My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish and I’m in Therapy,” opens in Atlanta for the first time tonight, but as far as comedian Steve Solomon is concerned, you already know the 30 people he imitates on stage every  night.

They grew up on your block. They’re at the family reunion. They’re sitting next to you at work right now.

Steve Solomon's show opens Oct. 15.

Yes, every character is an exaggerated versions of his own friends and family members, but he says they’re universal: the perfect sister, the dumb cousin, the neurotic, bombastic, too-smart-for-their-own-good…everyone.

That’s why the one-man show ran for years in New York, and is booked on the road into 2011. In Spokane, Wash., “there wasn’t a Jew for 600 miles,” and it sold out. In South Florida, he says he’s a recognized-on-the-street kind of celebrity. Everywhere he goes, he hears the same joke — “We must be related.”

He discovered the power of a good imitation when he was a kid in Brooklyn. He had a job delivering Chinese food and apartment after apartment, he buzzed up to let people know their dinners were waiting — and they rarely answered. When he imitated a Chinese accent, “they’d always open the door.”

He started answering the phone in other voices, entertaining and annoying everyone around him.

“I fooled everybody in my family and I loved doing it,” he explains.

He went on to a long career as a teacher and school administrator, until he just couldn’t do it anymore. In what he calls a “pretty risky” move, he left his job and tried stand-up. What he was really good at, though,was imitating others — especially the people who grew up around him. (He swears his family members love the show.)

Here’s what Solomon had to say about going from school to stand-up to stage:

On why he went from stand-up to stage show: “What I could do was voicing and sound effects. I was 20 years older than anybody else in the clubs. I knew I had to develop a property.”

On getting that show to a stage: “After six months of rejections, I got a 10 minute audience with the pope, an agent. He said, ‘I’m not interested in comics. I need shows.’ I did a little, he started laughing, brought in a whole bunch of people and in 10 minutes, we had booked $125,000 worth of shows.”

On writing his style of comedy: “You would swear I’m a babbling lunatic. You would put a quarter in my cup. I have to say it. I’m doing the sounds because I have to hear them. I write it, get the gist of it and I have to walk around my patio, hotel room, any place. You walk around New York babbling to yourself, everybody thinks you’re normal.”

On changing the show: “I’m trying to make it funnier. It has to evolve. No matter where I play it, it works. No matter how I change it, it works. I have people bring back members of the family and say ‘It was different! When do you change it?’ It doesn’t get boring. It’s not the same all the time.”

On changing the show during the show: “If it’s 90 percent seniors, I’m going to change the material somewhat. If it’s youngsters, I’m going to change the material. You have to establish whether the audience can recognize a character. You never smack ‘em over the head. My biggest problem is that there are cues, lighting cues, sound cues. I’ll make sure I’m back for a cue, or they’ll go crazy. If something’s going right, I’ll run with it. Backstage, they’re saying ‘He’ll be back, he’ll be back. Trust him.’”

On fame: “I don’t need you to know who I am. I need you to know my product. If you want to go out and become famous, it’s going to happen by accident. It always does. You’ll never make a dime, you’ll pump gas and wait tables. I’m a business man first, an egotist second. I do a wonderful job with my characters. But in New Haven, we sold out every single night, standing-room only. These seniors are there, they watch, they all stood up and applauded. I got a little emotional. I started to cry. It was one of those sincere moments. I wiped my eyes, ‘You’re looking at me. Ten minutes ago, I was one of 30 characters. I’m just Steve, a kid from Brooklyn.’”

Want to go? “My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish and I’m in Therapy.” Oct. 15-25. $19-25. Marcus Jewish Community Center Atlanta’s Center Theater-Zaban Park, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. 678-812-4002, www.atlantajcc.org.