Dallas comedienne Hope Flood doesn’t need a critic to give her feedback as long as she can see her audience’s faces.

“I personally prefer working in clubs. They’re more intimate, and the people are right there. You tell a joke, you hear laughter and you see their faces,” said the 20-year comedy veteran in a phone interview. “I recently performed in Baton Rouge at the Southern University Arena, where the Jaguars play. It seats 10,000 to 20,000. In the clubs, I usually perform to about 1,000. But at the arena, I couldn’t tell at all how I was doing. I couldn’t hear the laughter.”

She should hear the laughter Friday night when she returns to host the Funny First Friday event at Killeen’s Plaza Hotel. The venue’s usually crowded and while it won’t be all comedy, it’ll all be within eye contact of her audience.

Funny First Friday with host Hope Flood

When, where: 8 p.m. Friday at the Plaza Hotel, 1721 E. Central Texas Expressway in Killeen. Doors open at 7 p.m.

Tickets: $25 for VIP admission, $20 for general admission, $10 for the after party. Call (254) 371-4696 or go online at http://mosproductions.eventbrite.com.

Flood

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“(Friday) is more of a night of entertainment. There’ll be poetry, singers, comedians and some female impersonators,” she said. “It’s quality. . . . You will laugh and have a good time.”

While Flood will serve more as emcee for the evening, she’ll bring the laughs, too, and Friday night may be one of the last times to catch her before she moves back to Southern California.

The veteran of such television comedy shows as HBO’s “Def Comedy Jam” and BET’s “Comic View” came to Dallas from her native Los Angeles five years ago to do radio, a medium she loves — “I was born to do radio.” She built considerable name recognition from her time on the KNRB-FM morning show “BJ in the Morning.”

Flood earned laughs from the way she’d interact with listeners, a style largely conversational and improvised. Then the station dropped its local morning show for the nationally syndicated “The Steve Harvey Morning Show.” Flood returned to stand-up comedy, in which she started 20 years ago.

She knew from age 5 that she wanted to be an entertainer, she recalled, and found inspiration years later watching DL Hughley in “The Kings of Comedy” tour. “I thought, ‘I could do this,’ ” she recalled.

She got a chance to ask Hughley for advice, and he pushed her to get her feet wet to see if she’d be up to the life — thinking she’d quickly change her mind. In two weeks, Flood wrote enough material to perform a 15-minute routine. Hughley was impressed. “Twenty years later, I’m still here,” she said. “And he’s still a mentor.”

Flood plans to celebrate her two decades in comedy with an Aug. 28 show in Los Angeles. That show will mix comedy, poetry and music, much like Friday’s Killeen event, she noted.

While the comedienne enjoyed her time in Dallas, the city doesn’t offer the work opportunities and networking that Southern California does, she said.

Friday’s show will feature Maryland poet Julie, BET comic veteran Melanie Camacho, Hewitt musicians Johnny Powell and Huey O, comic Danny Clay, singer J. Domangue, Waco rappers YoungMook and Lil Ash, plus Dallas dancers Denaisha and Ramiyah.

choover@wacotrib.com

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