There was only standing room in the Spaulding Gymnasium Sunday, April 27 as comedian Gabriel Iglesias took the stage to entertain a sold-out show. The performance, a portion of the 2014 Spring Weekend at Keene State College, was sponsored by the Social Activities Council.
According to SAC Events Coordinator Ryan Mahan, the event sold 1,450 tickets with a net gain of over $28,000. Mahan said the performers cost $65,000.
“This event was two years in the making; we tried to get him [Iglesias] to come last year but the funding wasn’t right,” Mahan said.
Stand-up comedians Martin Moreno and Gina Brillon each had 15 minute acts leading up to Iglesias. Sophomore Tara Killory said, “The first stand up [Moreno] was really funny. I had heard of him from the jokes in Gabriel’s other shows.”
Dylan Kaiser, who also attended the event, said, “I thought the show was absolutely hilarious, he connected with the audience well.”
Residence Hall Director Casey Wilson commented, “The performance was great, they were the most exciting comedians to come to Keene in a while, and having someone who had been on comedy central was awesome. I had never heard of the first two performers but Gina was hysterical.” Wilson added, “It’s amazing that Iglesias can do jokes that people already know the punch line to and still get a great reaction.”
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Comedian Gabriel Iglesias has done stand-up on Comedy Central and also has a DVD special called, I’m Not Fat… I’m Fluffy, according to his website FluffyGuy.com
KSC sophomore David Dougherty stated, “It was awesome. His [Iglesias] new material is a lot different from his old stuff, but still really funny. You could see the difference in his jokes from the first part of the show to the last twenty minutes when he did his old material.”
Sophomore Chad Peterson said, “He [Iglesias] connected well with the audience by opening with jokes about New Hampshire. I also liked how he stayed on stage for almost an extra half-hour, it showed that he really cared.” However, not all students liked this overextension of time. Sophomore Andrew Clark mentioned, “It went a little too long.”
Joseph Geis, an employee of the KSC student center technicians said, “Setting up for the event we had all hands on deck to do this as fast as possible in a day, and we needed those hands.” Geis continued, “We were there setting up for the event at ten-thirty a.m. until around two-thirty p.m., we had a team of thirty students in SAC who helped set up. There were ten tech. workers and fifteen people who came in from the company we got the equipment from. They brought in the staging and sound equipment, none of it was owned by the school.”
Once Iglesias finished, the crowd gave him a standing ovation. The Equinox was denied an interview from Iglesias’s management after previously scheduling a post-show interview with Iglesias.
Zach Fournier can be contacted at zfournier@keene-equinox.com.