Rafael Mejia was just four years old when he and his infant sister were kidnapped. “A guy had asked my mom to dance at a party, and she told him no,” says Mejia.
So, the disgruntled would-be dance partner took Rafael and his sister, traumatizing the little boy. “When my mother found me, I was in his car and I had thrown up on myself and used the bathroom on myself,” he says. “I was terrified.”
That experience would set up a life of anxiety for the now 30-year-old York resident who owns his home recording studio. “I would throw up before I went to the mall,” he says. “I hated crowds.”
That all changed on a recent Thursday night in Hanover when Mejia was one of 10 aspiring comedians to participate in the Church of Satire’s first stand-up class and its graduation performance at the comedy club. Before a packed house, Mejia, who has long clung to laughter and making others laugh as a way of coping, felt his anxiety melt away. “I really felt like I broke out of my shell,” he says of performing his routine which included observational humor and a bit about his grandfather stumbling upon some questionable online content. “We were told to do five minutes, but I could have done five more. It’s given me so much confidence.”
Taught by professional comedian and Church of Satire Comedy Club owner Jim Bryan, the first-time six-week course offered weekly lessons on topics ranging from how to properly hold the microphone to “bombing” and what to take away from it and how to use it to improve on one’s act. “Bombing can be healthy,” Bryan told the students.
The class included men and women, different ages, different professions. Each brought their own brand of comedy. However, “There is one thing that all of these people are,” says Bryan. “They make people laugh in their own lives.”
Once Bryan had decided to offer the class, he was “flabbergasted” by the response he received. “We had 10 people sign up immediately,” he says. The stand-up class required participants to take to the stage at the club and perform each week before their fellow students. The performances were recorded by Bryan and then shared with each student as a way to hone their craft by seeing themselves perform.
“I liked the way Jim organized the class,” says John Katunich, a writing instructor at Dickinson College in Carlisle who decided to give stand-up a try as he hit his 50th birthday and talked about his life as a gay man during his routine. “It was really about people actually doing it. That’s how you learn.”
“I definitely have learned more in the past month of just doing it than I did from studying it,” adds Hanover resident Bill Sands, an admissions advisor for an online nursing school.
Robin Henry, a postal worker from Harrisburg, agrees. “It’s all about being onstage,” says Henry.
Then there is the laughter. “It makes you feel like, Oh okay. They do think I’m funny,” says Henry, who includes a bit about seeing the Amish at the Golden Corral restaurant during her routine. “They do think my stories are funny and that’s very rewarding.”
Henry grew up with a father “who was a natural storyteller,” she says. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Henry is a storyteller herself and delights in sharing funny stories. So, she decided to take the plunge and pursue her interest in stand-up comedy as she entered her sixth decade. “It was now or never,” she says.
Not that taking the stage couldn’t be intimidating for class members. “The hardest part was getting started,” says Sands, who in his routine talks about his life as a newly married man. “I liked the idea of it being like a school and they would know I was a beginner. I was worried if I had gone the more traditional open mic route, that they would judge me for not being all that good, which is silly but it’s still a fear.”
Some may have been less intimidated, however, than others. Bob Heuisler Jr. and Tait Harbaugh were already professional performers but wanted to polish and add to their skill set. Heuisler, who lives in Hanover, is a model and actor with leading and supporting toles in movies and cable television. Harbaugh is a magician. Both say they found the class helpful.
“I’m more of an organized comedian because of the class,” says Heuisler, who was previously a Maryland state trooper and also worked for Homeland Security. Adds Harbaugh, “The big thing that I got out of this was my comic writing has improved. Something about the things that we were doing helped me to realize how to just write better.”
Sarah Smith, who lives in Hanover and works as a prison guard for Adams County Prison, also came into the class with some performance experience. She was a professional wrestler for years before becoming a prison guard. “When I was about 17 years old my group of friends would all do backyard wrestling,” she says. “And then one day we were like, ‘Why are we doing this in the backyard when we could do this professionally?’ So, we went, and we paid, and we got trained by a professional wrestler and we started doing shows. I wrestled as far north as New York and as far south as Georgia”.
