IT IS TIME TO LAUGH AGAIN, WORCESTER JASON SAVIO
There is a lot to look forward to now that the pandemic is behind us, and a big part of that in Worcester is the city’s ever-growing comedy scene. The laughs in WooTown have been getting louder and louder in recent years, signaling a change from what it once was. Not long ago there wasn’t much of a comedy scene in the area, as many of today’s standup comedians will attest to, but times have changed.
There was, however, a slow movement beginning that Baxter saw firsthand at the open mics he was hosting, a shift that would give the underdog Worcester comedy scene a new life. A fresh crop of talent was emerging, many of whom would split their time between Boston and the growing scene in Worcester instead of committing all of their energy exclusively to the big city.
Here’s a look at where the Worcester comedy scene has been, where it is, and where it can go from here.
“Back in ’05 there was nothing going in Worcester at all, I mean not even a comedy club,” Baxter says about when he first started doing standup. “So it was cool, for me at least, to be a part of it when that scene started developing.”
BIG BROTHER
Standup comedians have options to showcase their talent in Worcester nowadays. Two of the biggest clubs in the area, the WooHaHa Comedy Club and the Comedy Attic upstairs at Park Grill & Spirits, both run by John Tobin, provide opportunity for young comedians, as well as a space for established performers.
NEW CLUBS AND NEW TALENT
The comedy scene in Worcester today is a far cry from what it was ten or fifteen years ago. Much of that has to do with one very busy and hands-on comedian.
But that wasn’t always the case. For a long period of time, comics had little choice but to travel to Boston to get work in. “Boston had such a head start on Worcester just based on its history of the clubs there and the people, the quote-unquote players who came out of Boston,” Tobin says, referencing Lenny Clark, Bill Burr and a host of others. Even Worcester’s own Dennis Leary, likely the biggest comedic name to come out of the city to date, cut his teeth in the Boston scene, performing in clubs like Play It Again Sam’s. Yet, there was always a rumbling in Worcester, albeit hard to hear sometimes in the deafening boom coming from nearby Beantown. A spat of places like Frank Foley’s Comedy Safari and a room at the old Aku-Aku Chinese restaurant gave local comics a chance to hone their craft. More recently, Worcester’s Orlando Baxter, who now performs around the world and has appeared on Conan O’Brien’s show and B.E.T., spent much of his time in Boston until he started to host open mic shows at Three G’s Sports Bar and Frank Foley’s Comedy Safari. He got his start in comedy in 2005 and has seen a lot of growth in Worcester since. “When I started, Worcester had no (comedy) scene, so I kinda had started a scene,” he says. There was a stretch around 2010 that Baxter recalls when all there was available was the open mic at Three Gs and then Frank Foley’s Comedy Safari. “Those were the only rooms that were going on and that’s when guys like Josh Ramirez, Shaun Connolly, and Nick Chambers came around. Still, you had to go to Boston to get a lot of work,” Baxter says. 6 JU LY 2 0 21
You can’t have comedy in Worcester these days without Shaun Connolly. The spry Connolly, who hit his stride in 2010, has become a godfather of sorts in Worcester’s comedy scene in recent years, co-producing the annual WOOtenanny festival alongside Bryan O’Donnell, hosting The Sort of Late Show at Nick’s Bar, hosting Hot Dog! A Comedy Sideshow at George’s Coney Island, and getting involved in other projects like podcasting and recording his standup album. He has that Vito Corleone aura in that when you speak to him he talks highly of other comedians in town as if they’re family, and many other comedians mention him with similar respect and gratitude. “Worcester is still growing, they’re still figuring it out,” he says. “But with John Tobin opening up the WooHaHa and bringing in legitimate touring headliners and taking over (the Comedy Attic) and letting more of the regional headliners and other comics get time in front of real crowds has definitely helped. Plus, I think what Bryan O’Donnell and I are doing with WOOtenanny, bringing a festival to the city and having comics from all
