 9 years old, his family moved to Portland looking for a better sense of community and to be closer to their friends. “This place just has the more ideal community,” Hepner says.

After watching comedy shows on Netflix, Hepner decided to write his own comedy routine to perform at his family friends’ wedding. He based his performance off of Demetri Martin, his favorite comedian.

He remembers feeling good after the performance because of all the laughs and positive response. “After the show, everyone was coming up to me and congratulating me,” he says.

After that, he was motivated to do more performances but never had a chance to go to an actual open-mic club. For a year he stayed dormant, wanting to perform but not having any opportunities.

But in 2013, his family moved to Garfield Ave., two blocks away from the Curious Comedy Theatre, a nice, clean, non-profit comedy theater open to all ages. Hepner went to one of their open-mic nights and met Anatoli Brant, a comedian who taught classes there.

“The art of comedy is that you’re having fun onstage because they’re laughing and they’re having a good time because of you.” -Aedan Hepner

About a month later, Hepner signed up for his class. “Anatoli was kind of like my mentor,” he says. There were eight other comedians in the class, and that is where he feels he learned the most about comedy. From there, he worked up the courage to perform at one of Curious Comedy’s weekly open-mic nights.

Currently, Hepner performs his stand-up at least once a week. He loves the attention he gets and when he can make people cry of laughter. “The art of comedy is that you’re having fun onstage because they’re laughing and they’re having a good time because of you,” says Hepner. When he is not working on his shows, he swims on Montavilla’s summer swim team and plays video games.

Hepner wants to continue doing comedy for the rest of his life. “I see all my favorite comedians up on stage and think: ‘Someday, that’s going to be me.’”