If you need a good laugh — and who doesn’t — comics Joe Kilgallon, Maggie DePalo, and Ray Wisbrock are ready to oblige with Hey Comedy at Hey Nonny in Arlington Heights on Oct. 20. Comic Ronnie Ray will host.
Kilgallon has traveled the country as a full-time comic since 2011 but he’s been getting laughs since he was in kindergarten.
“I was pretty much the class clown from an early age,” Kilgallon said. “I got into so much trouble for it where I thought maybe I should try to make a career out of it.”
That became an actual goal when he was a senior in high school. “I was at a party and someone said, ‘Tell everyone the story you told me yesterday,'” he said. Friends continued to ask him to repeat stories when he was in college, convincing him that comedy might be a career path for him.
In 2007, Kilgallon began doing open mics. “Before you knew it, it became what I do,” he said. “It became my only job in 2011.”
Since then, he has performed across the country, including Alaska, Florida, and Los Angeles. He lived in LA for a while, working on some television shows, but returned to Chicago with his family in 2017, shortly after his son was born.
Because he’s now the father of two children, 5 and 3, the comic doesn’t travel as far or stay away as long as he used to. “I don’t like to leave them too much,” he explained, but it’s still his fulltime job.
The Hey Nonny audience will hear tales of those two kids plus the trouble that Kilgallon causes himself.
“I’m a very confrontational person — not in a mean way — but I get myself in a lot of fun situations,” Kilgallon said, noting, “I talk about a lot of real world stuff, nothing political, just things in society that irk me.”
The best things about being a professional comic, Kilgallon said are “making strangers laugh and having a sense of bringing a room together. That feels great.”
Featured performer Maggie DePalo launched her comedy career by taking a comedy writing class four years ago at the Lincoln Lodge in Chicago. She indicated that was something she always wanted to do.
“It was on my bucket list,” DePalo explained. “I got some laughs and it felt good. Since then I’ve been working at the craft and getting booked in shows.”
The Wilmette resident has performed at Zanies in Chicago and Rosemont, Raue Center for the Arts in Crystal Lake, Metropolis in Arlington Heights, and the Comedy Bar and Laugh Factory in Chicago. “I’ve also done a variety of other private and corporate shows,” DePalo said.
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The busy comic also has a recruiting company — and four children.
“My material is very personal in that I talk about my own family — my husband and my kids. And also being raised in the ’80s and ’90s by my parents who are boomers,” DePalo said. “I was raised Irish Catholic, grew up in the South Side of Chicago, and now I’m raising my family in Wilmette.”
Sharing her humor onstage is “a very important part of my creative muscles. It’s me telling my story in the way I want to tell it. Making people laugh is the best reward for me.”
“I did my first comedy set July 2018,” said Palatine comic Ray Wisbrock. “I was a late bloomer for sure. I didn’t know if I was funny. I just did it because I like getting out of my comfort zone. It was more of a personal challenge.”
Turns out, Wisbrock is very funny. He quickly progressed from open mics to regular gigs and has performed at such places as Laugh Factory, Zanies in Rosemont and Chicago, Comedy Bar, CG’s Comedy Club, and Market Lounge in Indiana, among others. He still does some open mics, too.
Wisbrock describes his comedy style as “intelligent dark comedy because I always make sure there’s a punchline,” he said.
Wisbrock said that style of comedy came to him naturally. “I initially tried to write stuff about my life and frankly everybody thought my life was too boring. I’m married for 37 years. We have three fairly normal kids. We have two dogs. I’m ‘Leave it to Beaver’ in 2022 basically.”
He added that he likes the challenge of twisting something and seeing if people laugh at it.
His inspirations include headlines, twists of phrase, or something that strikes him as amusing during his volunteer activities at a hospice and a children’s hospital.
The comic tries to perform three our four times each week. He’s able to do that because he doesn’t have a day job now. Wisbrock had his own corporate communications and market research firm until several years ago. “I’m very lucky my wife has a good job,” he explained. “She makes the money. I do everything else — grocery shopping, laundry, housecleaning, etc.”
And sharing his somewhat twisted — but always funny — sense of humor with audiences, which he said is “an adrenaline rush. It’s such an incredible high.”
‘Hey Comedy’
When: 7:30 p.m. Oct. 20
Where: Hey Nonny, 10 S. Vail Ave., Arlington Heights
Tickets: $8-$25
Information: 224-202-0750; heynonny.com/shows
Myrna Petlicki is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.