Stony Brook Staff by Day, Stand-Up Comedian by Night

Victoria Hughes, coordinator for Commuter Services and Off-Campus Living, in Melville Library's "Pit Stop" commuter lounge.

It's not uncommon for professionals early into their careers to hold two jobs, but for Victoria Hughes, hers couldn't be more different - and one's a real laugh.

Within the Division of Student Affairs, Hughes works for the Office of Student Lifeas the coordinator for Commuter Services and Off-Campus Living. She is a resource for students living off-campus, assisting with educational programming, providing counseling on different rental situations and hosting events like the recent drive-in movie presentation of Beetlejuice(1988). Outside her work as a professional Seawolf, however, Hughes' main passion is stand-up comedy.

Hughes is only one year into performing stand-up, yet she is already ahead of the curve when it comes to popularity. Towards the end of August, Hughes won the Great Long Island Laugh Off, a stand-up comedy competition where she was just one of 130 contestants.

After winning the Great Long Island Laugh Off, Victoria Hughes (left) standing beside Angela LaRosa (middle) and John Hyland (right), who won second and third place, respectively.

What is your history with stand-up comedy? How did you first get into comedy?

VICTORIA HUGHES: I've always loved it. It's always been something that I was really interested in, but I was too afraid to try. Officially, I've been doing comedy for about a year now, and it's taken off pretty quickly for me. I started by doing a comedy class. I figured maybe that was a good way to kind of ease into it since I was nervous to get started, and didn't really know what I was doing. I took a class through Governor's Comedy Club called "Stand-Up University," and it was great! They teach you how to have stage presence and how to make your ideas into something that would be more palatable for the stage.

I just kind of took off from there. I've been really focusing on writing for a while now and trying out new stuff. I do a lot of open mics around the area; I perform in most of the Governor's Clubs. More recently, I did win the Long Island Laugh Off, which is a comedy festival competition on the island that's been running for a good chunk of time. I'm the first woman to win, and I think the first - what they would call - "rookie comic," so someone who had been doing it for less than a year at that time.

You mentioned that you attended Stand-Up University as part of your stand-up journey. What was that like? Did you find some similarities between Stand-Up University and Stony Brook University?

It's a supportive environment. You could say that for both. Everybody who's there is really involved and invested in what they're doing. The "professors" are really invested in it, and they take a lot of time - like, the class sizes are pretty small. I think the largest class size that they have is like 10 people, and everybody gets really individualized attention. I think the smallest class was one of the ones that I was in. We had about five people, but we would still spend hours and hours just workshopping material, picking apart which words are funnier, and the order of things and new ideas. You could sit there for hours and hours. It really goes long into the night sometimes with all the stuff that we're doing, but it's a lot of fun and everybody's really invested in it.

I want to circle back to the award you won not that long ago. Can you tell me more about that and walk me through the show you won the award for?

Yeah, so it's called the Long Island Laugh Off. It's a competition, festival-style thing that they do. There's three rounds - they started with 130 people and then I won, not to brag. That's a decent chunk of people to go up against. It's Nassau and Suffolk, so they do multiple different shows for the first and second rounds.

Any comedians in the area can sign up, as long as they haven't hosted before or done any judging for the competition in the past so there's no conflict of interest. But you sign up and then you go through the first round. It's a long show; I think there were like 20 or so comedians on that first show that I did. It's a long night, but it's fun. It's nice to be in an environment where everybody is supporting you. All of the shows were sold out too, so it was a big room every time. I think the first two shows were probably like 200-ish people, and then the final show was like 300 or so, so it's a good crowd. The final show we did in a theater, which was a good environment for that because everybody's looking at you and paying attention. But yes, I had a really good set. I was really proud of what I did.

You mentioned winning out of 130 people, [and being the] first woman to win the show. How does it feel winning?

Pretty good (laughing). No, I wasn't really expecting - I almost didn't even put my hat in the ring. I was like, "I don't know, I haven't been doing it that long [and] I don't know if I'm good enough." I just almost didn't even do it at all, but I was like, "Whatever." You know? Worst case scenario, I get some stage time out of the deal, so I tried, and I made it all the way through, and it feels pretty, pretty cool. It's a fun little bragging right that I get to have now.

Now, although Stony Brook has programs for Creative Writing and similar subjects, there really is no "Stand-Up Comedy" program here at the university. For students who might like to give comedy a shot themselves, do you have any advice or recommendations?

The cost-effective route would be to just hit the open mics. Write down whatever you think is your best material and just go try it out. People will give you unsolicited advice, whether you want it or not, and you'll know pretty quickly if it's catching people's attention. But just go out there and do it. It's pretty inconsequential. You're just gonna go and try your stuff out, and sometimes you'll bomb, and sometimes you'll do great, and that's just kind of the way it goes.

- Sean Gribbin