by Alexa Schmidt, Asst. A&E Editor
Sophomore Jane Nolan performed stand-up comedy at Scatterbomb’s show on Oct. 5. To say that she was a success was an understatement. As the opener, she set the tone for the rest of the night, and put herself on the radar for regular Scatterbomb attendees.
Stand-up comedy is not a common talent. It requires to comedian to be completely vulnerable to the audience, and try to make them laugh as much as possible. Sounds like a challenge, but Nolan seemed completely natural on the stage.
Nolan has always been interested in stand-up throughout high school, but did not try it until just recently.
“I never really got into it until last year. I did stand-up at the coffee house and then I just never did it again. And then this year, I was like, let’s get back into this so, I think I’ve always had an interest in it, I just never actively done it until I got to college,” she said.
After the first coffeehouse of the semester, Kevin Donald, a Scatterbomb member, took an interest in her performance.
“Kevin was there and then messaged me on Instagram and was like, would like to open for us, Fordham is coming, I think it would be cool. And of course, I was like yeah, obviously,” she said.
She continued.
“I was really nervous at first, just because usually with my stand-up, I’ll write stuff and then I’ll practice it for a really long time and then get the courage and be like, all right let’s perform this. But when Kevin messaged me, I didn’t have anything new written, so I had to write for the show and come up with new stuff. It was cool though, it was cool to write under pressure kind of and see how that went. I think it went well,” Nolan said.
Nolan hopes to open for Scatterbomb again.
“Really, any chance to perform I think is really fun, I love doing it. So if Scatterbomb wants to have me again, I’d love to do it again,” she said.
As inspiration for her stand-up, Nolan watches the comedians on the Netflix specials, like John Mulaney, Dave Chappelle, Jim Gaffigan and Ali Wong.
“I try to watch all of them. And see what they do. Try to not mimic, but take kinda what they do,” she said.
In addition to watching comedians, Nolan has her own unique writing process.
“It’s usually right before I go to bed I’ll think of either really embarrassing stories or stuff that happened to me or just things that I would think that other people would find funny, and then I’ll write it in my notes before I go to bed so I don’t forget it. And then I’ll wake up and I’ll try to write more on it or get a larger story on it I guess … stuff like that. It’s usually quick things that come to mind that I’ll jot down and then just try to elaborate more on later on,” Nolan said.
Nolan has long-term goals that she wants to achieve as well.
“In a perfect world, I want to get more momentum as a stand-up comedian and just start doing larger gigs, and specials, and eventually end up on Netflix, like the big ones; that would be really cool to do and I would love for that to happen. We’ll see. It’s really hard to break out in this world I feel like when it comes to comedy, but yeah, that would be cool,” she said.
You can follow her on Instagram @straightedgednow.