Live, stand-up comedy is seeing a resurgence in Athens. In any given week, there are at least a half dozen venues hosting open mics. And while many of the comics are younger, GenX and Boomers are taking their turn at getting some laughs. After all, if someone is going to make any jokes about aging, shouldn’t it be us?
Right after the pandemic, the nascent comedy scene was floundering when Owen Hunt, a film and events producer, put his organizational skills to work and created Athens Comedy, a website and Instagram page dedicated to boosting the visibility of the local talent pool of comedians.
“I thought I could rebuild and regrow it,” he says. “Athens is a great place for new comedians to get experience as they go out and start to build their careers.” For others who aren’t aiming for a professional career, he adds, “We do comedy because we love it. It’s a passion and it’s something we want to share.”
While there’s no formal comedy club in Athens, Hunt points out that “We have enough venues that are receptive to stand-up that we have evolved an organic, local scene. That’s what’s special and valuable about Athens – there’s a lot of camaraderie here and cooperation in creating the scene.”
Venues include The Globe, Jittery Joe’s in Five Points, Dead Beat Club, Wonder Bar, Flicker Theater, Mai Kai Kava Lounge, Flying Squid, and Fritz Mar Lane. Monroe has David’s 105 Listening Room. Check Athenscomedy.com for a list of shows.
Daring to take the stage
Alvin Mohrien, aka Big Al, age 65, says he had always enjoyed comedy shows and had thought about performing for a while. It was on his bucket list. When he became disabled seven years ago and had more time on his hands, he decided it was a now-or-never moment.
“The first time I went up on the stage, I did really well, which is unusual,” he explains. “People usually bomb the first time they do it.”
He describes himself as the oldest and the fattest comedian in Athens. Those are often topics he leans into.
“The funniest stuff is the stuff that’s true,” he says. Funny things come to him as he goes about his day. “I’ll have a funny thought, write it down, and fill in later.”
What’s the secret to success? “Some people have a personality that lends itself to performing,” Mohrien notes. “I have a little bit of talent so I do what I can with it. I use all the tools that I have to tell good jokes.”
He’s amassed about 140 jokes over seven years that give him enough variety to choose from for a 10-minute club set or performance at a senior center or retirement home venue where he often appears. Find Mohrien on Facebook (al.mohrien).
Walter Gauthia, 50, aka Mookie G, has been telling jokes onstage for eight years and credits his mother for pushing him in that direction.
“I’ve always been silly,” he says. “In 2018, I wanted to get out of education, but I didn’t know what direction to go. My mother encouraged me to consider comedy and said she would pay for classes.”
After graduating from the class, he quit education, and started doing open mics. “I got paid in chicken wings and $20,” he recalls. Still, he persisted and found momentum building until the pandemic. At that point, he made the decision to go back to the classroom.
Now that stand-up comedy is experiencing a revival due to various social media platforms and streaming services such as Netflix, YouTube, and particularly Dry Bar Comedy, Gauthia finds himself in demand again. He regularly travels from Kennesaw to perform in the Athens area.
Dry Bar is a popular stand-up comedy production company and streaming platform known for producing clean, family-friendly comedy specials that stream on their own website or on other social media platforms such as YouTube. Based in Provo, Utah, it features professional comedians performing sets that forego profanity, vulgarity, or suggestive material. It has become the dominant, fast-growing alternative to traditional, raunchier comedy, focusing on observational humor, storytelling and witty observations.
Gauthia says many comedians say whatever they want on stage, including cursing or vulgarities, but he advises starting “clean.”
“I talk about real-life experiences,” he explains. “A lot of my jokes are about going to the doctor, family life, work – everyday life.”
Follow Mookie G on Instagram (@mookie_g_comedy)
More women making jokes
Arma Benoit, 55, lives in Snellville and works in film and television production but turned to stand-up comedy in 2023, when a strike hit the industry.
“You don’t need a crew of people and gobs of money to tell a story, like you do with film,” she explains. “You can just walk on the stage. It’s very satisfying.”
Although she had some acting experience before she took the stage the first time, she enrolled in a class at Laugh Lab in Atlanta, which offers both all-women and coed stand-up and writing classes.
“It turned out I was good at it,” she says. “Things took off and I started getting booked.”
But ageism is real. “The people who book the shows see me and I’m the age of their mothers,” she explains. “Having said that, it’s not stopping me. I book plenty.”
Benoit says her topics often focus on her marriage, her French husband and her kids, occasionally. She’s also created a very popular show at The Globe downtown on the third Sunday night called Drunk, High, Sober, which features two comedians in each category. The audience guesses who is in which category, and picks their favorite, who wins $100. (The drunk comedians are provided with rides home.)
“Boomers love that show – we have an equal number of Boomers and kids,” she says. Both shows this year have been sold out. Keep up with Benoit on Instagram (@armabenoit).
Sandy Williams Quinn, 50, lives in Monroe and performs in Athens, Monroe, and Winder. An English teacher working on her doctorate, she has experience in public speaking, theater, and spends her days in school “doing stand-up.” As she became more serious about comedy, she took an improv class and attended workshops. She now teaches workshops herself.
“To be a comic, you have to have a schtick, a gimmick, be it age, gender, identity, “ she explains. In Quinn’s case, it’s her height, 6 feet 3 inches. “I once had Shaquille O’Neal run up and ask how tall I am.”
Quinn began doing stand-up about eight years ago, and was drawn to clean comedy, which local comic Lanny Farmer was promoting in Athens and the surrounding area.
