The comics in ‘No Adult Supervision’
› Donnie Marsh› Natasha Ferrier› Ryan Darling› Ben Dalby› Grace Holtz› Jared Nipper› Elijah Craan› Alex Howard› Reed Landry› Matt Humphries
Good comics can find funny in almost anything, and the stories of what inspired them to get up onstage in the first place can vary from person to person.
For local comedian Donnie Marsh, he found the comedic push during his finance classes at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
Two years ago, Marsh was a 33-year-old, transplanted student from Florida who was going through a divorce and had been in a rock band. Looking at that jumbled resume, he was hoping to get his life on track in the world of finance. Or maybe not.
"I learned finance wasn't for me," he says. "But I also learned in the band that we had no clue about money or business."
Marsh also learned in his UTC classes about people like Chris Sacca, a man about Marsh's age who had taken a chance and invested in a thing called Twitter, and later Uber, Instagram, Twilio and Kickstarter. Marsh then met Mike Jacobs, whose day job was vice president of the Royal Bank of Canada, but also was moonlighting as a stand-up comic, opening on occasion for longtime comedian Richard Lewis.
"I met [Jacobs] at a business seminar and I thanked him for showing me that you don't have to be boring to be in finance," Marsh says.
Inspired by Jacobs and Sacca, Marsh not only decided to try stand-up, he started looking for ways to make his own mark. He was becoming a regular performer at the Free Kittens comedy nights at JJ's Bohemia. About a year ago, he moved in with Corey Snipes and Thomas Sisk, who happened to own local agency Relik, which focuses on the creative side of video, photo and website design.
With Relik's help, Marsh hit on the idea of making a film of some of the regular comics that perform at JJ's and the idea for "No Adult Supervision" was born. The video, which was shot in late April and made it's debut at the local film house Cine-Rama on Sept. 1, features local comics Marsh, Ryan Darling, Natasha Ferrier, Ben Dalby, Reed Landry, Elijah Craan, Grace Holtz, Jared Nipper, Alex Howard and Matt Humphries. The video is currently available on YouTube.
"There are 25 or 28 good comics in town right now," says Dalby.
Marsh says he filmed the comics at the Relik office space in the Lupton Building over three days. He asked each comic to do their best 20 to 30 minutes and then he chose their best seven to 10 minutes for the 113-minute film.
Most of the comics in the video do observational humor with bits about being an only child, the one chicken at the plant with a strong survival instinct and using social media as an aid for heckling the visiting team's third basemen at a Lookouts game. Comic Reed Landry also has a very funny bit about names for porn films.
"I should point out that the film is R-rated," Marsh says.
The eight comics he enlisted for "No Adult Supervision" represent an up-and-coming group of local funny folks, Marsh says. He didn't reach out to veteran acts such as Janet Williams or Karen Mills, both longtime professional comics, only because he personally knows the ones he did ask.
Dalby laughs at Marsh's qualifier for who was used in the video, saying the local stand-up scene "is really growing a lot and starting to flourish."
Dalby is not only one of the featured comics in "No Adult Supervision," he also curates Free Kittens. The performance night started out as open mic but, as the quality and quantity of local comics grew, he started to pick and choose who would perform.
He says being a part of the film project was gratifying not only because it focuses a light on local comedy, but because it's a bold move.
"My favorite thing was, as somebody who hosts my own show, it was great to see someone who has not been doing comedy for so long start something so ambitious and to have this idea to expand our scene," Dalby says. "There are a lot of people that have some really big ideas."
Marsh has plans to do another video on Jan. 23 and 30 at JJ's, featuring a half dozen local comics and another six or seven from Atlanta.
"JJ's features comics from Atlanta all the time, and some of them are here so often, they might as well be local," Marsh says.
In addition to now being a senior at UTC, Marsh owns and operates New View Window Cleaning, and he sees the comedy project as serving several purposes. School and work prevent him from traveling much, so the video is a way to promote not only himself but others. He's also exploring ways to monetize his ideas via the web.
"I can't travel, so I wanted to use the internet," he says.
Contact Barry Courter at bcourter@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6354.