Madison’s comedy scene fulfills a community with more than just laughs

With a community that values the arts and a vibrant college-town vibe, one industry that thrives in Madison is comedy. In Wisconsin’s capital city, comedy brings more than just smiles to an audience. From students to professors to local businesses, comedy brings fulfillment and community to those who make it a part of their lives, propelling them forward both professionally and personally.

Comedy for the health of it

“We all vacillate in the awkward differently,” Professor Amy Zelenski says to her students. The small group, a mix of college-aged students and older adults, looks at her with a quiet respect. Standing in a circle, stretching their limbs methodically like a high school sports team, the students get ready for the two and a half hours of class ahead of them.

The class is Medicine 699: Improvisational Theatre for Health Professionals, a seminar offered to UW-Madison students going into health care professions. Housed in the School of Nursing’s Signe Skott Cooper Hall, the course aims to teach improvisational comedy and theater skills to medical, nursing and pharmacy students who may not otherwise get such training. According to Zelenski, these skills are essential in tough situations during patient care, a foundation for dealing with “the awkward.”

Zelenski created the course and has been teaching it for the past three semesters. During each class meeting, students take part in improv exercises and analyze how the skills apply to health care.

“It’s probably weird to think about how comedy and a sense of humor can help in patient care because so much of what you’re dealing with with patients is drama; horrible things are happening to them,” she says. “But actually laughing and a sense of humor can help people really overcome these horrible things in their lives.”

She says her inspiration for the course came from her educational background as an actor. Zelenski received her bachelor’s degree in psychology and drama from the University of Washington-Seattle and her doctoral degree in educational leadership and policy analysis from UW-Madison.

“As I started to work in medicine, I started to realize that all of the things that I learned as an actor, these folks never learned,” she says. “I started to play around with how I can bring some of that interpersonal communication that I learned as an actor to medicine and had many iterations workshops and experiments … Some of them failed, and this one stuck.”

This can negatively affect not only patients, but providers, too, according to Zelenski. Improvisational skills and interpersonal communication are often overlooked in the medical field; personal connection with patients can sometimes seem like an afterthought.

“We have a lot of medical professionals who are suffering, they’re burning out, they’re unfortunately committing suicide at higher rates, and I think that the skills you learn in improv — which are mostly about being present and connecting with another human — will definitely benefit the patient because [they’ll receive] better care, and it will benefit the provider because they’ll start to realize that they get some fulfillment out of that connection,” she says.

In one class, the group analyzed power dynamics by placing playing cards on their foreheads, with the number representing their hypothetical “status.” Higher numbers and royal suits represented a higher status. Students had to guess their own number based on how others in the group interacted with them, often resulting in silly quips and jokes between the students. After the exercise, the students were prompted to rank themselves based on how they see themselves in their social groups and in their academic lives.

During games like this, Zelenski’s classroom feels communal, like an old group of friends hanging out. Laughter regularly bursts from her students, and when they aren’t laughing, they’re listening intently. In this classroom, comedy exists not just to get a couple laughs, but as a practice rooted in on-the-fly decisions and finding the lightheartedness that can exist in otherwise clinical settings.

Comedy for the love of it

UW-Madison senior Grace Ferolo always knew she wanted to perform. Before college, she found herself scrolling through the Wikipedia pages of famous female comedians and looking for how they got their start. The answer was always in improv comedy.

When Ferolo started her first year on campus in 2014, she auditioned for The Understudies, an improv comedy team composed of students with passion and talent for performing comedy. Though each show takes its own unique turns, the team typically acts out games and audience suggestions, mimicking the structure of “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” The team performs three free shows each semester. When funding and grants are available from the Wisconsin Union Directorate, the team performs its shows in the Frederic March Play Circle, a small black-box theater in Memorial Union.

Ferolo says her onstage and offstage confidence has improved over time.

“I feel like I belong in every room I’m in. Improv kind of helps you, it gives you that security net. [I] know if I’m in a bind or I don’t know what to say, it’s never going to go down in flames like you think it will,” she says. “It’s definitely made me more confident and more grounded within myself.”

Photo courtesy of Cameron Smith

Ferolo says the skills she has learned throughout her time with The Understudies have also helped her offstage. As a student in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and an account management intern at the advertising agency Hiebing, Ferolo says her attitude toward job interviews has changed since starting improv.

“In improv, you do every game based on audience suggestion, and an audience suggestion is kind of like the equivalent to a job description,” she says. “You kind of infuse those ideas and the idea of what they want into what you say. And so I enjoy the formulaic aspect of that a lot, and I actually find it quite thrilling.”

Ferolo says that it’s on stage that she feels the most herself, the most comfortable. Noting the isolation that college can bring, she says the community she’s found in improv and the environment it helps create brings out the best in her teammates and the audiences they perform for.

“People are here to see us, and we love doing it, and we love laughing with each other,” she says. “I just feel so happy, and I just feel so warm, and my friends come and I see them there, and I just feel very loved, through and through. It’s a very loving experience to be on stage with a team.”

Comedy for the growth of it

Nestled in the basement of 202 State Street, The Comedy Club on State has been a staple in the Madison community for years. While bigger-name performers regularly take the Comedy Club stage, the lounge-style club is a place for new comics to showcase their talent and make a name for themselves in the industry performing in a renowned local venue.

Joe Buettner, one of four managers at the Comedy Club, helps get many of these local comics where they want to be. Making it “big” in the entertainment industry is hard in the Midwest. He says helping these comics is mainly about preparing them for when they eventually move out of Madison to pursue comedy careers.

“If comics leave and go to other places and say that they started doing comedy here, I want to make sure they’re the most professional comics out there, to make sure they’re the best they can be when they eventually move away and do something with it,” he says.

Every Wednesday, the club hosts The Big Deuce, a two-hour open mic. Unlike many other venues, it’s easy for local comics to get their name on the list: Simply sign up before 8 p.m. Yet the 3- to 5-minute slots remain coveted places for 20 performers, Buettner says. On any given open-mic night, 150 to 200 people pay the $2 fee to watch the show.

But beyond the club, the Madison community, known for its “smart” crowds, helps these comics get their feet in the door as well.

“The greatest thing about Madison is [it] support[s] the arts, be it plays or music or comedy. People come out, and they’re willing to spend their hard-earned money to come out and support that,” he says. “Madison is not that big, so to be able to have all these music venues and places where you can see comedy and have them all survive because they’re getting crowds in the door says a lot about the community in general.”

Local comedians put on benefit shows around the city as well. In the past month, local comics have put on two benefit shows: one for Hurricane Maria relief at The Argus, another local venue, and another raising $3,000 for an area “comedy groupie” with terminal bone cancer.

“The scene in general is such a loving scene,” Buettner says. “A lot of comics have a platform to do stuff like this, and it ends up usually turning out pretty well.”

Katie is a senior from Milwaukee, majoring in journalism with a focus in reporting and strategic communication.

When she isn’t running around Madison taking photos, she can be found cruising around on her bike, drinking iced coffee or eating tacos with her friends. Outside of Curb, Katie is an intern at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism and works as a staff photographer for the Big Ten Network.

Post-graduation, Katie would like to pursue a career in documentary journalism or nonprofit marketing. That is, if she can stop crying about leaving UW-Madison sometime soon.