By Ron Evans
Saturday, July 10, comedy returns to Mission Ridge with an evening of Stand Up & Suds at The Chair 5 Pub. The show features comedians Ryan McComb and Gabe Rutledge. I reached out to event organizer/promoter Alex Haley about this show and about the stand up world during a pandemic.
Comedy has been creeping back out into the world as Covid restrictions have eased. Are there any rules or current guidelines that make stand-up tricky right now or is it basically business as usual?
Covid has definitely made everything more challenging for event production this last year. This will be the first show I’ve produced since March of 2020 but since things are opening up I think people are hungry for live entertainment. We just finished the Apple Blossom Festival which had record numbers so I think the people are ready.
Over the course of the pandemic we have learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t work concerning stand up, and one thing that didn’t really work...virtual stand up. Talk about the challenges of keeping comedy alive over this past year.
To be perfectly honest, I kind of took a hiatus from comedy over the past year. I’ve performed a couple times at Badger Mountain Brewery’s comedy night, but otherwise I avoided the virtual shows because the only thing I can imagine that’s worse than bombing doing stand up comedy is having to watch myself bomb doing stand up comedy.
Have you seen any creative examples of virtual comedy shows/work-arounds that did work?
I didn’t watch many of them but I know they worked for some people and that’s great! I figured I’d just rather wait it out and see comics in their full glory…I’m such a purist! The one thing I have seen work really well is podcasts. It became necessary for people to do them remotely, which as a byproduct made them more accessible to a lot of people. Not to mention the ample free time some people were forced into.
Is this show at Mission Ridge a one-off or part of an ongoing series?
I’ve definitely learned over the years that it’s better to start small and grow organically if people dig it -cough cough- Wenatchee Comedy Festival. So we’re going to try this one and see if people are eager for a comedy show with a dramatic mountain backdrop and delicious food to pair. If it goes well, you can almost certainly expect more.
Tell us about the event’s headliner.
Gabe Rutledge is always top of my list! He’s hands down one of the best to do it and also happens to live in the PNW - jackpot! He’s one of probably three comics I always go to when I’m launching a new show or trying a new venue because he always kills.
What does the future look like for the rest of this year concerning stand-up in the Wenatchee area? And is there anything coming up you’d like to promote?
Not too much on the books but it looks like it’s coming back! Really missing the RadarStation right now... I’m hoping to do some outdoor shows this summer though and maybe some private backyard shows, so keep an eye out. The roaring twenties are upon us!
The show is 18 & older only. Tix can be purchased at missionridge.com - $40 plus tax (includes dinner and entry for the show). Dinner will be served prior to the show with doors opening at 6:30 pm and the show starts at 8 pm.