ON a recent Monday night at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater in Manhattan, the comedian Leo Allen came out to kick off his stand-up showcase, “Whiplash,” and was startled at the packed 150-seat theater. “People are sitting on the floor,” he said, gazing at the cross-legged spectators. “They think Chris Rock’s going to be here or something.”  The latest on the arts, coverage of live events, critical reviews, multimedia extravaganzas and much more. Join the discussion.  Mr. Glover with Danny Pudi in a scene from the NBC show “Community,” which has been renewed for a second season. Mr. Glover’s Comedy Central stand-up special will be broadcast on Friday.  But the audience members knew who they were there to see: Donald Glover, the 26-year-old actor, writer and comedian who stars on “Community” on NBC and whose videos are an Internet sensation. And even with the lights so bright, when Mr. Glover took the stage, he knew what type of crowd had come to see him. He’s gotten pretty good at sorting out his fans.  “When I get stopped on the street, I have to listen to know how the person knows me,” Mr. Glover said over arepas at an East Village restaurant. “If it’s an older woman, it’s ‘Community.’ If it’s a New Yorker, it’s ‘30 Rock,’ ” for which he was a writer. He added, “If it’s a dude who has on an A.S.U. hat backwards, it’s probably ‘Bro Rape.’ And the last thing you want to hear when you’re walking down the street with your mom is ‘Yo, Bro Rape!’ ”  The last credit refers to a video he produced with his sketch group, Derrick Comedy, when he was a student at New York University. It skewered frat-boy types and became the sort of Internet phenomenon comedians hope will propel them into careers so huge that they stop having time for the Internet. But even after being welcomed by traditional television “30 Rock,” “Community” and his first Comedy Central special, which has its debut Friday  Mr. Glover said he has no intention of leaving the Web and other grass-roots outlets behind.  “In Hollywood people are risking a lot of money on your weird ideas,” Mr. Glover said. “They’re trying to make money, and so they should. It’s an expensive business. The vision will always be a bit corrupted, and I’m really fine with that. But online, hopefully, will always be like the Wild West, where anything goes.”  Even with a steady day job on “Community,” which NBC recently picked up for a second season, Mr. Glover made time over the past year to spoof boy bands and Tiger Woods, to help distribute Derrick Comedy’s first feature film, “Mystery Team,” and to hone his stand-up at casual shows in New York and Los Angeles.  But nothing underscores Mr. Glover’s commitment to self-produced content as much as his decision to depart the writing staff of “30 Rock” because the job was keeping him from his other endeavors.  That was nearly a year ago. Yet much of the buzz surrounding Mr. Glover still concerns how he came to “30 Rock.” David Miner, an executive producer on the show, was searching for writers when he found Mr. Glover on the Web site of the comedy troupe Wicked Wicked Hammerkatz (hammerkatz.com). In a rare instance of reverse cold calling  from producer to unknown writer  Mr. Miner reached out to Mr. Glover and sent him to meet Tina Fey, the star and creator of “30 Rock.”  “All he had was a packet of sketch comedy pieces,” Ms. Fey said in an e-mail message. “One was about going on a date with a girl and slowly realizing that she was a Fraggle. She ate furiously, like Cookie Monster, and food fell out the sides of her mouth. That sketch made me laugh.”  After two seasons, which included numerous late-night sessions with the writing staff on Ms. Fey’s living room floor, Mr. Glover left “30 Rock”  and not because he had another network offer. “People think I left to do ‘Community,’ ” he said. “I left because ‘30 Rock’ is a full-time job, and I was doing so much other stuff.”  The other stuff included breaking into stand-up. “It helps me work out stuff I didn’t know was inside of me, like being the only black kid in my school, or the foster kids we had in my family,” Mr. Glover said. (Over the course of his childhood Mr. Glover’s parents hosted about 100 foster children in their Atlanta home.)  He was also trying to distribute “Mystery Team,” which follows the exploits of a hapless group of teenage detectives, alongside his Derrick colleagues Dan Eckman, Dominic Dierkes, D C Pierson and Meggie McFadden. The group orchestrated a limited theatrical release based on fans voting online to bring the film to their area. (It’s currently playing in Los Angeles.) Moviegoers who see the film twice get a plastic sword and their names printed on the insert of the DVD, which comes out in May.  With Derrick “we do whatever we want without worrying about standards and practices or money,” Mr. Glover said. “Mixtapes are what make rap stars now, and the online bits we put out there for free are like the mixtapes of the comedy world.” Mr. Glover should know. He makes music under the name Childish Gambino and distributes it online, also free.  Of course neither rap nor comedy mixtapes pay the bills. Luckily, just as Mr. Glover was starting to panic about having quit “30 Rock,” he got a call to audition for “Community,” a sitcom about a group of misfits at a community college.  The show’s creator, Dan Harmon, cast Mr. Glover as Troy, whom Mr. Harmon calls “a dumb jock.” “Donald has to work hard, because there’s a great distance between him and this character,” Mr. Harmon said. “You can feel his potential. Someday I’ll be cashing in on the fact that I worked with him.” Mr. Glover hopes that the Comedy Central special will help bridge the gap between “Community” and the other parts of his fan base, and the special seems constructed to do just that. It’s a mix of straightforward gags, scenes from his childhood and the President Obama impression that sparked last year’s rumors that Mr. Glover would join “Saturday Night Live.”  And it’s a performance that demonstrates he is as comfortable onstage as he is on screen, online and in the writers room  which is why Ms. Fey said she was comfortable with letting him go. “Usually, when writers tell you they want to pursue performing, you want to tell them to keep their day jobs,” she said. “But with Donald, I had to agree that his talent, youth and handsomeness were not to be wasted sitting on my living room floor.”
The comic Donald Glover has thrived as a writer and actor on network sitcoms like “Community,” but traditional television comedy comprises only a portion of his output.