Donnie Marsh performs at The Honest Pint. The pub’s “ComedyFight” open mic night starts every Monday evening at 9 p.m.Some comics like to joke that they got into stand-up comedy for the ladies. But for 36-year-old Donnie Marsh, the motivation was divorce.
After his marriage came to an end in 2014, the Florida transplant was in need of an outlet. Like many battling grief, Marsh found solace in the comedic arts, but couldn’t bring himself to commit to the burgeoning dream of stand-up – not when chasing it meant risking what little he had left just so he could perform in rundown cafes for peanuts and live out of a van.
Instead, Marsh did the responsible thing. He enrolled in the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, looking to break into the world of finance, and let his longing for stand-up eat away at him in silence.
All that changed, however, when a school-sponsored trip to a New York business seminar brought him face-to-face with Mike Jacobs, vice president of the Royal Bank of Canada by day and touring stand-up comedian by night.
“That was my introduction to the idea that I could do comedy but not be a homeless, living-out-of-a-van comedian,” Marsh says of meeting Jacobs, who regularly opened for legendary actor and comic Richard Lewis.