By Barnett Wright | The Birmingham Times
Long before the audience files into the Broadway Room at the StarDome Comedy Club in Hoover, Alabama, on a July evening, a group of comedians gather in the lobby for guidance. They are in the venue for Open Mic Night and for many this is their first time on stage. Some are nervous, but not for long. They are put at ease by Eunice Elliott, herself a comedian, who will host the show.
“She was brilliant, she was nice to us. She told us how it would go … she talked to us before we went out, she talked to us backstage,” said Randall Arrington, 19, aka Showstopper, from Wylam in Birmingham, who performed that evening. “It helps when folks who have done it a longtime still tell you they get nervous.”
“If someone is thinking about being a comedian, I usually tell them don’t think of what could be funny, just share what is funny,” Elliott told the Birmingham Times in an interview the following morning. “That’s my number one thing. I noticed that when people first get on stage, they start making up these fantastical ideas that aren’t realistic and don’t really connect with the audience.”
The StarDome Comedy Club this summer brought back its Open Mic Night for the first time in more than a year with Elliott as the host. The shows, on the last Thursday of each month, run approximately two hours and Elliott closely monitors each comedian from backstage.
“Any show I’m on I watch,” said the former WVTM 13 morning news anchor. “Most comedians don’t, which is horrible. Let’s say I’m headlining. Or I’m hosting and doing a show like this [open mic] with so many comedians [12]. You need to know what people are saying on stage. You don’t want to go and do similar material and tell the same joke . . . hopefully you can tailor your material to a moment and that comes with time.”
She added, “Also, being a writer and I punch up people’s material for a living, I write with other comedians so I watch everybody’s show, I’m paying attention because it might be something they say … that’s why I enjoy it because it gives me an opportunity to exercise those muscles. I can riff pretty easily, I can do what [comedian] Roy Wood Jr. called ‘get more meat off the bone’ so you might see someone has a great premise or a setup and that either reminds me of something that I can talk about that I do or there is something else I can get off the bone from them.”
With Elliott as host for Open Mic Night at the StarDome people fill the Broadway Room to see more than the comedians who perform. Some in the audience come to see the host as well.
Rick and Amanda James from Hoover are among those who say they’ve come for Elliott. The couple came to their first open mic in June, came back again in July and will be there again for the 7 p.m. show on August 29.
“Eunice is so funny, she’s beautiful. She’s hilarious. We love to come watch her,” said Amanda James, of her and her husband. “She just keeps it real. Very authentic. She is very relatable. The stories she tells and the jokes she tells are relatable. Her energy is good.”
Her husband Rick said Elliott is easy going, able to reach people where they are. “Even if I had a bad day she’s going to bring me up with some of her authentic conversation, making people feel like we’re all together.”
Elliott will host the next Open Mic Thursday, August 29, at 7 p.m., and the club will continue doing it for the foreseeable future on the last Thursday of the month.
People who desire to be a part of the show are required to submit a video of a previous comedy performance to eunicecomedy@gmail.com in advance, and people are not confirmed to be on the show until they receive a confirmation email.
