By Cassidy Rota | Staff Writer
Salve Regina University’s Campus Actives Board hosted three New York comedians this past week including Calise Hawkins, a stand up comedian who had once been featured on Jimmy Fallon and is a writer for MTV’s Girl Code.
At 8pm on February 11 in Antone’s Distefano Hall, Calise Hawkins, Amanda Baramki and host Matt Pavich all entertained thirty to forty students for an hour and a half.
Calise Hawkins is a stand up comic from Springfield, Illinois who has been featured on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,” “Russell Simmons Stand Up at the El Rey,” Comedy Central and was featured on “Last Comic Standing” for two seasons on NBC.
Also traveling with Hawkins was Amanda Baramki who perferomed a 15-minute set before headliner Calise Hawkins and the host Matt Pavich took stage. Both Pavich and Baramki are from Brooklyn and are building careers as stand-up comedians.
Comedy was not the only thing students could expect that night. Salve Regina’s CAB also provided students with Domino’s pizza before the show. Also in attendance was, Salve Regina’s “improv” group who performed for students from 7pm until the show began.
One of the members of Salve’s CAB explained to me that all of the hard work that goes into making a show like this happen. Matt Brady explained that a lot of the work is on the day of a show, such as “putting all of the pieces together,” and “making sure everything is going as planned.”
When asked how popular the events were, Brady responded, “These comedy events are usually very popular, on average we usually expect around 60-70 people to show up.”
I also had the opportunity to speak to two students, Ari Fantakis and Liz Harlow about what they thought of the performance. Both agreed that the event was a good time and something they would consider coming to again.
When asked who their favorite comedian was, Ari said, “Amanda was definitely my favorite. She was really funny and seemed really comfortable in front of a crowd.”
Liz had a different opinion. She said, “ I thought Calise was great. She was hilarious and she could talk about anything. I was surprised at some of the stuff she said!”
The show ended around 9:30pm with the announcement of the raffle ticket winners that students could have participated in at the start of the show and an opportunity for students to do a “meet & greet” with the comedians.
