We caught-up with Andy Ofiesh, founder and emcee of the Naked Comedy Showcase, just as he was driving from Boston to New York to do a show on a snowy February day. “Too cold to be naked today”, he quipped. Talking on a cell phone while driving is unsafe, but we carried on with the interview with the funny man anyway!
Once a month, Boston native Ofiesh hosts the Naked Comedy Showcase, which he started three years ago, at Boston’s Improv. The show also goes on the road to various other locales, including New York and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. The show features completely nude professional comedians performing in front of a completely dressed audience, although on occasion they’ve also had a nude audience for a private performance. The show is very popular, as it has a certain “in” cachet.
Ofiesh actually was a nudist before he was a comedian, doing his first ever stand-up at a nudist club. He discovered it was something he was good at and now even does comedy fully clothed as well! As for the many other comedians who take part, the majority are men simply because most comics are male, but a surprisingly large number of women have dared to bare their comedy routine. Ofiesh told us that he doesn’t have to beg other comedians to participate these days, but the most convincing argument he’s used in the past is to tell them that they’ll “relive the terror” they felt when they were neophytes. Hecklers aren’t a problem, he says, as audience members are oddly very protective of nude comedians, even booing boisterous patrons. They’re awed that someone could have the courage to do comedy in the buff, Ofiesh confided.
The style of comedy involved tends to be adult-oriented, but so is most comedy club material, the only difference being that there’s a wealth of self-deprecating jokes one can make while standing naked on a stage, we reckon! Visit their web site for show times.
Photo courtesy of Andrew Ofiesh. Copyright Andrew Ofiesh
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