Once she stepped away from wrestling, she says she missed being able to perform. So, she decided to sign up for the class. “I was like, well, I did one crazy pipe dream let’s try to do another one,” she says.
Her work in the prison system is not easy. “I’ve had to cut people down from attempting to hang themselves,” she says. “I’ve had to give CPR to multiple people. I’ve had to break up fights.”
She copes with this stress by finding humor where she can. Her “Prisoners Say the Dumbest Things” routine is a good example. The routine is a light-hearted poke at odd and unexpected comments she hears from those behind bars. Such as, “Was the movie Pearl Harbor based on a real story?” she says with a chuckle. “Or, I wasn’t good at math, but I was good at meth.”
She found the weekly stand-up class a refuge from her at-work duties. “No matter what kind of day I had I knew I could come to the class and laugh for an hour and a half,” she says.
For Michael Casper, who lives in Freedom, Pa., the class wasn’t just a momentary refuge but a way to heal some deeper wounds, much like Mejia. “I was picked on a lot in school,” says Casper. “Bullied. The stuff you hear me say on stage is pretty much all true. My crossed eyes, my red hair, my freckles, my last name. I was a walking target.”
But he was funny too. Even as a child. In fact, he performed his first stand-up act at the tender age of seven at the school talent show. Casper was encouraged to do so by his older siblings. They even shared jokes with him as he prepared for the talent show. “They were telling me jokes, without the cussing, by Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor,” he says. Adding, “I didn’t understand any of the jokes they were saying.”
He did decide to use them though. Standing before the microphone, “I can remember I started rattling off these Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor jokes and all the little kids were kind of looking at me with their heads cocked and their brows furrowed. And all the parents and teachers were covering their mouths, like, ‘Oh my gosh.’”
Despite his sense of humor, Casper, who spent 20 plus years working as a stagehand in Baltimore, has struggled as an adult, as well. “I had a lot of issues,” says Casper, who now works as a direct support professional with individuals who have intellectual and physical disabilities “I was working 100 hours a week as a stagehand. I was in a very negative work environment. All of that kind of built up on me.”
As a result, Casper fell into some bad habits. Add that to his wife’s multiple and potentially fatal health issues, and “at one point I was suicidal,” he says.
Today Casper is working to get his life back on track. Taking the class was part of that process.
“So, the comedy thing really started to kind of come to the forefront for me,” he says. “Like, you know, maybe I should try it.”
In class doing his routine, Casper took on the persona of countrified and shrill-voiced Skooter McGruff, a character of his own creation. But slowly, he became more himself as his routine continued and he threw off the mask of Skooter and faced his demons head-on in a comical way.
“For me it’s a way to vent off about things that have happened in my life,” he says.
All lessons in laughter.
And Bryan is more than willing to help aspiring comedians like Casper to find their comedic voice. Given the success of the class, Bryan hopes to continue to share his experience and expertise as a comedian. In fact, the class proved so successful that he is currently planning to offer an improv class and another class in stand-up.
“School of Satire has a really cool ring to it,” he says with a smile.
Featured image credit: Rick Gregory
Lisa Gregory is an experienced journalist whose articles have appeared in publications nationally and internationally including the Washington Post and U.S. News and World Report. She is also a frequent contributor to Frederick Magazine, Hagerstown Magazine and Carroll Magazine, among others. A published author of fiction, she has short stories in the books, “For the Love of Gettysburg” and “On Hallowed Ground.”
It was so nice to have you and your husband join our class to document the experience. Your support and encouragement was greatly appreciated. Hope to see you again in the future!
Thank you Lisa for supporting us throughout our 6 week journey. I truly appreciated speaking with you. The article is amazing!
Another wonderful feature by Lisa Gregory. Well done.