Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.

No one who watches the recently-released Netflix comedy special “Nate: A One Man Show” will confuse it with any other comedy special.

The avant-garde, one-hour special is rated TV-MA for good reason and stars Natalie Palamides, a 2008 Peters Township High School/2012 Indiana University of Pennsylvania grad, as Nate, a guy who is toxic masculinity personified.

Her bare chest speckled in fake chest hair, Palamides wears a manly vest for the first half of the program but then … stuff happens: Prosthetic male body parts are bared, a shower is taken on stage.

The show opens with Nate in full machismo mode, choking on unmixed protein powder and pouring a La Croix sparkling water down his face (“So that’s what crying feels like,” Nate observes).

From there the show, filmed in front of a live audience, tracks Nate as he explores rape and consent while interacting with the audience and later his art teacher, also played by Palamides.

In the show’s introduction executive producer Amy Poehler (“Parks and Recreation”) remarks, “People are generally confused and sometimes mad (about ‘Nate’) and that’s art, baby!”

Part performance art, part character comedy, Palamides premiered “Nate” as a stage show at the 2018 Edinburgh Fringe Festival a year after she’d won “best newcomer” at the festival for a show called “Laid” where she portrayed a woman who lays an egg every day and has to decide if she’s going to raise it or eat it. Poehler saw “Nate” at a performance in Los Angeles, opted to produce a filmed production independently and then sold it to Netflix.

If there’s a theme to Palamides’ stage work it’s surely the comedy of the uncomfortable, but she takes the concept several leaps beyond “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

“(Tension) creates discomfort and then you can easily get a laugh by breaking that tension,” Palamides said. “The more tension you create, the bigger the laugh is going to be when it comes to exploring issues people avoid because the issues are uncomfortable. If you get people past that point of discomfort and rip off the Band-Aid, it allows people to open up to having challenging conversations with each other.”

Palamides, who double majored in theater and communications and was part of the Cook Honors College at IUP, credits her work in the IUP theater department with professor Rick Kemp for introducing her to clowning, mask work, commedia dell’arte and devised theater work.

“He brought in the Pig Iron Theatre to do a residency and they further introduced me to their way of creating theater,” Palamides said. “What I learned at IUP informs how I work now and initiated my interest in clowning and the way of creating plays from improvisation, which is how I make my shows now.”

Palamides, who previously voiced Buttercup in the 2016 Cartoon Network “Powerpuff Girls” reboot, is a utility player on Fox’s animated comedy “Duncanville,” voicing multiple characters each week on the Poehler-executive produced series which will air its second season in 2021. Palamides also does voice work for adult cartoon “Wild Life,” which aired as part of Syfy’s midnight Saturday “TZGZ” programming block this fall. She’s also known for playing Mara, Flo’s cynical co-worker, on Progressive insurance TV commercials.

Palamides said she wouldn’t let her parents, Becky and Dale Palamides of Peters Township, see “Nate” when she was touring with the stage version of the show prior to filming it for Netflix (“Nate” never played on stage in Pittsburgh).

“They didn’t really have a good reaction to my first solo show where I’m not naked even so I was not sharing this one with them but now there’s no keeping it from them,” Natalie Palamides said. “They certainly had a visceral reaction (to ‘Nate’). My dad suggested I get a stage name so people don’t know, so they don’t have to be associated with the show but it’s OK. It’s understandable.”

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