Rocky River resident Becky Lee gives stand-up comedy a try Saturday evening at Cuyahoga Community College. (West Life photos by Kevin Kelley)

Westshore women try hand at stand-up
By Kevin Kelley
Westshore
Published April 9, 2008

Did you hear the one about the skeleton who goes into a bar? He asked for a beer and a mop.

That was one of the jokes told Saturday evening during a live stand-up comedy show at the Western Campus of Cuyahoga Community College. The comedians were 11 local men and women who had signed up for an eight-week noncredit class on stand-up comedy.

One of the student comedians was Westlake resident Kim Susbauer, who works at Cuyahoga Community College as a professor of hospitality management.

“My students often tell me I should be a stand-up comedian,” she told West Life after her performance Saturday night. “When I saw the sign (advertising the comedy class), I thought I’d give it a try.”

Westlake resident Kim Susbauer delivers her routine. (West Life photos by Kevin Kelley)

Even though she’s used to speaking in front of people as a teacher, Susbauer said being funny in front of a crowd isn’t easy.

“It’s so much harder to get up there than you would imagine,” said Susbauer, who said she admires female comedians such as Janeane Garofalo and Wanda Sykes.

She didn’t even tell any friends or family members that she had signed up for the course until Thursday because she wasn’t sure she would go through with the final “assignment” — a five-minute stand-up routine in front of a crowd.

During her routine, she joked about being single because she can’t cook — she never had an Easy Bake Oven as a child because Ralph Nader deemed them too dangerous.

And although the students were taught to talk about their real lives, Susbauer made up a false employment history that included a job as a phone sex-line operator. Her routine included humorous stories about how her sex-line voice and persona got her into trouble in real life.

Although her classmates said she did well during her routine, Susbauer said she had no idea how well she did.

“It’s a total blur,” she said of her five minutes on stage. “I lived through it, so that’s a good thing.”

The class was taught by J.D. (for John David) Sidley, a Cleveland-area stand-up comic who has performed across Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania and won several comedy competitions.

J.D. Sidley, a Cleveland-area comic who teaches The Stand-Up Comedy Experience class at Cuyahoga Community College, introduces the next act during Saturday evening’s show.

Sidley himself served as the warm-up act for Saturday’s audience, which included friends and relatives of the 11 students.

He urged them to go easy on the new comics and not heckle them.

“These are comedy virgins,” he joked.

Sidley, whose day job is a public relations professional for the American Heart Association, said he tells his students to write material based on their own lives.

“People will identify with (a comic’s) personal foibles,” Sidley said.

Sidley tells his students to keep their material tight and be themselves.

“It’s all about being original,” he said. “Who can steal your life?”

Sidley taught a similar class at Lakewood’s Beck Center from 2003 through 2005. While a couple of his former students have pursued comedy seriously, most take the class just for the experience.

Saturday’s “graduates” included a variety of ages, from people in their 20s to 60s. And unlike the stand-up circuit, which Sidley says is dominated by male comics, his classes attract a mix of men and women.

The goal of his class is not to make people professional comedians, Sidley said.

“The goal is to put on a show at the end of eight weeks that looks like a professional show,” he said.

Rocky River resident Becky Lee said she took the class to learn more about the philosophy of humor.

Lee, who signed up for the class after seeing a notice in The Plain Dealer, said she viewed it as something she’d try once, like skydiving or bungee jumping.

“I’m never doing this again as long as I live,” she said after the comedy show, which took place in the atrium galleria at Tri-C’s Parma campus.

In her routine, she spoke of her real job of chasing away unwanted birds at Ohio Geese Control. In extreme cases where geese refuse to leave a property, employees play conservative talk radio shows to annoy the birds until they leave, she joked.

Lee also told the audience that she was firmly in favor of gun control. She noted about a dozen instances in which she would have killed her husband if she had access to a gun, she joked.

The class, entitled The Stand-Up Comedy Experience, will be offered again this fall at Tri-C. The class fee is $150. Interested students should contact Mike Ketterick at (216) 987-2260. Students will be informed as soon as fall class dates are finalized. For more information, contact J.D. Sidley at (216) 906-7435.