Arts & Culture
Comedian brings laughs
The Pointer
dneck184@uwsp.edu
The University of Wisconsin- Stevens Point campus got its first taste of stand-up comedy last Saturday when comedian Mike Merryfield performed in the Dreyfus University Center Encore to a large crowd.
His one-hour set brought many laughs as he covered topics like growing up, college, fashion and sex.
He won over the crowd with his combination of an active stage presence with aggressive jokes and funny accents. His active, physically involved set included a large range of impersonations and jokes about American culture.
Kate Bakalarski, the Centertainment ProductionsClub/Variety Coordinator said she was very impressed.
“I thought the show was really great. Mike was very funny and seemed to relate to the crowd really well,” she said.
She also commented on his connection with the audience.
“The audience seemed to find him very funny. There were even a few people that he talked with throughout his set. He had a strong stage presence and made everyone laugh with his nonverbal humor mixed in with his stand-up routine,” she said.
She added that he was the first comedian of the year and he “definitely set a high precedent.”
Merryfield, an Appleton native, has performed around the United States, as well as across the globe, including Japan, Korea and Guam. In 2006 Merryfield was included in HBO’s celebrated “Lucky 21,” a comedy festival in Las Vegas and is regularly featured on XM Radio’s comedy station.
Merryfield got interested in comedy when he was 13-years-old.
“The 1980s had a big comedic boom,” he said. “There were a lot of comedians on televesion and there were all these comedy clubs. I always wanted to do it.”
He started performing after he had worked at his friend’s comedy club as a doorman and people started telling him he should try out the stage.
“My first gig was really bad,” he said. “There were few jokes and fewer laughs. It all just came from the top of my head. The room was silent and I could hear the piece of paper I was holding coming through the microphone,” he recalled. “I didn’t get many laughs until the end of the set, and I think it was only one. But if it wasn’t for that one, I would’ve probably never done it again.”
Merryfield says his act is about things he’s grown up with, and “real- life stuff.” He likens himself to a storyteller more than a comedian.
“The thing that makes my act good is that rather than using a setup-punch line approach, I am telling stories. People laugh while almost forgetting that I’m telling jokes,” he said.
Performing for a college audience is slightly different than his normal audience, which forces him to adjust to slightly more modern material.
“I have to always remember that my jokes can’t refer to things from more than ten years ago,” he says. “When I perform to older people or younger people I have to adjust to that. But I must say that penis and poop jokes work across any age,”
He added that for his first time in Stevens Point, he thought that the crowd responded very well.
Merryfield said that he thinks stand up comedy as a whole is currently enjoying a lot of success and that it will never completely go away.
“I think that right now, success by newer comedians like Mitch Hedburg, Dane Cook and Larry the Cable Guy show that there is a lot of talent out there,” he said. “It’s very good for comedy to have a set of fresh acts doing well.”
