In late spring, five comedians, almost all new to stand up comedy, came together for their first performance as Club Baby Seal.<\/p>\n
No, it wasn\u2019t their sold-out performance at the Gold Town Nickelodeon Theatre \u2014 that happened in October. This show was a bit smaller in scale.<\/p>\n
The venue? Nate Williams\u2019 living room.<\/p>\n
The five \u2013 Brady Ingledue, Allison Holtkamp, Alicia and Corin Hughes-Skandijs and of course, Nate \u2013 were a web of overlapping connections through friendships and other performance arts. All had an appreciation for each other\u2019s sense of humor and a desire to try out professional standup comedy.<\/p>\n
\u201cCredit goes to Brady for being a driving force behind getting people together to be funny in a more structured setting,\u201d Alicia told the Capital City Weekly. \u201cWhat started out as joking around over a beer quickly expanded into doing house shows.\u201d<\/p>\n
They met regularly for informal workshops, a.k.a. \u201cpunching up\u201d each other\u2019s jokes, and to practice their sets.<\/p>\n
For Alicia, standup felt like a natural progression. \u201cI feel like I\u2019ve explored all other performancy-type events,\u201d she said. She\u2019s performed with Perseverance Theatre, directed plays, performed at Folk Fest, and has even gone to clown camp. Comedy was the next mental step and \u201cit feels the most natural to me, most comfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before Club Baby Seal formed as a group, she and Brady opened for a comedian coming to town. But that\u2019s all the experience they have in standup comedy, and that\u2019s more than the other three members, Allison, Corin and Nate, who are all completely new to the field. Nate said sometimes he feels like someone will point as him and tell him he hasn\u2019t paid his dues \u2014 but there\u2019s no one right path to becoming a comedian.<\/p>\n
Nate said he comes up with about five jokes a day. His material includes his life, historical and literary references, politics, sexual dysfunction and familial relationships.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like writing down all the little things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Allison said she\u2019ll be driving in a car and think \u201cIs this funny?\u201d She can always find out when she tests a joke on her group mates.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, the jokes that seem to work for me are the ones that come from a real, personal place,\u201d Corin said. \u201cWhen I\u2019m honest and joke about issues I have with myself I think it\u2019s funny.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eventually the group decided they were ready to perform for an audience \u2014 even if it was just friends they invited over for a house show. But before the show, they needed a name.<\/p>\n
Somewhat hesitantly, Nate said, he suggested Club Baby Seal. It was \u201cfifth grade humor,\u201d just word play between a friend and him back in Colorado; in 2008 after a snowstorm, they made a snow fort and dubbed it Club Baby Seal.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s kind of dumb, kind of offensive,\u201d Williams admitted. The world has sharp edges, he said, but the \u201chighest mission of comedy is to soften those edges.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though they\u2019re a group, every member performs a set of their own. The material can range from G to the R-rated, Allison said.<\/p>\n
She was nervous. With her material, she would be revealing a lot about herself.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m an actor so I\u2019ve been in a lot of plays,\u201d she said. With acting there is a luxury of being someone else. With stand up comedy, \u201cit\u2019s all you and makes you vulnerable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Corin acts as emcee for the group, but when Allison introduced Corin for his set, she flubbed his name. The audience laughed, helping her to realize stumbles were OK.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been around performers my whole life and have always wanted to get into it,\u201d said Nate, \u201cI was kind of in awe that I was doing this. A shy kid could get up and perform a solid set.\u201d<\/p>\n
The group went on for a total of three house shows that spring\/summer.<\/p>\n
Corin fondly recalls one time he messed up a joke. \u201cI got a big laugh from that \u2014 commenting on my own dumb delivery, and so it all worked out in my favor anyhow.\u201d<\/p>\n
Due to the positive feedback, they decided to go for a public show. Hali Duran, Nate\u2019s girlfriend, and Grace Lee, Corin\u2019s girlfriend, acted as managers and did a lot of the behind the scenes work to prepare.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s room for ad-libbing and riffing off of things happening in the moment, Allison said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can be so practiced, but in the end, if it\u2019s so practiced it\u2019s just a show.\u201d<\/p>\n
In retrospect, she found the public show at the Gold Town Theatre less nerve wracking than the house shows.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was nice to feel a little more presentational,\u201d she said, since she is used to being on stage at Perseverance or singing with the Juneau Jazz Divas. At the house shows, she could see whether everyone was laughing or not. At Gold Town, she would hear the laughter, and could just assume everyone was laughing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI genuinely felt like we gave people their money\u2019s worth,\u201d Nate said of the Gold Town show. \u201cWe\u2019re all white heterosexuals in our 30\u2019s so we\u2019re not that diverse but I think our content is fairly diverse. Our reviews have been really positive.\u201d<\/p>\n
In future shows outside of Gold Town, Corin said he\u2019d like it if they had a more \u201ctaken care of audience\u201d who could order food and drinks while seated at a table.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like being comfortable when I\u2019m watching standup,\u201d he said. \u201cI think that\u2019s normal. I\u2019ve been to both the Comedy Store in Los Angeles and the Comedy Cellar in New York multiple times, and every single time I leave feeling way better than I did coming in. I think Club Baby Seal does that in this town, and it\u2019s nice to be part of something new and different in Juneau \u2013 nice to add to the town\u2019s cultural diversity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Club Baby Seal will have another show at Gold Town on Dec. 17 at 9 p.m.-midnight. This is a 21+ event due to a no host bar. Doors open at 8:30 p.m. Tickets are available through squareup.com.<\/p>\n
The group will also be doing a show in Petersburg on Jan. 20, 21 at Kito\u2019s Kave.<\/p>\n
For more on the group, visit their Facebook page.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe pressure in on,\u201d Nate said. \u201cYou got to keep writing, writing, writing. I love the work so I just want to keep doing the work.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact reporter Clara Miller at clara.miller@morriscom.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In late spring, five comedians, almost all new to stand up comedy, came together for their first performance as Club Baby Seal. No, it wasn\u2019t their sold-out performance at the Gold Town Nickelodeon Theatre \u2014 that happened in October. This show was a bit smaller in scale. The venue? Nate Williams\u2019 living room. The five […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":429,"featured_media":11167,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-11166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/429"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11166"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=11166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}