There are a few basic skills a comedian needs in order to survive onstage: Stay calm if your material doesn’t go over; read and react to a crowd; be decisive about your next step. Luckily, the six amateurs from New England who will take the stage on May 17 at Dorchester’s Florian Hall are better prepared than most. They are firefighters, competing in “The Search for America’s Funniest Firefighter” for a $5,000 cash prize and to help raise money for charity.
Comparing firefighting to live comedy is a tad dramatic, but there are some parallels, according to Damien Speranza, a firefighter, working comic, and cancer survivor. Speranza is mentoring one of the competitors — each has a stand-up comic for a coach — and will perform in the show. In both jobs, he says, you train until your actions become muscle memory, and then hope for the best.
“Nothing goes according to plan, things are always unpredictable,” he says. “A fire could take a turn for the worse, a joke could go in a bad direction and bomb. Or sometimes you just get those magical moments. It’s never a good thing, but you get those moments where the fire behaves exactly how you think it’s going to behave, or the joke goes exactly how you think it’s gonna go. And those are the greatest days on the job on both jobs.”
“I think that’s what this whole contest and show is just really about,” says Boston comic Dan Crohn, who is also mentoring a contestant. “Firefighters have to see completely unique situations and put their lives at risk but still have to deal with the public and people. So I think there’s a nice marriage of those two things.”
Harry Conforti, the founder and producer of the show, has a history with stand-up competitions in Boston. He produced the Comedy Riots at Stitches from 1985 to 1992, helping to give younger comics like Bill Burr a leg up. Conforti had been looking to create another competition show when he thought of “Funniest Firefighter.” The comics who had competed in the Comedy Riots back in the day were all amateurs with day jobs.
Conforti wanted to capture that feeling and decided to limit the field to firefighters — “really brave guys that have a lot of good stories and that’s kind of what they are,” he says. “They sit around the firehouse, telling stories.” The idea was to find the funniest of those folks and “give them an opportunity to make a lot of people laugh and raise money for Firefighters Vs. Cancer.”
Firefighters Vs. Cancer is a charity that helps to fund cancer screenings for firefighters that aren’t covered by insurance. It’s an important cause to Speranza, himself a survivor of testicular cancer. Firefighting carries extra risk. “You’re around such toxic stuff when it’s burning,” he says. “We don’t use natural materials anymore to build things. All that stuff that burns is so bad to inhale and have it get on your skin. It’s just all such terrible stuff.”
Conforti would love to crown a true “America’s Funniest Firefighter” and hopes the idea will catch on. “The main thing is to make New England successful,” he says, “and in doing so we’ll raise money and awareness. And from there on, we’ll see what happens.”
Nick A. Zaino III can be reached at nick@nickzaino.com.
THE SEARCH FOR AMERICA’S FUNNIEST FIREFIGHTER
Hosted by Tony V. With Will Noonan, Mike Donovan, Damien Speranza, and Dan Crohn. At Florian Hall, Dorchester. May 17 at 7 p.m. $65-$100. firefightersvscancer.org