The Comedy Cast with Dwayne Strickland

Joining us on the Comedy Cast this week we have Chicago stand-up comedian Dwayne Strickland. We talk about the Indiana comedy scene, horror open mics and loads more.

Hello and welcome to The Comedy Cast, Dwayne Strickland is our stand-up comedy guest today.

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We kick off the internet speaking about Indiana where Dwanye finds himself living, he doesn’t seem to particularly like it of the comedy scene there and would prefer to be back in Chicago so we speak about why he feels that way.

Dwayne gives us a couple of open mic horror stories from his early days performing in Indianapolis, one is a hilarious story about his grandfather having a few drinks too many, eyeballing a little person and listening to a stand-up ‘joke’ about how he got a STD after finding money on the street and spending it the only way you should, in a whorehouse.

Next up, he shares another one about how he played in a bar that ending up being an old people’s home that was half a barbers as well and drugs deals were being done on bicycles outside, it was all kinds of wrong.

We have a chat then about how America is a bit of a crazy place. Dwayne speaks about how the country as a whole simply does not like to take responsibility for anything it ever does and how America just continues to do stupid sh*t and is somehow both proud and ashamed of it at the same time.

We speak about Dwayne’s first time on stage. He speaks about how he’d always wanted to do it but was scared. Scared of sweating too much and it took a dare from a girl in his work for him to get up on stage. In front of a room full of white people. It didn’t start well but when he got joking about his personal life he starting getting laughs and that’s when he knew that going with events from his daily life would be the best for his comedy career.

We get talking a little then about some of the weird dates he’s had, one girl did crosswords. Why? Why would anyone do crosswords on a date? People are strange.

We speak then for a bit about Dwayne’s joke writing process and he reveals that he watches his sets back to really hone his sets and tries to constantly improve on them to make them funnier and funnier.

We speak too about the trick of stand-up comedy, the confidence that you need to convince people that something is funny. Dwayne opens up on this and gives some good advice and how and why this works. We speak too about how some American comedians say they’re being held back by political correctness but surely there’s an argument to be made that it’s up to you to make people laugh and if you can’t do that then you’re doing comedy wrong.

We speak then about the similarities between stand-up comedy and hip hop, especially starting out the artists have so much to say, but then, when the money comes people become comfortable and have less to say with the world and they struggle to remain relevant.

The best place to get Dwayne Strickland on the internet is on Instagram: here

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