Kickstand Comedy offers free summer stand-up shows in the park

For the fourth year in a row, nonprofit theater Kickstand Comedy is hosting a series of free stand-up comedy nights in Portland’s Laurelhurst Park Friday evenings for the entire summer. The first outdoor event was held by necessity in the pandemic and began with a small crowd of less than 100 people. But word has spread, and as pandemic has subsided, crowds have grown and shows now typically draw around 3,000 or more.

Since it began 10 years ago, the theater has offered a broad array of classes, including improv, sketch comedy and stand-up. We’ll get a preview of the upcoming shows from Dylan Reiff, co-founder and artistic director of Kickstand Comedy and Julia Corral, a comic, teacher and one the co-hosts of the series.

This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We end today with comedy – free comedy outside. For four years now, the nonprofit theater Kickstand Comedy has hosted a series of free stand-up comedy evenings in Portland’s Laurelhurst Park. They happen almost every Friday evening for the entire summer. Dylan Reiff is the artistic director and a co-founder of Kickstand Comedy. Julia Corral is a comic, a stand-up teacher and one of the co-hosts of Comedy in the Park. They both join us now. It’s great to have both of you in the studio.

Julia Corral: Hi, thanks

Dylan Reiff: Thanks.

Miller: Dylan, how did Comedy in the Park get started?

Reiff: I think that as many can guess, the pandemic really changed a lot of things for performers, for everyone. But in terms of like live arts, there was really this big question mark around what does this mean for performance?

Miller: Because this was the summer of 2020, the heart … I guess 2021 was also very locked down, but that was the first summer of what we are doing [and] can we be around humans at all?

Reiff: Yeah. And, is my career over? I think for some people, they were like we have no guarantee. Comedy is in small boxes, little black box theaters, low ceilings. So there was no guarantee that this was something … that we all just had so many questions about what was going to happen.

The big thing we knew was everyone needed to laugh. We needed some joy. It was a time where we were feeling isolated from the community, and we looked for a way to bring folks together safely where we could still be outside and in a way that everyone felt comfortable. Then invited people to kind of just connect, even if you were on a blanket over here and a blanket over there. You were still there laughing and being in community together. So that was kind of the spark for doing a comedy show outside.

The journey of how we got there was really just knocking on doors. We talked at church parking lots and drive-in movie theaters. The Portland Parks [& Recreation] Department really came through and allowed us to try this idea out.

Miller: So Laurelhurst wasn’t your first choice. I mean, it seems like pretty quickly, in only four years, it’s become a kind of institution. It seems like a perfect bowl kind of a place. But it wasn’t your first idea?

Reiff: You know, we were throwing darts pretty wildly. We were just looking for any opportunity. And I think I felt like maybe Laurelhurst was out of reach or that certain parks would … but once the Parks Department came on board, it feels like one of those choices where it couldn’t have been any other way. It kind of feels like the perfect place all along. But yeah, we really had no direction exactly where we wanted to have the shows to start. As soon as we got there, it was home.

Miller: What was the size of the shows like at the very beginning?

Reiff: Our first show, we had about 75 people come out which is a totally fun respectable show, a lot of people’s first time maybe seeing local comedians here in Portland. A lot of folks will wait for their favorite comics to come through, but it was a free show. It’s a very low investment to come out and check it out. You can bring your dog, your kids, and just get up and leave if you want to. So it’s like a nice low stakes way to check it out. And so those 75 people took a chance and came out and it grew from there.

Miller: Julia, what’s the size now on any given Friday evening?

Corral: Oh, I’m so bad at math. Don’t ask me that. No, it’s in the thousands. It’s sometimes, I would say, 3,000 to 5,000 a week. It’s hard because people will ask me, oh, what’s it like performing in front of all those people? And I was like, I’m just used to it now. And that’s a really beautiful thing, because all of Portland comes out and it’s very fun to be a part of it.

Miller: Do people ask you that because it’s a larger audience than you had performed in front of in the past?

Corral: I think just in general. I mean, most people aren’t performing in front of thousands of people.

