The Evolution of Vermont's Comedy Scene

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When comedian Tina Friml made her late-night television debut on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” in November, she opened with a few gentle barbs at her home state.

“I grew up in the ’90s in Vermont,” Friml told the audience at Rockefeller Center in New York City. “Which means I grew up in the ’80s.”

Friml’s family and friends watching on TV back home in Middlebury, and her comedian pals at the viewing party at Vermont Comedy Club in Burlington, surely forgave the cheeky slight — after all, Vermont is often behind the times. Those paying close attention might also have recognized that many of Friml’s most successful jokes that night were ones she’d first honed in Vermont.

Funny Business

Read our dispatches from a scene that has come into its own.

Friml, 30, was born with a disability, which she riffs on in her act. Her openness sometimes catches audiences off guard and makes them uneasy — which is, of course, the perfect setup to reel them in. On the “Tonight Show,” you could see the moment it happened.

“A lot of people, they think I suffer from cerebral palsy, which I don’t,” she told the crowd, which she hadn’t yet won over. Then she did: “I have cerebral palsy,” she continued. “I suffer from people.”

The appearance was a high point in Friml’s rise from small stages in Vermont to comedy clubs around the world. More may be coming: Last month, her face beamed from a Times Square video billboard announcing her upcoming U.S. tour. Friml might be Vermont’s most successful comedic export in recent memory, but her late-night set was also a figurative mic drop, underscoring a phenomenon at least a decade in the making: Vermont comedy has arrived.

For this issue, our writers explored the evolution of our homegrown comedy scene, fanning out across the state to take in live shows, catch up with comics who have launched beyond our borders and profile a few others who might just be the next to break out.

Before Natalie Miller and her husband, Nathan Hartswick, opened Vermont Comedy Club in 2015, opportunities to see good comedy in the Green Mountain State were few and far between.

Local comic Carmen Lagala ran Levity, the Queen City’s first comedy club, which lasted just 18 months before it closed in 2013. Around that time, Miller and Hartswick produced one-off shows at local bars and nightclubs and taught classes in Burlington’s South End. Before that, local comedic offerings were largely limited to Josie Leavitt’s all-female standup troupe the Vermont Comedy Divas, the annual Higher Ground Comedy Battle and smaller indie shows produced by Montpelier comic Kathleen Kanz, who founded the Green Mountain Comedy Festival.

In other words, you were lucky if there was more than a show or two every month. Now, you can catch high-quality comedy in Burlington and beyond any night of the week. “There is a critical mass right now of people performing standup, improv and sketch,” Miller said. She added that “99 percent of Vermont comedians don’t know Vermont without a comedy scene.”

Local standup showcases and open mics populate Queen City nightclubs such as Radio Bean, the 126 and Lincolns. Improv and sketch teams flock to Vermont Comedy Club and Off Center for the Dramatic Arts. Big-name acts such as Seth Meyers, Fortune Feimster and Iliza Shlesinger routinely grace the marquees at the Flynn and Higher Ground.

Beyond Chittenden County, venues such as Moogs Joint in Johnson and Bent Nails Bistro in Montpelier host standup nights. Northfield’s Dirt Road Theater produces sketch comedy shows and offers classes. And in tiny Bridgewater, the Woolen Mill Comedy Club draws acts from Boston and New York.

But Vermont Comedy Club is the star around which the local comedy scene orbits. Every weekend, Miller and Hartswick host the funniest names in comedy — think Tig Notaro, Michelle Wolf and Jay Pharoah.

The club is ground zero for Groundlings-style sketch and improv, the latter of which rules the stage midweek. A slate of about 20 comedy classes and workshops this spring will be the most the club has ever offered at one time — and may well produce the next generation of Vermont comics.

Vermont Comedy Club owners Nathan Hartswick and Natalie Miller in 2016 Credit: File: James Buck

“It’s a snowball effect,” Miller said. “The more people who come through the doors to watch shows, some of those people will get inspired to try comedy.”

While Hartswick stressed that only a fraction of people who try comedy will stick with it, eventually a scene forms. And in Vermont, it’s close-knit.

Unlike Friml, most Vermont comics aren’t bound — or even aiming — for bigger stages. The lack of careerist ambition neutralizes the professional jealousy found in other scenes — and, following the tone originally set by Leavitt and Kanz, fosters an inclusive and welcoming environment.

Similarly, Vermont Comedy Club has set a standard for quality and decorum that reverberates across the state. When it comes to hecklers and racist, homophobic or misogynistic humor — par for the course in some places — “we don’t put up with bullshit,” Miller said.

In comedy, stage time is the most valuable currency — aside from, you know, actual currency. And it’s ample in Vermont, which gives comedians more opportunities to hone their craft.

They’re also willing to collaborate and give each other feedback and support.

A few weeks ago, Burlington comedian Levi Silverstein began hosting an informal comedy writers group on Saturday mornings at the Happy Place Café, the daytime alter ego of the comedy club’s bar and lounge. While the jokes onstage in the evenings are more polished and professional, the bits amateur comedians bat around over lattes and tea are decidedly, well, not. But that’s exactly the point.

On a recent Saturday, a group of about eight comics of varying ages and backgrounds shared jokes they were working on. Peer feedback ranged from the granular — “‘Boobs’ is a very funny word; don’t change that” — to the global. “Lent is good fodder for jokes, for sure,” one comic observed.

It was an open, honest and surprisingly far-ranging session; at various points during the hour, Silverstein compared it to both Alcoholics Anonymous and Bible study. At the end, most comics walked out with solid notes on their jokes or ideas for new ones. When they next take the stage, they’ll suffer no shortage of eager Vermont audiences ready to catch the next Tina Friml, or even just the next good joke.

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