Let’s Get Serious with Beth Stelling

Chicagoans will have a couple of opportunities to see Beth Stelling perform stand-up during this week’s TBS Just for Laughs comedy festival. She’s performing at the opening night Secret Big-Time Local Comedy Showcase and at Wednesday and Thursday night New Faces of Chicago shows. Beth was named “Best Stand-Up Comedian” by the Chicago Reader in

The MP3 Experiment Chicago

Hundreds of people participated in Improv Everywhere’s MP3 Experiment Chicago today in Millennium Park as part of the TBS Just for Laughs Chicago comedy festival. Undercover agents were instructed to download a thirty-four minute MP3 before heading to Millennium Park wearing a red, blue, yellow or green shirt. They were asked to blend in until

LOL

I’ve created two new pieces for “LOL: A Decade of Antic Art” opening Friday, June 10, 2011 at the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore, MD. Curated by Sue Spaid, the show is described as “a survey of recent artworks which either riff off or intervene on the real.” I created a new video for this exhibition—LOL, a one-minute exploration

Let’s Get Serious with Carisa & Kevin

Carisa and Kevin are a sketch comedy and improv performing couple of live-together lovers. They’ve both performed with The Second City’s Boat Co on Norwegian Cruise Lines and are immersed in so many comedy-related activities in Chicago that we talked for close to two hours. We discuss hunting the most dangerous game, dramatic juggling and

Let’s Get Serious with Mandy Whitenack

Off Off Broadzway perform “almost sexy sketch comedy” that’s sort of a musical parody of burlesque. They have a new run of shows coming up at Stage 773 so I sat down with Mandy Whitenack to discuss her character, Ricki Dickyouless. She tells me about eating dirt as a baby, Indiana’s Pizza King, Flat Top Grill

Let’s Get Serious with Teenager of the Year

I finally got around to interviewing one of my favorite groups from this year’s Chicago Sketch Fest, Teenager of the Year. Teenager of the Year is Joe Avella and Tim Racine. We discuss what it means to be “Too Hot for Sketchfest”, Frank Black, yellow journalism, hating easy humor, Jock Jams and the Chicago sketch comedy scene. Plus, we talk

Let’s Get Serious with Dirty Borders

Dirty Borders is a group of four Chicago filmmakers: Tim Weidelman, Matt Relstab, Charlie Ward and Sean Dove. In their newest short film, Trajectory, Rob Nastoff plays a sad astronaut that returns to Earth to find empty streets and mass destruction. Sean and Rob join me to discuss the short and their non-film related projects. Let’s

Let’s Get Serious with Bryan Craig Applegate

Bryan Craig Applegate joins me to discuss stand-up comedy, his relocation to New York, owl stuffing and (briefly) the Oscars (pre-show). Let’s Get Serious with Kendall Bruns Episode 013: Bryan Craig Applegate Running time: 98 minutes Download (90MB mp3): Let’s Get Serious: Episode 013 Subscribe to the Let’s Get Serious podcast through iTunes.

Let’s Get Serious with Tim Soszko

I started off this episode by accidentally not recording and followed that up with some clipped audio but once we get past that I think there’s some good conversation with Tim Soszko. Tim is a member of multiple groups including Bri-Ko, The Cupid Players and performs with Micah Philbrook in The Tim and Micah Project.

Let’s Get Serious with Batterymouth

Dave Urlakis and Zack Whittington are Batterymouth, a two-person group that does long-form improv. They just began a run of shows at Second City’s de Maat Theatre in Chicago, IL. We discuss the high stakes of doing long-form improv, question iO’s name and see how well they really know each other. Let’s Get Serious with Kendall Bruns