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Arts & Entertainment

Stand-Ups Are Standouts at OutLaugh Opening Night

Innovative comics get the three-day queer comedy festival off to a great start Thursday night at The Comedy Store.

From a pitch-perfect recreation of a standard Black Eyed Peas song to an on-stage striptease for one blindfolded member of the audience, Outlaugh 2011, a three-day festival in West Hollywood that celebrates gay and lesbian comedy, was off to a scintillating start at  Thursday night.

This year marks the fourth Outlaugh festival. The lineup of shows include stand-up comedy, sketches, short films, and improv, and a portion of the ticket proceeds will go to support www.GetEqual.org.

It was a solid opening night, with an eager crowd and some inventive stand-up comedy on display. Two of the strongest sets of the night arrived back-to-back, right at the top of the show.

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Nico Santos, a young, energetic comic, proved himself a particularly adept storyteller, brilliantly portrayed a wide range of characters. Santos, a highly performative comic, had the audience in his hands as soon as he assumed a new persona, eliciting huge laughs from the smallest looks and gestures.

Justin Martindale had a quieter, more incisive stage presence, but he could also go big when it mattered. An inspired rant about the current, mechanized state of pop music, complete with an absolute pitch-perfect recreation of a standard Black Eyed Peas song, was easily one of the highlights of the night.

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Other particularly strong showings came from special guest Jason Stuart, who undercut his funny, biting demeanor with several displays of genuine vulnerability, and Julie Goldman, the closing act, who brought an explosion of thrilling energy to the stage, re-invigorating the audience and tearing the room apart during the final minutes of the show. 

The most surprising performance of the night, however, came courtesy of Charlie Ballard. The first 10 minutes or so of Ballard’s set were rather unremarkable, and he had a somewhat lethargic energy that seemed to rub off on the audience. However, things drastically changed when he pulled a chair from the audience on stage and invited a member of the crowd (a young lady, looking like a deer in the headlights) up on stage with him.

He asked her to close her eyes, and proceeded to seranade her, all the while removing his shirt and performing a grotesque, seductive dance. The audience gasped, screamed, laughed, and watched the display with an equal mixture of thrill and horror. Whether you found him particularly funny or not, you can’t deny that Ballard absolutely commanded the audience’s attention.

Even though the performers were playing to an eager, primarily gay audience, they all had material that transcended their sexual preference. It can be far too easy for any comic that falls outside the standardized "straight white male" paradigm to coast on their one unique attribute and build all their material around that (this doesn't just occur with gay stand- ups, but can be an issue with any minority within the comedy world).

While there was certainly a good bit of material that addressed the gay experience, it always felt like the comics were using their sexuality as a way of enhancing their stage personas, rather than relying on it.

There are two more nights of Outlaugh 2011: Friday, June 3 and Saturday, June 4. Both shows take place at The Comedy Store, starting at 8. Visit their website for more details.

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