Residents with a yen for yucks can rejoice. The First Annual Meadowlands Comedy Festival will run from April 14 to 19, bringing six nights of high-spirited entertainment to venues in Secaucus and surrounding towns. The event will be capped by a competition finale where America’s Stand-up Comedy Champion will be crowned at the Meadowlands Plaza Hotel in Secaucus.
Among the performers will be both nationally known acts and home-grown talent, all of them hand-picked by veteran comedy booker Joseph Loesner.
A lifelong Secaucus resident, Loesner started the Meadowlands Comedy Club in 2013 at the Meadowlands Plaza Hotel, after a storied career booking acts at The Laugh Factory and other major New York clubs. The shows quickly became popular enough that he added a second line of performances at the Empire Hotel, until a collapsing parking garage this winter put the kibosh on that enterprise.
Perhaps it was the pent-up need to expose audiences to great comedy that led Loesner to create the Meadowlands Comedy Festival.
“I was thinking about doing this for over a year now,” he said. “I decided it’s time to stop thinking and start doing.”
A mix of local and international talent
The festival kicks off on April 14 at the Plank Road Inn in Secaucus. “I’ve grown up there,” said Loesner, noting that comedians like Chris Rock and Colin Quinn played the venue in their early days. “The place hasn’t changed much. It’s a very local neighborhood bar where everybody knows everybody.”
Comedians performing at the festival range from a schoolteacher to a Playboy playmate, from a Jersey dentist to a Russian immigrant.
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Other Secaucus-bred comedians include Kevin Gootee, who will be hosting the April 18 show at Al Di La in East Rutherford; Zac Amico, nephew of 101-year-old former Mayor Paul Amico; and Secaucus High School teacher Janet Regensburg, a recent convert to the comedy stage.
“She was actually my math teacher,” said Loesner. “She thought she was hard on me but I think it was the other way around.”
A friend tipped Loesner off that Regensburg was performing comedy and he checked her out on YouTube and liked what he saw.
Regensburg will be playing the Saturday night show in Lyndhurst, headlined by popular comedian Shuli Egar. “He has his own radio show on Sirius Satelite and a regular on The Howard Stern Show,” said Loesner.
Russian funnyman Gregory Gregory Korostishevsky, a master of deadpan delivery familiar from his recurring roles on Orange is the New Black and The Blacklist, is headlining on Friday night.
Another well-known performer coming to the festival is Rich Vos, the headliner on Tuesday. “He’s pretty big,” said Loesner. “He came in third place on the first season of Last Comic Standing. He has his own show Tuesday nights on Sirus radio and is a regular on The Opie and Anthony Show. He was the first white comedian to do the Def Comedy Jam and he rocked it.”
The championship event
The second Secaucus venue is Mamajuana, where the festival settles on Thursday for Loesner’s first Latin Comedy Night. “Mamajuana is a Dominican restaurant and Latin nightclub where they have live DJs and Latin artists on the weekends,” he said. Mario Lucena is hosting the event, with co-headliners Las Vic and Imagine.
Imagine is the current America’s Stand-up Comedy Champion. He will defend that title at the grand finale event on April 19 at the Meadowlands Plaza Hotel.
“I actually started [the competition] in New York City a few years ago,” Loesner explained. “I did it a couple of times and gave it a little rest. And then once I started doing the shows here I brought it back.”
The finale show will include the most popular performers from the previous nights in a knockdown, drag-out comedy competition. “The audience gets to vote on that,” said Loesner. “We have a referee and a ring card girl, judges. The judges pick the two best and then whoever gets the most votes is the winner.”
Meadowlands comedy – the movie
The event is even going multimedia. “I have a local Secaucus resident, Brian Crause, he’s going to film the festival and make a documentary,” said Loesner. “We’ll get some Q&As with comedians and behind the scenes stuff. It’ll be interesting to see the back stories and what it’s like to be a comedian.”
Tickets to the festival are available online at www.meadowlandscomedyfestival.com, where a full schedule of events is posted. Discounts are available for advance tickets.
“I’m looking forward to every single night, and working around the clock to make sure it’s a success and everyone has a good time,” said Loesner. “I think we’ve got some of the best comedians in the country coming out of this area.”
Art Schwartz may be reached at arts@hudsonreporter.com.