Charleston Comedy Week features Holmes, Papa, Ms. Pat

Comedian Pete Holmes kicks off the second annual Comedy Week on Saturday at the Charleston Music Hall. By the time it ends a week later, Charlestonians would have seen some of the best standup comedians in America.

About 30 comedians will perform in five different venues around the city through Jan. 31: The Music Hall, Wit’s End, Silver Hill Studio, the Riviera Theater and Theatre 99. But the main stage is at the Music Hall, and there are some heavy hitters scheduled.

After Holmes on Jan. 24 Tim Heidecker — one half of the cult-comedy duo Tim and Eric — brings his sharp, anti-comedy sensibility to the stage on Sunday, alongside Neil Hamburger, the deliberately abrasive man called “worst comedian of all time.”

Then on Wednesday night, the Bluebird Improv Group, featuring Tim Meadows from Saturday Night Live and Matt Walsh from HBO’s Veep, is up, followed the next night by Connor Wood, a digital creator who has transitioned his social media following into a thriving stand-up career.
The week wraps up with the hilariously neurotic but chipper Tom Papa on Friday. The inimitable Ms. Pat will close things out on Saturday night.

“We’re thrilled about the second annual Charleston Comedy Week,” said Charles Carmody, the director of the Charleston Music Hall. “It’s a week dedicated to celebrating the many hilarious humans producing comedy, from stand up, to sketch to improv. I want to encourage people to try some new shows, and I challenge them to go to all five venues.”

Holmes loses with a smile

The word you’ll most often hear associated with standup, author and host of the hit podcast “You Made It Weird” Pete Holmes is “positive.” And it’s true that his big goofy grin, rubber-limbed physicality and joyful tone radiate positivity. It’s just that he’s using all of those tools to mock himself mercilessly, taking on topics like faith, masculinity, sex and ego.

Holmes seems to delight in the contradictions of his act, though.

“I did a show recently, and these two Moms came up to me afterwards, and they said, ‘We love how clean your show is and how positive it is.’ And I was like, ‘Really? Go listen to the tape!’ ”
Perhaps one of the reasons that Holmes comes off so joyfully is that in his material, the joke is always on him. He’s even got a story to illustrate the point.

“I went to this hotel with my 7-year-old daughter, and I thought we were going to get an upgrade because the manager was chasing after me and yelling ‘Mr. Holmes, Mr. Holmes!’ And I turned around with ‘upgrade face.’ Here we go! She knows who I am, and she’s going to give us a suite! Then she said we had to leave because the hotel was 18 and over. I thought she recognized me, but it was just, ‘You have to leave.’ ”

Papa, a comedian and baker

Passaic, N.J.’s Tom Papa, who hosts multiple podcasts in addition to standup, also delivers some dark hilarity with a bright disposition.

Papa often talks about attempting to deal with technology as he ages, his decades-long love of baking bread, his irritable but adorable pug, Frank, and he and his wife becoming empty nesters.

“Now that my wife and I are in another phase of our marriage, I’m starting to realize that no one really gives you the arc of a relationship,” Papa said in our interview.

“People want you to get married, they want you to have kids, and then when that 18 years is over, what do you need each other for? And I think you really just need each other for grooming. We just pick things off of each other before we go out, like apes.”

Ms. Pat settles it

It’s fitting that Ms. Pat closes out Comedy Week on Jan. 31, because it’s difficult to imagine anyone following her.

Ms. Pat is less of a standup than she is a truth-teller, and a very busy one at that. She’s a sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued judge on her court-based comedy show Ms. Pat Settles It.

Season 5 of her Emmy Award-nominated BET sitcom The Ms. Pat Show kicked off on Jan. 7. Oh, and she’s launching a cooking show on YouTube.

“I stay busy because I love doing this,” Ms. Pat told the Charleston City Paper. “This is the first thing I’ve fallen in love with that was legal.”

Ms. Pat’s past includes a stint as a drug dealer nicknamed “Rabbit,” becoming a mother at 14 and doing a stint in prison. And she talks about all of that and more with zero filter.

“You go out and you tell people who you are,” she said. “And if they like you, they hook onto you. And when I started comedy, they didn’t do a criminal background check on me or nothing!”

IF YOU WANT TO GO: Each of the three comedians above are at the Charleston
Music Hall, 37 John St. Charleston.
More: charlestonmusichall.com