By Dave Paone
Campus News
My mom is such a horrible cook. Seriously. She uses the smoke alarm as a timer.
— Kyle Kratzke
This is what letting yourself go at 18 looks like.
— Abe Hannigan
It wasn’t that bad having a teenaged mom. We shared a lot of things. Like the school bus. We even had the same pediatrician.
— Matthew Arevalo
All of these jokes were delivered to audiences at comedy clubs by standup comics who were still in their teens. All three are pursuing comedy as a career, and while their goal is the same, each path is a little different.
Perhaps the most unusual path is Kyle’s. Kyle began having extreme headaches at age three and sudden, loud noises made him feel uncomfortable. Even hearing people sing “Happy Birthday” was painful.
As the headaches continued, Kyle’s parents brought him to a neurologist who couldn’t find anything wrong. At age five, on the way home from one of multiple appointments with her, he vomited in the car. His parents knew this wasn’t a good sign, so they brought him to the emergency room where doctors performed a CT scan and were told he needed immediate surgery.
Right before the operation he had a seizure and the next day they were told there had been a good chance he wouldn’t have survived the night had they not come in when they did.
The culprit was a malignant brain tumor.
A fairly new treatment at the time was proton beam radiation therapy, and it did the job. Kyle has been cancer and tumor-free for 15 years.
Although Kyle was on the mend by first grade, he was still behind the rest of his class developmentally. He had a one-on-one aide all through school and was pulled out for speech and occupational therapies. However, he found he could fit in by telling jokes.
At first he told the usual kid jokes to his family, classmates and teachers in elementary school. By middle school his father, Robert, introduced him to the work of professional standup comics and Kyle would repeat their material.
Eventually, he crafted his own jokes (with Robert’s help) and had his very first performance at the Friars Club in Manhattan.
The Friars Club!
The Friars Club is the big time for a comic. It was founded in 1904 and is a private club whose members are comedians and celebrities. Since 1950 it has hosted its annual “celebrity roast” of a popular personality, and is televised on Comedy Central.
So how did Kyle land the most prestigious venue for a comedian for his debut?
At 14, Kyle was the subject of a documentary about his victory over cancer. In the movie he told some jokes, including a routine from his favorite comedian, Brian Regan.
Lionel Leventhal was on the board of the Children’s Brain Tumor Foundation and a member of the Friars Club. After seeing him in the documentary, he gave Kyle five minutes in a fundraiser talent show at the venue.
After his set, the host, Sean Lynch, offered to help Kyle book more shows. Three nights later he was back in the city performing again at a comedy club called The Underground.
Since then, Kyle has performed 50 or more shows at all the big comedy clubs, including Caroline’s, Governor’s and The Comic Strip Live, all thanks to Sean, who has acted as his mentor.
Although cancer and brain tumors are serious subjects, Kyle regularly includes jokes about them in his act.
“My motto that I always go with is, ‘Try to turn a negative into a positive,’” he said.
Kyle is considering a career as a motivational speaker who uses comedy to perform at fundraisers for organizations that help children with diseases.
Because of some physical limitations, he isn’t able to drive, so he depends on his father to chauffeur him to and from gigs.
For the past three years, Kyle has been attending Suffolk County Community College as a communications major. The 21 year-old will graduate next month.
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Abe attended Ward Melville High School in East Setauket, Long Island. In true slacker fashion, he proudly states, “Graduated bottom of my class,” in August 2018.
Abe’s paternal grandfather, George Frost, was an economics professor at SCCC for about 45 years and his father, David, is currently a full-time history professor there.
Abe started at SCCC in September of 2018 as a liberal arts major with plans to focus on English and creative writing. With a parent on the faculty, Abe had the opportunity to attend college tuition-free.
He didn’t take it.
Abe lasted one semester and decided to drop out in order to give his full attention to his standup career. When he told his father of his plan, David wasn’t as upset as one might have thought.
“He took it extremely well,” said Abe.
Abe started standup at 17, and in the ensuing year plus he’s performed close to 100 shows. He credits John Butera, a promoter who runs Aragona’s Comedy Shows, for most of his gigs.
Abe says his best show was this past January 5th at Stand Up NY in Manhattan.
“I did six minutes — youngest one there as always — and it went really, really, really well,” he said. “I killed for five minutes. I did some new stuff; I did a bunch of old stuff. It went awesome.”
This is in stark contrast to a show he did at Dangerfield’s, also in Manhattan.
“The crowd just didn’t like me. The jokes just didn’t land,” he said.
Abe doesn’t drive either, but unlike Kyle who has physical issues to prevent him from doing so, Abe just hasn’t bothered to learn.
He refers to himself as “the licenseless 18 year-old” and has only gotten as far as a learner’s permit, so he depends on friends and car services to get to and from shows.
At 18, he’s actually too young to attend venues where he performs, since they sell alcohol. This is ironic because he admits on stage that he’s a 420 bandit. He says sometimes he gets served a beer or two “on the down low.”
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As does Kyle, Matthew uses a real-life and otherwise malevolent experience as inspiration for jokes. His mother was 15 years old when he was born.
Matthew swears the pediatrician joke is actually true; there was a period for just over two years before his mother turned 18 that they shared the same child doctor.
Matthew’s parents were regular patrons of Governor’s and got to speaking to two of the comics after a show. They told them of the classes in standup comedy that Governor’s offers.
They signed him up at 16. The class started with the basics of standup (how to use the microphone) and then advanced to the nuts and bolts of crafting a joke.
In the two years since taking the class, Matthew has performed at the usual venues: Governor’s (for “graduation”), The Broadway Comedy Club, The Comic Strip Live and Caroline’s, as well as private events.
Matthew likes to pepper each set with a few new jokes “to keep it fresh.”
As did Abe, Matthew also bombed at Dangerfield’s. He made a joke about his parents being intimate and someone in the audience shouted out, “That’s disgusting!”
“And the whole audience agreed with her!” said Matthew. “After that, they were just silent. They didn’t laugh. They started talking over me. They just didn’t care for my material.”
Matthew is a freshman at Pace University in New York City. He’s attending as a film major on an academic scholarship with half of his tuition paid for as long as he maintains a GPA of 3.0 or better.
In his short time performing comedy, Matthew has learned many of the rules of the genre (e.g. “comedy comes in threes”) and has concluded there’s enough to the subject for college students to major in it.
“You could probably have a degree in comedy theory,” he said. “The amount of information I’ve learned in the past two years is ridiculous.”
While these three comedians have wildly varying life experiences to draw from (Kyle’s cancerous brain tumor, Abe’s slacker lifestyle and Matthew’s teenaged mother), there’s one thing they have in common — they take comedy seriously.
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