Author: Michael Witthaus

Chatting with Tom Papa

A middle-aged dad whose kids are out of the house and off to college, Tom Papa revels in the joy of empty nesting on his 2024 Netflix special, Home Free. However, the reality turns out to be different, he noted recently.

“It’s more like you get breaks,” he said. “My daughter just came home from college, and I learned the other night that she’s going to be here for four months. I was like, ‘Well, that’s not great.’”

Born in New Jersey, Papa was “knocking around” in the New York comedy scene when Jerry Seinfeld spotted him and gave his career a much needed boost in the late ’90s. A few years later, his sitcom Come To Papa ran briefly on NBC, until a new network CEO looking to launch another show called The Office poached cast member Steve Carell and canceled it.

Papa will be at Hampton Beach’s Casino Ballroom on July 17. He spoke with Michael Witthaus in June — here’s an edited transcript.

When did you realize that you were funny?

In second grade…. I had an idea for a bit [and] a banana peel. I walked to the front of the classroom in the middle of the lesson, and I sang a song parody of ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’ only as ‘Rhinestone Banana.’ It was throwing this banana and shaking my hips. The kids were laughing, and the teacher was sitting next to my desk like, what are you doing? But I remember distinctly thinking, yeah, that works.

What made you decide to be funny in front of people?

In seventh grade, this one week, I walked into my friend’s house, and all the older kids were listening to Steve Martin’s Let’s Get Small album. Later that week I was at my other friend’s house. He had a copy of George Carlin’s Class Clown. You would sit and listen to albums and look at the cover, and it really dawned on me that these are grown-up men [and] this is their job. They’re funny for a living. That really hit me.

Was there a moment where you knew you were going to be successful?

When I met Seinfeld. He came into this club two nights in a row when I was on stage [and] wanted to talk to me after the second one. He was talking about how funny I was, he was really interested and complimentary and spent time with me. I was like, all right, if this guy is endorsing me and saying I’m on the right path, then I think I have a shot. It really came at an important time where it was like, am I going to do it? And he’s like, you’re going to do it. I was like, OK. And that was really the moment.

Come To Papa … What are your memories of that?

…I did a set on Conan and the head of the network wanted to meet me. Then it was kind of this little leaf in this roaring river. Before you know it, I had a pilot and I was casting a show. It was all happening and it wasn’t like I was trying to get it. I was surprised it was happening … we ended up getting hooked up and then there was a new president and he was looking to do The Office. So, it ultimately got canceled after several years of working on it. It was a little confusing because I didn’t know. I got there, that’s got to be something. So … do I have to go back home now? You don’t know what’s up. Then someone gave me advice…. More shows get canceled than become hits … you’re good enough to have people want to make a show with you. It’s validation that you have it. … I was unhappy about it, of course, but I wasn’t crushed. But the real thing that kept me going was like two months after I was called to do a spot on the Tonight show, and I had done it before, but it was just a funny moment to be, OK, NBC put my show on, they canceled my show, and here I am driving back through the gate showing my ID because I’m going back onto the lot to stand up on their network. It was like, oh, wait a minute. I don’t need a show. I don’t need other people to say I can do this. If I’m funny as a comedian, I kind of call the shots. That was a huge moment. The show would have been fun and cool in its own way, but … you’re kind of unstoppable if you can be funny.

This current tour, you headlined the Beacon Theater for the first time. As a Jersey kid, that must have been exciting.

Yeah, that was great. It was a real milestone. Within a couple of weeks I did the Chicago Theater and then the Beacon … definitely milestone spots. I love places that have that kind of history. The one in Hampton is definitely that, right?

You’re right, the Casino Ballroom has had many, many greats on their stage.

I had no idea the first time I went. I was like, oh yeah, I know the area. That’ll be fun. It’s got to be a quirky little place. Then everyone from Count Basie to George Carlin, I mean, everybody. It was like, oh man, I better straighten my tie.

Tom, anything that I haven’t brought up that folks should know?

