Gordon Clark Credit: Jeb Wallace-Brodeur Gordon Clark didn’t let a bad knee stop him from jogging to the stage to open his Wit Wine Comedy Night at Shelburne Vineyard in December. After thanking the sold-out crowd for braving the evening’s snow and blustery cold, Clark, 66, warmed up the au dience with topical humor about climate change, the Epstein files and, a frequent subject of his, what it’s like being a senior citizen. “If I’m not that old, how come my favorite social media platform is MyChart?” Clark joked, gauging how many people in the audience had health insurance by which ones understood the gag. Calling himself “too old for TikTok and too young for Life Alert,” the white-haired host and producer worked the room for about 10 minutes before handing off the microphone to the first of four comedians he’d booked for the evening. The youngest among them was half his age. It’s an industry maxim that standup is a young person’s game. A Vermont open mic typically features comics in their twenties and thirties who riff on the latest dating and hookup apps, low-wage day jobs, and adulting. As for bits about the shortcomings of Medicare, memory loss and the challenge of finding a good urologist? Not so much. In that regard, Clark has carved out his part-time retirement gig as Vermont’s oldest and most prolific independent comedy producer. Much to his chagrin, he can’t claim to be the state’s oldest working comic. That title is held by Bob Alper, the 81-year-old rabbi turned comedian from East Dorset. Still, Clark is a close runner-up. As comedy producers go, however, Clark has little competition. In the past five years, his nonprofit Vermont Comedy All-Stars has produced at least 110 standup shows around the state and paid out more than $23,000 to dozens of local and regional comics, including Tina Friml, Max Higgins, Jared Hall, Maggie Phelan and Josie Leavitt. In addition to his near-monthly gig at Shelburne Vineyard, Clark has also mounted shows at the now-defunct Nectar’s in Burlington, Bent Nails Roadhouse in Middlesex, Next Stage Arts in Putney and Zenbarn in Waterbury Center. In the process, he provides comedians of all stripes with venues to hone their skills outside the established comedy club circuit. Jokingly calling him “the funniest octogenarian we know,” Blain Matthews at Bent Nails Roadhouse said Gordon’s shows routinely pack the house. Despite his prolific work as a producer, Clark is a relative newcomer to comedy. He only went up on stage for the first time in his mid-fifties, he explained during an interview a couple months after the December gig in Shelburne. Clark arrived at a downtown Burlington café with a noticeable limp, the result of a recent knee surgery, he said. It’s one of several age-related ailments that provide regular fodder for his routines. Clark was born and raised in Philadelphia. His father, an architect, had a dry wit and enjoyed making people laugh, he said. His mother was a professional singer who worked the nightclub circuit in New York City and the Borscht Belt, a summer resort area of the Catskill Mountains popular among Jews in the mid-20th century. Clark attributes his booming voice to his mother — he can work a room without a microphone if he chooses. He also credits her for his night-owl tendencies. His mother kept a nightclub singer’s hours well into her old age, sleeping until noon every day and staying up past 3 a.m. every night. Clark spent 20 years doing political advocacy work in Washington, D.C., for such organizations as Peace Action, Chesapeake Climate Action Network and Greenpeace. But by 2016 he and his wife, Emily Piccirillo, an art therapist, were tired of the D.C. scene. The couple initially considered a move to British Columbia — until a visit there during a particularly bad wildfire season disabused them of that idea. Because Clark had vacationed in New England and the Adirondacks during his childhood, “Vermont felt like a second home,” he said. So they gave Burlington a try and settled in the South End. His first local job was working on David Zuckerman’s 2016 campaign for lieutenant governor. Clark got started in comedy the following year by taking a beginners’ standup class at Vermont Comedy Club. His old-school style is neither biting nor overly sarcastic; after his one-liners, one almost waits for the requisite rim shot. During December’s Wit Wine show, he cited a recent study showing that, of all the U.S. cities affected by climate change, Burlington ranked No. 1. “I was just as shocked as you are,” he said. “They call Burlington a city?” Gordon Clark Credit: Jeb Wallace-Brodeur After a few years of performing at open mics, Clark tried his hand as an independent producer. If timing is key in standup, he chose the worst possible moment imaginable: spring 2020, just as COVID-19 was ramping up. Assuming the pandemic would last only a month or two, he booked his first show, at Nectar’s, in October 2020, then quickly had to transition to online events. But Clark stuck with it and by June 2021 was booking monthly shows at various Burlington venues, as well as Next Stage Arts and what was then Bent Nails Bistro in Montpelier. These days, he produces and hosts at least three shows per month — he frets until he hears they’re nearly full or sold out — and also performs his own solo sets at comedy clubs around the state. Putting together a comedy event isn’t all that different from organizing a political rally, he said. Both require raising money, getting people to show up and making sure everyone onstage gets paid afterward. No one is getting rich off his shows, he noted. A local comic will take home $50; an out-of-towner, $100. While what Clark pays himself amounts to little more than gas money, producing comedy nights “gets me out of the house,” he said. “I wouldn’t be doing shows unless I was getting minutes [onstage] out of it.” Mostly, Clark considers his shows a community service that allows other comedians stage time to hone their craft — a view shared by others in Vermont’s comedy scene. “I’m not just speaking for myself when I say that we all appreciate the opportunities that Gordon brings in providing these shows,” said Tracy Dolan, director of the Vermont State Refugee Office, who moonlights as a comedian and occasional standup instructor. Clark has a knack for booking lineups with a good mix of ages, material and comedic styles that appeal to the widest audiences, Dolan added. And he’s respectful of comics’ time and doesn’t rush them offstage if they run long. Gordon cares about community at every level, and that comes through in his comedy.Maggie Maxwell “Gordon cares about community at every level — local, national and global —and that comes through in his comedy,” Burlington comic Maggie Maxwell wrote in an email. “In his own hilariously incisive material and in the shows he carefully curates, Gordon creates opportunities for comedy to punch up at power structures while providing audiences with much-needed catharsis.” Given his many years in D.C., Clark routinely performs political humor. That he’s one of the few Vermont comics who does initially surprised him, especially in a state known for its activism. “I didn’t choose to do it because no one else is doing it. It’s just been part of my life for so long,” he said. “Even before the orange menace,” he went on, referring to President Donald Trump, “there was plenty of stuff to make fun of.” When Clark turned 60, he assumed he’d only be doing comedy for a little while longer. But as the opportunities kept coming, he’s stuck with it. How long does he plan to keep it up? “Until the phone stops ringing,” he said. ➆ Gordon Clark’s next shows are Friday, April 17, 7:30 p.m., at Bent Nails Roadhouse in Middlesex; and Friday, April 24, 8 p.m., at Shelburne Vineyards in Shelburne. The original print version of this article was headlined “Getting Up There | Comedian and independent producer Gordon Clark spends his retirement setting the stage for younger comics” The post Standup Gordon Clark Sets the Stage for Younger Comics appeared first on Seven Days. ...read more read less