STEVEN WRIGHT IS COMedy royalty — the king of surreal humor delivered with deadpan precision. Ranked the 15th best stand-up comic of all time by Rolling Stone magazine, he has been entertaining audiences since the 1980s, and on May 1, Mr. Wright takes the stage at the Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall, in Fort Myers.

In 1982, the Burlington, Massachusetts, native got his big break on the “Tonight Show,” the most coveted, make-it-or-break-it stage for stand-ups at the time. His inventive and clever performance placed him on Johnny Carson’s short-list of favorite comedians and catapulted him to the upper echelons of the industry, with regular appearances on “Late Night with David Letterman,” “Saturday Night Live” and “The Conan O’Brien Show.”

Known for a monotone, unhurried delivery of brain-teasing one-liners, Mr. Wright’s minimalist style sets him apart. “I like to notice the tiny, mundane things in life that people don’t talk about, but everybody is aware of,” he says. “It’s my perspective of seeing the world in a surreal way, a kind of twisted perspective. This is just how my mind works. I see the world like a child, but I use words of an adult to describe what I’m seeing.”

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Mr. Wright still recalls an influential field trip to the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston, when he was in the 11th grade. “That’s when I first saw surrealism, and I didn’t even know what surrealism was. I remember two paintings. One was a road coming down a hill and then the road went straight down and turned into a waterfall. Another one was a painting of a clothespin in the middle of a field that was the size of a silo. And I thought, ‘Wait a minute, wow, what’s this?’” Those paintings still come to mind decades later. According to Mr. Wright, they changed and informed his perspective, encouraging a new way of seeing that continues to this day.

Combining new observations with some of his tried-and-true riffs, Mr. Wright’s set promises lots of laughs, with no mention of current events or celebrity gossip. “Right from the beginning, I had these rules that I made up for myself, and one of them was that I wouldn’t talk about giant things in the news, like the president or current events or some popular movie. I wanted to talk about littler things,” he remarks. “I didn’t want to be attached to time, either. I wanted to be able to do a joke for years if I wanted, not like a Reagan joke. Electricity is never going out of style.”

In a departure from many other humorists, Mr. Wright’s material steers clear of vulgar language or insult comedy. “I think I swear four times in 90 minutes, and I don’t make fun of anybody,” he explains. “That’s just how I was raised — to be a polite person. I might say stuff to my friends, but when you go out in front of an audience, it’s like you’re at someone’s Thanksgiving dinner. All of a sudden, what are you going to say, pass me the [expletive] cranberry sauce?”

Mr. Wright’s legendary career includes an Academy Award for the short film “The Appointments of Dennis Jennings”; Grammy-nominations for his comedy albums “I Have a Pony” and “I Still Have a Pony”; successful specials on HBO and Comedy Central; and acting gigs in iconic films like Mike Myers’ “So I Married An Axe Murderer,” Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers,” Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs” and Dave Chappelle’s “Half-Baked.”

A Google search of Steven Wright quotes will lead to a vast treasure trove of gems that don’t just tickle our funny bones, but also prompt acknowledgment and thought. Mr. Wright admits that he finds ideas everywhere. “A lot of jokes come into my head throughout my day,” he says. “I’ll see a sign, overhear a couple of words, or I’ll be reading something and I’ll see a word that jazzes me up that I wouldn’t have normally thought of, like the word electrolysis. I read that word in the paper, and then I made an entire joke off of that word. Certain words are exciting. They’re weird. They sound weird.”

Inspired by literary heroes such as Kurt Vonnegut and Charles Bukowski, as well as George Carlin, whose example inspired him to become a comedian, Mr. Wright has a daily writing discipline. “I exercise every morning and drink a bunch of coffee, and then I have an hour-and-a-half where my mind is blasted on caffeine, and things will come to me during that time because I’m jazzed up,” he says. “In the afternoon I like to go for an hour walk, and after like 20 minutes, you go into this peaceful state. The madness of the world floats away, and then you can see these thoughts casually come around because you’re not busy doing stuff.”

At 66, Mr. Wright is not anticipating retirement any time soon. “I know that people my age do retire, but I don’t really think about that, because what I do is just thinking, and I like to think. I like to write. I like to do the show.” ¦

In the KNOW

Steven Wright: A Comedy Original

» When: May 1
» Where: The Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall, 13350 FSW Parkway, Fort Myers
» Information: 239-481-4849 or www.bbmannpah.com
Also playing at:
» April 29 at the King Center for the Performing Arts in Melbourne, FL @ 8PM
Tickets from $29.50, plus fees
» April 30 at the Florida Theatre in Jacksonville, FL @ 8PM
Tickets prices are $34.50 – $59.50