Six nights a week in New York City, former Fort Wayne resident Stephanie Holmes performs stand-up comedy.

Sometimes she does this at comedy clubs and sometimes she does this in the sort of dives where laughter tends to be mirthless and rueful. Where comedy goes to die, in other words.

Sometimes she does it for money, but often she just does it for free.

The 24-year-old started doing it almost by accident and now it has become her purpose in life.

Holmes will perform tonight at the Dash-In, 814 S. Calhoun St.

The free show, which will also feature comics who have remained in the area, starts at 8 p.m.

This will mark the first time that most people in Fort Wayne who knew Holmes before she was a comic will have a chance to see her act.

A lot has changed with the Leo High School graduate over the years, and some of those changes are reflected in her comedy.

Holmes says she was a “repressed conservative” growing up in Indiana.

“I moved to New York and discovered myself,” she says. “Lenny Bruce has a great quote: ‘If God created the body and the body is dirty, then the fault lies with the manufacturer.’ ”

Which is to say, Holmes does some material about sex.

It’s funny, spot-on material, but that isn’t likely to appease people who are too straitlaced to give her points for accuracy.

Holmes originally went to New York to train to be a musical theater actress, so it is no surprise that she has produced two popular music video parodies, one involving an unlikely anatomical boast and another about her obsession with actor Jake Gyllenhaal.

You can see them by entering “Stephanie Holmes” into the search engines at YouTube.com and funnyordie.com.

The former has been watched by at least 30,000 people and – to Holmes’ way of thinking – that’s 30,000 more people who are curious about coming to a Stephanie Holmes comedy show than were curious before.

As for the comedy show she is about to do in Fort Wayne, Holmes says she is less concerned about shocking her loved ones than she is about former schoolmates and cohorts who may attend in the hope of seeing Holmes bomb.

“I think it’s a natural part of every person,” she says. “Even though you want to see your friends succeed, part of you wants to see them bomb.

“I have that, too,” Holmes says. “I am sure there will be people in the audience who’ll be thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if Stephanie fell flat on her face?’ ”

Holmes knows what it feels like to bomb.

“I’ve bombed,” she says. “I’ve been heckled. I have been doing this for a little over five years. I have had great experiences and bad experiences.

“In the moment, it sucks,” she says. “But in the long run, it’s better that it happens than it doesn’t.”

Holmes says the first time she bombed, she “curled up into a ball.”

“There were a lot of carbs afterward,” she says. “There was a lot of booze involved.”

But now she knows how to handle hecklers, she says.

Growing more confident about something is an almost-inevitable result of doing it six nights a week.

The reason Holmes performs so much is because Jim Gaffigan told her to.

Holmes sent an e-mail asking for advice to the MySpace page of the popular Indiana-born comic and, to her great surprise, Gaffigan responded. He told her to get on stage as much as possible.

So she did.

And she still does.

“If I go a couple of days without performing, I feel rusty. My timing’s off.”

Holmes admits she is sometimes haunted by the fear that she’s not any good.

“There are comics out there who are bad and yet they’ve done it for years and years,” she says. “Nobody tells them they’re bad.”

But Holmes got some noteworthy external validation last year when she was one of 10 finalists in the “New York’s Funniest” contest at the New York Comedy Festival.

Some of the other finalists were Holmes’ idols – people who’d been featured on Comedy Central specials and the like.

And she recently was admitted into the Friars Club, a prestigious New York hangout for homegrown and stopover celebs for over a century.

Holmes says she recently overheard a Broadway producer there brag about how he was saving about $4 million on startup costs for a new show.

“I was thinking, ‘If you have a couple of extra million lying around, I could use some of that.’ ”

Whatever happens from now on, it will happen without a backup plan.

“I never wanted a fallback plan,” she says. “Even if I am homeless on the streets but still performing comedy, I will consider myself headed in the right direction. I don’t want to go to beauty school.”

After all, a backup plan does imply the existence of backup skills.

“I can do nothing else,” she says. “I have no other discernible skills. I can’t do anything but comedy.”

spen@jg.net