Stand Prov
It’s Stand-up! It’s Improv! It’s StandProv!
“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh. Otherwise, they’ll kill you.” Oscar Wilde.
For learning about each other, for healing each other, for being human together: stand-up comedy is important. Vital, probably -- and energized local comedian Franco Tevini seems like a true believer.
On the first Saturday of every month, Tevini and comrade in comedy Jeremy Lessnau run a rad event at The Lost Church in downtown Santa Rosa called StandProv -- an evening of equal parts stand-up comedy and improvisational theater. First, stand-up comedians take the mic. Then an improv troupe performs improvised comedy based on the comedians’ jokes. So rather than improvisors building scenes by mining bland suggestions from the audience -- “She’s in labor! She’s in labor at the dentist!” – StandProvers work with far more captivating material straight from the minds of professional comedians. It’s pretty genius.
The event features a different cast of comics each month, and there was an impressive roster on that first Saturday of October: Jade Wong, Mean Dave and the esteemed Nina G. Wong is another local – a ex-ophthalmologist with an odd bit about counting the letters in job titles– maybe a reach, but a creative one. A strange one. And I respect strange ideas.
I love Mean Dave and his friendly cynicism because Mean Dave understands the assignment: insult comedy is dead, and self-deprecating humor is good for all of us.
Nina G was sublime. After the Bay Area’s favorite stuttering comic and disability activist joked about her vagina being long like a mountain road winding through the Swiss Alps, improvisors Josh Jobrack and Ninad Athale set up a scene where they were Swedish dads driving their mini-car through Grindelwald – with Athale suddenly remembering to switch the driver’s seat to the “European side” of the car for a huge laugh. Tricia Siegel played their creepy toddler peeking out of the back seat – who may or may not have been involved in a Yellowjackets-the-Preschool-Years type ritual killing inspired by Wong’s earlier jokes about stabbing annoying coworkers with chopsticks.
And the hits kept coming. Tevini and G created a scene with Siegel and lightning-witted Rachel Pyle that asked the question: what would you do if you were dying a panic-stricken death, bleeding out, every second wasted bringing you closer and closer to the brink ….. and your 911 operator had a pretty substantial stutter? It was inspired. It was comedy on comedy. It was stand-up. It was improv. It was awesome. You should go.
StandProv rides again at The Lost Church in Santa Rosa on November 4th. Doors open at 7:30. Tickets $15.00. All ages welcome, “except babies, children and adults who may be disruptive”. https://thelostchurch.org/santa-rosa/