Miller: That’s like when you’re in the arena stage of your career. It’s a different level in most comics.

Corral: Exactly. Or you’re doing theaters. Like, it’s not usually … I would say during the pandemic, there were multiple cities who did park shows, and they didn’t last and they didn’t become an institution. And so sometimes when I travel as a comic and I tell people, “come do a park show,” and they’re like, “OK, yeah, I don’t think so,” or “maybe”. But when they actually see what I’m talking about and see the pictures, they’re like, “oh, I want to do that, that is amazing.”

Miller: Why do you think it survived here and thrived in ways that maybe it didn’t in other places?

Corral: I think Portland loves to stand in line. [Laughter] That’s my theory.

Miller: But the great thing about the park, you don’t need to stand in line, you just show up.

Corral: But they just like to be where everybody is.

Miller: Oh, I see. It’s just like there’s something about Portlanders just like some herd mentality of being in a busy place.

Corral: Yes. And also, I say this about Portland – I moved to Portland about 15 years ago – I think our motto is we all collectively decided to live in this place together so we work together, we do the same things together. So it would make sense for these big events. You’re going to want to do them.

Reiff:  It’s a town that likes to jump on … if they hear a friend talk about something and they’re showing up next week. I think that’s the other thing, going from 75 to several thousand people each week, it was really word of mouth. People just talking about how great the show was, or how fun it was, or how easy it was, like it was accessible. You can get there, like I said, bring a kid, bring a dog. So I think that there’s a part of it where Portlanders, especially folks who are newer to Portland, they really want to be a part of what made Portland great, why they moved here – the art scene, the food, the culture. And I think that this was a way that they could really feel connected to it, and it was easy. It’s like, “great, I can show up and I’m now a part of the art scene here in Portland.”

Miller: Julia, does it feel different to do a show in a place outside, where the laughs, I imagine, just sort of evaporate up into the sky, as opposed to bouncing off the walls and hitting you as the comedian? Is it different to try to be funny outside?

Corral: It is. I’m used to it now And a lot of my jobs as the host is to reassure comics. I sometimes tell comics to take a walk to hear where the laughs travel. For me,

I’ve benefited, it’s made me really stronger as a comic.

Miller: In what way?

Corral: So if I have to do another outdoor show, I can gauge how my set is. I do a patio show as well and I feel like I’m able to gauge the laughs and know a hot or cold outside room, rather than I didn’t have that before.

Miller: But that was just a new skill to learn.

Corral: That’s a new skill I learned. My job as a host is a little different. It’s to keep that energy up, it’s to keep it going, it’s to flow and it’s also to make my comic side books feel really good. But it is very different. Some people, you can get a huge roar, and the laughs will travel up and that does feel amazing.

Miller: But there are times when you take a comic and walk them around to reassure them to talk them down.

Corral: I’m not going to walk, but I do tell them to go walk.

Miller: Go walk over there.

Corral: Yeah, I was like, go to the restroom, hear it and know, don’t get in your head because, like I said, it’s a beautiful thing. And if you haven’t been there, you have to be there to understand there’s just so many people supporting live comedy and I forget how overwhelming that is. Like if we book a new comic and they’ve never done it, and we’re saying, “here’s your five minutes, do it,” it’s very overwhelming. And then I say, just enjoy it, like this is the reward, this is very fun. Have fun.

Miller:  How do you go about booking these shows? How do you think about who you want at these shows, and the order and putting a show together?

Corral: So for me personally, I’ve been booking in Portland for over three years. I produced many shows that aren’t even with Kickstand, too. For me, I need to make sure that there’s women. I need to make sure that there’s People of Color. I need to make sure there’s even the cis male represented. I think a show works better when there is an array of people. It’s an energy shift and it makes people stand out more. If you don’t look like the person you’re with.

