Stand-up Comedians Al Lubel, Karen Rontowski and Shaun Eli at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield, MA

 

Friday September 13, 2024  7:30 PM
Colonial Theatre
111 South St.
Pittsfield, MA 01201
(413) 997-4444
Tickets

Al Lubel became a lawyer to please his mother and a year later became a standup comedian in order to displease her.

Getting stage time is hard for a new comic so Al, unannounced, would suddenly stand up in the middle of restaurants while people were in the middle of eating dinner and do his five minutes. As Al says, “And I almost always got big laughs because, looking back on it, I think they were scared that I was insane.”

Al began getting work at comedy clubs and within a year won the $100,000 Comedy Grand Prize on television’s Star Search. Doing the Tonight Show was a childhood fantasy so he auditioned and luckily became one of the last comics to appear with Johnny Carson. He then went on to make a bunch of appearances on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and the Late Show with David Letterman.

In 1992, Al was the subject of A Standup Life, directed by Peter Lydon for the BBC. A documentary about American standup comedy, it features Jerry Seinfeld, Bob Hope, Mort Sahl and Joan Rivers.

Al’s solo show, Mentally Al, won the Amused Moose Award Judges Prize as the best one person show in the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Two years later he was nominated for best performer of a one person show by the Barry Awards at the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. In 2016, Al was Marc Maron’s guest on WTF and a year later moved to London where he did standup for three years in the UK and Europe.

A new documentary about Al directed by Joshua Edelman, Mentally Al, is being distributed by Comedy Dynamics and can be seen on Amazon Prime and YouTube.

But Al does admit to missing the practice of law. “I’d like to have just one more trial, something serious like a murder trial because right before I give closing argument and my client’s fate hinges on every word I say I want to see his face when I turn to him and whisper, I’m a comedian!”

 

 

Karen Rontowski’s fast-paced, quirky and charmingly optimistic comedy has been featured in clubs, TV, radio, and at corporate events all around the world. Her stand-up showcases endearing, self-effacing and intelligent characters that catch you by surprise every time. Karen uniquely blends comedy with her experience as a Paranormal Investigator, Tarot and reiki master.
Karen has appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman, Sirius Satellite Radio, Comics Unleashed, Comedy.com, Live at Gotham, Comedy Central and Mysteries of the Unexplained. You can see her Dry Bar Comedy Special called Ridiculous Me has received over 21 million hits and her second, War and Instant Pudding will be out later this year. She is also a Paranormal Panelist at the Los Angeles ComicCon.
After performing and hosting at paranormal conventions all over the world she created the hilariously odd web series Paranormal Karen where she has fun reporting from haunted and obscure places everywhere. She also has an in depth podcast by the same name.

 

Stand-up comedian Shaun Eli has rightfully been called one of America’s smartest comics. Whether it’s a story about dining with a vegetarian or successfully fighting a parking ticket in criminal court, master storyteller Shaun Eli shows you that there’s hilarity in the ordinary if you approach life with a comedic warp. Job interviews? How about the Ten Commandments? For just about anything he’s experienced he has hilarious stories at the ready. With a sense of humor that’s both cheerful and universal Shaun has headlined shows on five continents. In 2021 he was the recipient of a major profile in The New York Times.