Make ‘Em Laugh- Stand Up Comedy at Art House Productions, Jersey City

Rich_Kiamco_stage_shot_IMG_5575 by Sally Deering

It’s April and maybe you could use a few good laughs to cheer up those IRS blues. Then why not head over to Art House Productions in Jersey City on Sat, April 27 for a night of stand-up comedy featuring Mike Britt. Host Rich Kiamco, who runs the comedy nights at Art House Productions, promises it will be an evening of topical comedy not “Photoshop commentary”.

“The show is great,” Kiamco says. “This is almost our third year at Art House. The show has a following; it’s a good time. There’s always a headliner from ‘The Tonight Show’ or Comedy Central.”

Living in Hudson offers plenty of resources to inspire laughs, Kiamco says, especially when the comedy is based on natural disasters.

“We had two disaster shows, one right after Hurricane Sandy and one after the blizzard,” Kiamco says, “The place was packed.”
Kiamco’s comedy career began with a sewing machine at the Fashion Institute Of Technology and according to his website www.richkiamco.com: “Rich did his first stand-up routine at the dorm talent contest and was hooked. Later that year later he became the costume designer for comedian Judy Tenuta. His one-man show UNACCESSORIZED, an autobiographic romp about a queer Filipino overachiever, received the Overall Excellence Award in Solo Performance at the New York International Fringe Festival and Best Solo Performance at the Montreal GLBT International Theatre Festival.”
Kiamco says the hot topics these days are the same hot topics comics have been addressing for years: politics – the president, of course; marriage equality; women’s rights.
“I can’t believe we’re still talking about women’s rights,” Kiamco says. “Stand up is like a truth serum of where our culture is at. You can make a joke about the best or the worst of our culture. When you call out that something misogynistic, people respond because we know what’s happening in our culture.”

And even though we turn to the Internet more and more to get our daily laughs, Kiamco says there’s no replacement for live performance.

It’s happening live in front of you,” Kiamco says. “The person in the crowd will say something and the comic will go after that. It will never be on ‘The Tonight Show’ – you can’t do crowd interactions on TV, but with a live audience anything goes.”

If you go:
Sat, April 27 at 8 pm
The Laugh Tour; Stand Up Comedy
Art House Productions
1 McWilliams Place
Hamilton Square
Jersey City
Tickets $15 online; $20 at the door
www.thelaughtour.com
(201) 915-9911

.