So I usually start with booking my headliners. I’ll get those all set. I make sure this year there’s two women, two People of Color per line up. And that’s not like … if I’m a woman and Brown, I don’t count as one-for-one. And I really just try to see which energies really match. Who am I seeing that are really strong that we have to have and also who has been doing great work in the community and I want to give it a chance? And also, now that I’m traveling more as a comic, who’s coming into town, who am I getting to tell my friends, come, stay with me, come do Comedy in the Park. You’re going to have a great time.

Miller: Dylan, there’s an interesting warning on your website – or I don’t know, maybe warning is not exactly the right word – but it says this: “All ages welcome, but content may occasionally range from PG-13 to R so it’s at parent’s discretion to bring children!” Do people bring kids to these shows, young kids?

Reiff: One hundred percent. Yeah. It’s giving folks an opportunity to say, hey, we want to bring our kids and we’re totally OK with it, if a comic starts to talk about certain topics that may be a little more adult. Generally, our comics are really good with staying in the range of stuff that if they are talking about certain subjects, it goes over kids’ heads. But we’re Portland, we do encourage people to speak from their lived experience and we don’t want those topics to be avoided. We just want to make sure that it’s within a range where you can swap out words or do things, but we’re totally open to topics and we also want parents to have the opportunity to say, you know what, this doesn’t sound like a show for my kids. But there are plenty of parents who are excited to bring their kids to a show where they get to hear and learn.

Miller: Julia, have you been in the middle of a joke when you saw a seven-year-old and realized, what am I going to do?

Corral: No, because you’re planning your jokes beforehand.

Miller: Right, but maybe you didn’t see the seven-year-old beforehand.

Corral: No. Well, I work blue.

Miller: Right.

Corral: At nighttime.

Miller: Oh, but 7 p.m. is not nighttime.

Corral: So I, yeah, I’m not going to do that. I’m very … we call it TV clean.

Miller: What does TV clean mean?

Corral: So if you’re going to do the late show

Miller: Oh, OK, TV – television clean.

Reiff: That’s what we’re looking for and you’ll get the feedback right away. You know, it’s a daytime show. So if a comic does start to go a little in that direction, you hear the feedback, it’s a little quiet. It’s not really the vibe of the show. The vibe of the show is like having fun together, joy and community. Yeah, that’s what I think.

Corral: And also doing that’s a little different. I know this sounds wild. This sounds made up, but I have 16 nieces and nephews. My husband is in the middle of nine. So I feel like I have a good gauge on what to say in front of children and what not to. But I typically don’t want to say certain things in front of children, but also every comic is different. So that’s why there are those guides. But I also think it is fun. Sometimes there will be a slip and then somebody will be like, I’m sorry, they’ll say a cuss word and the audience is with it. They understand. I don’t know, I think this year’s stressing the comics, especially TV clean. Everybody’s been really on board with it and excited to see what they could do.

Reiff: It’s a job and you have expectations for a job. And, you know, we’re very clear with what our expectations are and comics who have not taken it to heart, maybe don’t get us back the next year.

Miller: So Dylan, I mentioned that you’re one of the co-founders of Kickstand Comedy. We have just about a minute left, but can you just tell folks what it is?

Reiff: We are a nonprofit comedy theater. Our mission is to bring the community here in Portland together through laughter, and to work to help eliminate a lot of the historic barriers that have kept people from seeing comedy and from doing comedy. So big outdoor free show access. We have a really robust scholarship program, our BIPOC improv program. They’re all free programs to get folks who’ve historically not been invited to the stage, to get on stage and to feel like this is for them so that we can get more experiences represented. We have a brick-and-mortar space at Hawthorne and 10th. And we’re really excited for people to come and check out the new theater.

Miller: Dylan and Julia, thanks very much.

Corral / Reiff: Thank you.

Miller: Dylan Reiff is co-founder and artistic director of Kickstand Comedy. Julia Corral is a comic and one of the co-hosts of Comedy in the Park. It’s almost every Friday evening at 7 p.m. in Portland’s Laurelhurst Park. There are a couple dark evenings because there are some pre-planned events in the park these days.

Contact “Think Out Loud®”

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983. The call-in phone number during the noon hour is 888-665-5865.