Needed laughter in a time of pandemic
When I received an email inviting me to perform in the Connecticut Comedy Festival on Sept. 13, my initial reaction was, “You have got to be kidding me. They’re actually having this thing? In the middle of a pandemic? This is nuts!” And while trusting your gut may be a vital ingredient to performing stand-up comedy, a rush to judgment beyond the stage oftimes proves costly.
Thankfully, I continued reading the email and learned that the shows would be held outdoors on a giant field in Fairfield with social distancing mandatory, and the audience would supply their own lawn chairs and beverages. Still, I thought, “Who wants to laugh at a time like this?” In hindsight, the question I should have been asking was, “Who needs to laugh at a time like this?” The answer: everybody.
Even though I had not held a microphone in seven months, I decided to perform, and am so glad that I did. On Sunday at 7 p.m., the field was covered with socially distanced lawn chairs and blankets with people who sought levity and a brief reprieve from a harsh reality. Among them, several of my neighbors, and an old friend and health care worker who drove in from New Jersey with his girlfriend to support me.
After such a long layoff, I feared that my performance would suffer and the rust would be palpable. The silence of the audience would be intensified by the chirping crickets, who came out in droves to heckle the laboring comics. When the host, Gus Constantellis, introduced me, I walked onto the stage with a freshly disinfected microphone and began, “My wife recently gave birth to our second child. Now we have two boys because we believe white men in this country are highly underrepresented. Next we’re trying for an Apache female.” The joke got a laugh, and I was able to find my footing and deliver a solid set.
Equally satisfying was seeing old friends in masks from the comedy circuit, like Adam Muller, a talented comedian from Canada who had me in stitches when he said, “I started standup later in life than most. Starting stand-up at 40 is like starting to eat kale during the heart attack. You get to a po int and you’re willing to tr y anything.” Then there was Nick Scopoletti, a Monroe native, who charmed the crowd with tales of his gregarious Italian f ather.
For the audience, it was a night out in a country that has been starved of entertainment beyond one’s own living room. Though it has been over a hundred years, our country has been here before. During the Spanish Flu in 1918, children’s author Edna Groff Diehl griped about this barren reality in her poem “Flu Bound”:
The street crowd surged — but where to go?
The bar? The Concert? Movies? No? Old Influenza’s locked the door to Pleasure Land.
Oh what a bore!
Enter Joe Gerics, a fantastic comic from Trumbull who is the co-founder of Fairfield Comedy Club in Connecticut.
Along with Emilio Savone, and Beecher Taylor IV, Joe was determined to hold the the 2nd Annual Connecticut Comedy Festival in an unimaginably painful year of tragedy and heartbreak. When I asked him why carrying on with the festival was so important, he said, “It was a number of factors: people need an escape — entertainment — really anything at all, and we had an opportunity to provide it. The outdoor stuff has just been a blast! We’re having fun and we’re doing more. Comics need work, they need stages, they need the opportunity, so we are making sure we are doing what we can.”
And boy, have they ever! The festival, which began in early September and runs through mid-October, has secured greater and greater talent since the shows commenced on Sept. 5. Comedy greats such as Brian Regan and Bill Burr recently performed in the festival, and added to an already stellar lineup that includes Mike Birbiglia, Michael Ian Black and Ronny Chieng, to name a few. Simply put, Joe Gerics is a godsend; an unnamed essential worker prescribing and delivering laughter to a depressed state. If you have the chance to attend a show, I highly recommend doing so. Above all, remember the words of Connecticut’s greatest humorist, Mark Twain, who said, “Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.”
Visit https://www.connecticutcomedyfestival.com/ for the full calendar of shows and ticket information.