No, it’s just that I think my comedy really is pretty hopeful and not really that cynical. I sign books at the end of the show, so I get to actually meet the people that are coming out on this tour. You can just tell from the response and spending a little time with these people that they really appreciate that they were able to escape for an hour and a half. It feels like people are under a lot of pressure. It’s easy to yell about the sky falling, but my whole goal out there right now is to give people a good time and a little bit of an escape.

Tom Papa
When: Thursday, July 17, 8 p.m.
Where: Casino Ballroom, 169 Ocean Blvd., Hampton Beach
Tickets: $36 and up at ticketmaster.com

Featured photo: Tom Papa. Courtesy photo.

On stage and screen, Stacy Kendro finds the funny

Though she didn’t start performing until her thirties, Stacy Kendro’s journey to the standup spotlight started much earlier.

Before starting college, she waitressed at a restaurant in Framingham, Mass., when it became a suburban outpost of Nick’s Comedy Stop. For someone who would eventually major in art and minor in theater, whose dad loved comedy and had a record collection that included Rodney Dangerfield and Spike Jones, it was timely.

Since then, “it’s kind of been my whole adult life,” she said by phone recently. Urged by coworkers, she did characters for the Nick’s crowd a few years in. “It was awkward, but I got laughs,” she said, “There were like 15 waitresses, and none of them did standup, but I did. So it was already in me, I think.”

Later, she sporadically duoed with her now ex-husband, an experienced comic. When the two weren’t working, she crafted a solo set and tried out her nascent act at one of her friend’s shows.

“I didn’t tell my husband at the time,” she recalled. “I wanted to not have anybody looking at what I was writing, just go do it, fail a bunch of times and see how it went.”

When Kendro got serious, she headed to L.A., doing shows at the Comedy Store’s female-centric Belly Room, along with the Ice House, which had an annex for young comics. All the while, she’d hit every open mic she could find. Then she headed home. “I kind of cut my teeth in Boston,” she said.

Later, she performed on cruise ships. “That was interesting…. I met singers, but mostly it was piano players and magicians that I became really good friends with. Then I went to New York in 2000…. I came back at the tail end of the pandemic.”

Kendro’s comedy is street-smart and world-weary, with sharp wordplay leavened in. She’s written a series of film shorts called Albanian Assassin set in Las Vegas. She’s won accolades, including placing second in a national Ladies of Laughter competition in 2019. Kendro’s writing is also getting noticed. She wrote a couple of pilots, one of which was picked up by Women in Film Video New England for a table read and more. “We’re also going to block, which is great, because you can see everybody act it out, but also network with filmmakers.”

Since returning home, Kendro has become a regular on Rob Steen’s Headliners circuit, which includes a show in Gilford on July 12 with Jody Sloane and Amy Tee at Beans & Greens’ Notch Biergarten called Ladies of Boston Comedy. She’s not crazy about the name, even while understanding the marketing of showcases like Mothers of Comedy and others.

“It’s like we’re a novelty,” she said. “You know, there’s never an all-male show, there’s just a show…. Interestingly, bookers are still in the boys’ club in their heads. They kind of base a lot of who they book on what their tastes are, not realizing that half the audience is women. In that sense, it’s harder to be a woman.”

Kendro once opened for Joan Rivers at a New Hampshire women’s expo and recalls watching her perform as revelatory.

Her set mixed humor and reflection. “She managed to talk about her personal life and some triumphs. She even said to the audience, ‘You think just because I’m famous that my life is easy? I got fired off the Tonight show. My husband committed suicide. I’ve been through some trials.’ But she made it funny, she was very skillful in that.”

Later, the two talked about Rivers’ early years in a comedy world even more dominated by male comics than today’s. “I asked her what it was like,” Kendro said, and the answer exemplified the legend’s no-BS worldview. “She said, ‘Oh, it was easy, because I was friends with Richard Pryor, and Carlin, and we drove around the Village, and I did stuff with them.”

Ladies of Boston Comedy w/ Jody Sloane, Stacy Kendro, Amy Tee
When: Saturday, July 12, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Notch Biergarten by Beans & Greens, 245 Intervale Road, Gilford
Tickets: $27.50 at beansandgreensfarm.com

Featured photo: Stacy Kendro. Courtesy photo.