LOS ANGELES — Not everyone wakes up to an avalanche of antisemitic tweets and then decides to attend a meeting of white nationalists in New York City. Because, well, not everyone is Alex Edelman, who has recounted the evening hundreds of times onstage in his hilarious and thought-provoking hit show "Just for Us."

And after spending six years revising his incisive 90-minute set (with the help of numerous comedy legends) and performing it all over the world, he's ending it with an encore run in Los Angeles — just before the April 6 release of the corresponding HBO special, filmed during the show's run on Broadway last summer.

"Part of the reason this show is ending is because I can't do it anymore," he told The Times. "Doing it can be a wrenching experience, but I've loved it."

Ahead of his final seven performances of "Just for Us" at the Mark Taper Forum, the comedian participated in an exit interview of sorts, where he talked about the trick to recounting the time his Orthodox Jewish family celebrated Christmas, the loss of his director and close collaborator Adam Brace, and the to-do list for starting a new show — one that possibly addresses the decadeslong Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a topic that's fascinated him since childhood. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: You attended the white nationalist meeting in 2018. When did you realize it'd make good onstage material?

A: I didn't realize it until other comedians and other people pushed me toward it and told me it was a good idea. I'm an idiot — I just thought it was a fun story to tell friends. I told Nick Callas [a fellow stand-up comedian] the story, and he made a joke about a detail in the story, and I thought, that's a pretty good joke. Then I did it on stage as a three-minute joke while opening for a comedian friend of mine who, I would say, I didn't think had my best interests at heart. That comedian went, "That story about that apartment is really weird, huh?" and I thought, "Wow, they feel a little threatened by that joke."

Then Adam clinched it. I told him the story, and he was like, "There's something there." It was a work in progress through 2018, and even though it won awards and got good reviews, it went to bed for all of 2019. I desperately wanted someone to make it as a special then. Thank God nobody did, because it needed more work. I've told this specific story of the meeting steadily since 2021 that it's become the memory, which is fascinating.

Q: You're now known to ask comedy greats for advice. Whose words of wisdom helped you most?

A: Steve Martin gave me a tag [for a joke], Stephen Colbert gave me a performance suggestion, and Jerry Seinfeld pointed out something that got a laugh every time but was really a flaw of the show. Billy Crystal gave me the advice to move from a handheld [microphone] to a headset, which I wasn't sure about because I thought the show would lose its stand-up roots. By the way, I pried that note out of him. I knew from looking at him during the show that his brain was going, and I wanted what was in there. Not only did he offer that advice, he came back when we taped the special.

Adam's instincts were almost always right, and it eats at me a little bit that it took me longer to come around to them than it probably should have. He was militant about prioritizing comedy and cutting distractions. I was once arguing for a detail that I thought was pretty good and belonged in the show. I said, "It's true!" and he said, "Well, it's a shame it isn't more entertaining!"

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