The KSC Pride group at Keene State College hosted the comedy duo of Cole Escola and Wet Hot American Summers’ John Early in the Mabel Brown Room this past Saturday.
With a small and enthusiastic crowd of over 50 people, Early and Escola broke the ice and excited the crowd with a medley of character comedy and improvisation.
KSC Pride is a group is a group of students that have come together to promote equality on campus, especially in the LGBT community at KSC.
“It’s sort of like a support group,” KSC Pride member Danielle Carlson said. “We just promote equality and keep it as a presence on campus because it’s important.”
With both Early and Escola being members of the LGBT community, Early said he felt it was only right.
“When I found out the pride group was putting it [the show] together I was happy to do it,” Early said.
Cole Escola opened up the night with a few characters such as Ellen, the stereotypical commercial suburban mom, and Diane, the theatre lady who does too many talk backs during intermission of a play.
Luke Stergiou / Senior Photographer
After warming up the crowd, John Early graced the stage to do some stand up of his own. Early discussed being gay, sex, Donald Trump and movies, and closed with a memorable Britney Spears impression. The impression included help from a student in the audience who beat boxed while he sang hits from Spears’ career.
Following their individual performances, the two came together to close the show interviewing two students on stage about their majors and KSC. With one of the students being a safety major, Escola would go on to tease Early about not knowing what a safety major entails or what OSHA is.
When the show ended, Early said the show went well despite being unsure about how the show was going to go because of the circumstances.
“It’s scary going to a college especially because it’s a Saturday night, in the student center, who would come?” Early said.
But after feeling the positive vibes from a satisfied crowd that took pictures with both Early and Escola after the show, Early said, “It was nice that people really warmed up and had fun with it.”
When asked how they became comedians, Escola said, “I guess I just started doing it. There wasn’t a moment where I was like ‘Now this is what I’m going to do,’ I just started doing a show here and there.”
Early added, “As little boys, we dressed up in a lot of wigs, a lot of characters and I think it was just inevitable for both of us.”
KSC Pride member, Sam Whitaker said he thought the show went great.
“It was just great to have the LGBT community members come and there was a good turnout.”
Fellow KSC Pride member, Heather Aldrich explained why they chose comedy as the performance of choice and said there’s a god choice they will do it again.
“This is the first comedy show we’ve done since I’ve been here,” Aldrich said. “I think it just made sense because we’ve had speaker, we’ve had singers and we had never had comedians so it was just another medium that we hadn’t brought to Keene yet.”
The KSC Pride group holds “outspoken” meetings every Monday for LGBT community members.
Nick Tocco can be contacted at ntocco@kscequinox.com.
