Hamilton’s Campus Activities Board (CAB) hosted their annual FebFest Comedy Show on Saturday, Feb. 16 in Wellin Hall. The show featured opener Julia Shiplett and headliner Brent Morin.
Shiplett was born and raised in the Midwest, and is now based in New York City. She was recently named one of
TBS
’s 2018 Comics to Watch. In addition to her achievements in stand-up comedy, Shiplett also has written for
The New York Times
and
The New Yorker
. Moreover, she made her television debut on season 2 of
HBO
’s “Crashing.” She is currently co-producing a popular comedy show, “Side Ponytail,” in Brooklyn, which performs on Wednesday nights and the last Saturday of every month.
On Saturday night in Wellin, Shiplett’s performance covered a wide array of topics including life in New York City, her biracial identity, body positivity, therapy, and wedding etiquette. She spoke fearlessly about topics that are not often openly discussed on campus.
“I liked that Julia brought up subjects that are sometimes taboo like the female orgasm,” said Vanessa Vincent Martinez ’21.
Shiplett also interacted with the audience, asking people to raise their hands if they had shared similar life experiences to her. The audience seemed to connect with her natural comedic energy, and overall, the honest humor started off the night strong.
Morin, the headliner, grew up in a small town in Connecticut and moved to California at the age of 18. He graduated from Columbia College Hollywood with a film degree and went on to pursue a career in stand-up comedy post graduation. Now based in Los Angeles, Morin can now be sewn on a variety of television shows like
“Chelsea Lately,”
NBC
’s sitcom “Undateable,” and his own
Netflix
comedy show, “I’m Brent Morin.” Morin has also made guest appearances on “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” Adam DeVine’s “House Party,” and “The McCarthys.” Today, he says spends most of his time touring the nation with his own shows to make people laugh.
Morin opened his performance by discussing the horror-movie-like drive up to Hamilton through middle-of-nowhere roads, an experience most of the audience seemed to relate to. In the rest of his set, he covered topics ranging from the weather, to social media, to dating and relationships. However, the bulk of Morin’s performance consisted of hilarious detailed stories from his adolescent years.
Two specific stories stood out as they seemed almost too absurd to be true. The first was about a time in high school when Morin’s friend made dozens of copies of his car key so that all of their close friends could use his car. Eventually, people made so many copies of the key that his car essentially became a town car, which became clear when Morin’s father saw an elderly stranger driving his son’s car.
In the next story, Morin told the audience about how he got revenge on his friend for copying his car key. When he was home for winter break after his first semester at college, Morin convinced all of his friends, his parents, and his friend’s parents to pretend that Morin was kidnapped. Morin really wanted to instill fear in his friend, so he even got a local police officer involved in the ruse. After over a week of hiding from his friend, Morin “ran into” him at a hockey game and acted as if he had never gone missing. Morin claims that to this day his friend does not know that the “kidnapping” was a prank. These stories were riveting and hearing them felt like living in a real-world sitcom.
Audience reaction to the night was almost uniformly positive.
“I personally loved the contrast between the two performances,” said Genny Cohen ’21. “I appreciated Julia’s dry sense of humor because, although it didn’t seem like she got as many laughs as Brent, she was relatable and able to talk about several important issues that pertain to women, such as body image and aging, with ease. Brent’s set was full of outlandish tales from his childhood and teen years, which had the whole crowd laughing from start to finish.
“Overall, it was a good time, and I would definitely see them perform live again.”
