Lauren Kincheloe has a useful description of what stand-up comedians do for a living: “emotional strippers.” The clothes stay on. Everything protecting the tender parts comes off. At Squalid Gold Comedy School, the Kingston program she founded in 2021, students learn to turn their insecurities, disappointments, and bewilderment into something an audience recognizes—and laughs at. The mortifying business of being yourself supplies plenty of material.
On October 18, six of those comics take the stage at Catskill’s Community Theater as part of the Catskills Comedy Festival. Hosted by Kincheloe, the showcase features Elena Cruz, Jess Edelman, Mie Inouye, Jill Mary, Sarah Mesler, and Svetlana Chirkova, a lineup drawn from across her five years of teaching. Their lives extend well beyond the microphone: Cruz is a hospitality vet who’s competed on “Chopped,” Inouye teaches political theory, and Mary is a veterinarian and mother of three. Everyone has something to work through. These people have developed punch lines.
Kincheloe grew up in rural Delaware County. “It’s a beautiful place to leave,” she says. A theater kid, she moved to New York City at 17, working in theater, voiceovers, and sketch comedy before spending 11 years in Los Angeles. There, commercial acting helped pay the bills, but a competitive storytelling series called Write Club clarified what interested her most: the intersection of writing and performing. Stand-up followed.
She returned to the region shortly before the pandemic, drawn by family and the man she eventually married. Looking for comedy, she found open mics largely oriented toward singer-songwriters. Teaching seemed worth trying. Her first eight students met at Stockade Tavern on Mondays, when the bar was closed. Their graduation show sold out.
Eighty students later, Kincheloe has helped build a community that keeps generating its own opportunities. Three former students now run open mics, giving graduates places to test material and keep developing. The festival cast includes a member of her very first class.
For anyone imagining comedy school as people sitting around being amusing, the homework may come as a surprise. Kincheloe’s classes, capped at eight students, are structured writing workshops. Students receive specific assignments, read their work aloud, and discover which thoughts survive contact with an audience.
“I think people get the impression that stand-up is extemporaneous,” she says. Behind a successful set are hours of writing, revision, and practice. After the first class, students work on the microphone every week, gradually getting accustomed to saying deeply personal things in front of other people.
Kincheloe encourages subjects with emotional stakes: aging, grief, the struggles students are actually living through. Her oldest student was 80. The task is finding the shared experience inside the particular predicament. “A premise doesn’t have to be funny,” she says. “A joke is funny.”
A student can begin with something intensely serious; the class then helps locate the surprise, metaphor, or shift in perspective that produces a laugh. Students contribute to one another’s jokes, learning to accept help without feeling that collaboration invalidates their authorship. “Students are really helping each other write each other’s jokes and letting go of the idea that, ‘Oh, I didn’t come up with those exact words. I can’t use that on stage,’” Kincheloe says. “It came from your premise that was deeply personal. We’re all here as a group to help each other succeed.” The experience belongs to the person telling it. Everyone can help sharpen the telling.
Vulnerability also establishes a relationship with the audience. “It makes us trust the performer when they’re willing to reveal something,” Kincheloe says. She wants students to remain the underdog, giving people permission to recognize their own uncomfortable thoughts. Her preference is for insecurity that produces “something generous that helps other people.”
A naturally entertaining personality helps, but an introvert willing to do the work can learn the mechanics: a setup, a surprise, the discipline of rewriting. Kincheloe says she has never had a student bomb. The approaching graduation performance supplies motivation; classmates supply encouragement and an audience.
The October 18 showcase highlights women and nonbinary performers, voices Kincheloe deliberately makes room for in her classes. A previous show with the same cast prompted an audience member to realize afterward that no men had performed. They had simply enjoyed the comedy.
For Kincheloe, watching students keep performing—and supporting one another—has become its own reward. “I’m so proud of these people,” she says. “I’m so impressed every time, how hard people work.” That commitment continues beyond graduation: “It’s just so great to watch people leave the class and then continue to support each other and continue to support the comedy scene.”
Squalid Gold performs October 18 at 7pm at the Community Theater, 373 Main Street, Catskill. Tickets here. Festival information here.