“If you can’t be funny without swearing, you’re not funny,” she says. “A lot of my comedy is about things my students say, and while my routines have some swearing in them, I’m usually quoting other people.”
The other topic that’s proved fruitful for Quinn is that she married for the first time a couple of years ago at age 48.
“I’m still working things out and some of what I say would be inappropriate except as part of a stand-up comedy routine,” she jokes. “Many comics will work out their challenges on stage, whether it’s neurodivergent issues or their gender identity.”
“Anybody on any given day can soar or flop,” Quinn teaches in her workshops. “You can have a set that absolutely kills it one day and the next day, same set, different audience, different weather, and nothing happens. You got to keep moving.” Follow Quinn on Instagram (@truegritcomedy).
Nancy Heiges who turns 60 in May, did her first comedy open mic at Mai Kai Kava Lounge in 2023. As a songwriter, musician, and an English instructor at Athens Technical Institute, Heiges is comfortable in front of a crowd.
“I had been playing ukelele at Mai Kai when more and more comedians showed up for the mixed mic,” she recalls. “I became friends with them and was impressed with how they practiced and revised, week after week. I decided to give it a shot.”
Combining music and comedy has become her niche, “I almost always include a comedy song in a booked set,” she says.
She finds age an asset, “I have lots of life experience to draw on. I talk about myself – it’s a therapeutic process. I decide what of my traits I want to reveal and then exaggerate for effect”
Her sets might cover her 35-year marriage, her son, aging, her desire for compliments, generational differences, even her late mother’s dementia. She was mother’s caregiver from 2017 to 2021.
Heiges, who describes her comedy as PG-13, also produces a monthly show at The Globe called Funny Femmes on the fourth Sunday.
“It includes women comics from Athens, Atlanta, Augusta, and a team of regulars.”
Heiges recently held her first Women in Comedy conference at the Marigold Auditorium in March to teach and encourage women. Topics included joke writing, performance, improvisation, and marketing.
“We have some different challenges,” Heiges explains. “The culture of comedy is more geared for men.” While the Atlanta scene can be difficult for young women to manage with sexual harassment, condescension, or fewer opportunities from male bookers, Heiges says the Athens scene is very different and much more supportive.
“Some of my closest friends in my life right now are young male comedians – we all appreciate the art form.” Follow Heiges on Instagram (@nancy.carolyn66)
Barbara Dooley is funny!
Barbara Dooley, 86, widow of legendary UGA football coach Vince Dooley and accomplished motivational speaker, says she had always wanted to try stand-up comedy. So, when comedian Karen Morgan, a long-time friend who grew up with Dooley’s children, called two years ago and asked if Dooley would open for her at The Foundry, she eagerly agreed.
“I think she had heard that I wanted to do stand-up so she asked if I would try it,” Dooley says. “Throughout my life I’ve told stories about what happened every day and people would be rolling. That’s what I put together. I wasn’t sure it was going to work – but it did. I loved every minute!”
Then recently, in December, Dooley participated again in another of Morgan’s shows at The Foundry, telling her stories in her famous Alabama drawl to a laughing, appreciative audience.
She says her husband was not impressed with her stories.
“He didn’t think I was funny, but I kept him on his toes – he never knew what was coming up next. He had to be careful – but I didn’t.”
Stand-up is much harder than making a speech, she notes.
“You’re going from one joke to the next joke, not working off a speech that has a beginning, middle and end. You have to have a transition, like making a face or pausing. I usually pause and laugh.
“Vince used to say, “’Well, if nobody else will laugh, you will.’ You’re darn right – I laugh at a lot of things.”
Athens native and Dry Bar star Karen Morgan
GenX’er Karen Morgan, 61, born and raised in Athens, has made a name for herself in the competitive field of stand-up comedy.
The former trial lawyer, who lives in Maine, accidentally discovered the comedy scene 20 years ago, when she needed a break from caring for three children under three.
“My friend was taking a comedy class once a week, and I thought it sounded like fun,” she recalls. It was not only fun but life changing as well.
“The class instructor encouraged me to enter the Nick at Nite contest, “Search for the Funniest Mom in America,” and I became a finalist.”
From there, she organized a tour with two of the other “Mom” finalists and spent several years on and off the road until it demanded too much time away from her children. Once they were college bound, she went back to touring.
Today, Morgan works some clubs but more often, theaters and performing arts centers, corporate events, and fundraisers where the audience is closer in age and seeking clean comedy. She’s recorded three specials for Dry Bar, the gold standard for clean comedy – her latest is titled “If Gen Z takes over the world, Gen X will win it back.”
Morgan’s current tour, “Unsupervised and Dehydrated,” riffs on GenXers, finding humor in the days when “kids didn’t wear bike helmets, have adult supervision or bottled water, and still managed to survive.
“I’ve made a pretty good living with stand-up,” she says. “There’s no deadline, no age limit. The more birthdays we have, the more we have to offer in looking at life with humor and a shared experience.” Keep up with Karen at karenmorgan.com.
2nd annual Athens Comedy Festival
Morgan says she had organized other festivals and had long wanted to produce one in her hometown. She connected with event producer Owen Hunt, who could be the boots on the ground, and the two put together the first Athens Comedy Fest last year.
This year, it’s scheduled for April 30 through May 2. She will be taping a live special at Live Wire downtown that Thursday while the rest of the festival will take place at the Morton Theater Friday and Saturday.
Hunt says there will be a lineup of 18 nationally touring comics, some from Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, although “We take pride in featuring locals in the festival also.”
The Athens Comedy Fest
Athenscomedyfest.com
Tickets: $65 for an all-shows pass
Single night tickets available also
