Comedian Sebastian Maniscalco brings his Stay Hungry Tour to Taft Theatre (317 E 5^th Street Cincinnati) this Thursday Jan 24. Doors open at 6 p.m. and the show begins at 7 p.m.

Forever able to seize the moment, never failing to speak his mind, always telling it like it is, Sebastian Maniscalco is one man who isn’t afraid to put it all out there. Yes, the Chicago-area born, Italian-immigrant-raised comedian behind wildly successful network specials including last year’s “Sebastian Maniscalco: Why Would You Do That?,” “What’s Wrong With People?,” and “Aren’t You Embarrassed?” is that little voice within all our heads. The one we are too timid to unleash. Maniscalco is bearing the burden of our bizarre and head-scratching modern-day world. You can thank him later.

Distinguished by the New York Times as having his “own kind of panache,” Maniscalco is a success story resulting from years of hard work and a keen self-awareness of innate talent. A natural born-storyteller, one constantly regaling his family with madcap tales at the dinner table, Maniscalco moved to Los Angeles in 1998 and began pounding the pavement on his comedic quest. The tireless worker first made his name at the city’s famed Comedy Store where he performed at every opportunity — even if that meant rushing over to the club on a break from his waiter job at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. “I felt if I missed an opportunity to be onstage I missed an opportunity to somebody being in the audience and seeing me.” His persistence paid off: then-massive comic Andrew Dice Clay saw him onstage one night and took a young Maniscalco out on the road with him. But not until Vince Vaughan enlisted him for his popular “Wild West Comedy Show” did his career begin to explode. Says Maniscalco: “From there things started to snowball.”

Purchase your tickets today at ticketmaster.com.