Kost was itching to produce an event last summer. After a nine-month tour of the U.S. with a children’s theater company, the poet-director-writer-performer wanted to create something of their own. They bounced ideas off of their roommate, Lincoln Lodge manager Christian Borkey, including a potential poetry reading or comedy show. Borkey suggested combining both.
Kost loved the idea. She reached out to two poets who inspired her, Kailah Peters (“K.P.”) and Emily “Lee” Goldstein. Both were down to collaborate, and after a series of coffee shop brainstorming sessions, Giggle Hour was born.
Giggle Hour
First Tuesday of every month; next show 10/1, Lincoln Lodge, 2040 N. Milwaukee, thelincolnlodge.com, $10
Giggle Hour markets itself on Instagram as “a poetry show that’s not a total bummer.” The monthly event ranges from stand-up to PowerPoint comedy to rap—Kost once even inhaled helium onstage for a sketch they titled “POV: I’m one of the seven spiders you swallow in your sleep every year.” Now coming up on its 14th month, the series has already garnered an enthusiastic following.
A number of factors might explain Giggle Hour’s rapid rise in popularity. For one, it stands out as a lighthearted option among other poetry events.
Mikee Parangalan, a writer and regular Giggle Hour attendee, appreciates the series’s balance between levity and seriousness.
“We’re living in such a terrible time, in my opinion—it’s so hard to just get through a day sometimes,” she said. “To be able to go somewhere where people want to share work that’s actively trying to put a smile on your face but includes [their] own experiences, it’s just really encouraging.”
Goldstein, a self-professed “former button poetry addict,” noted the often unwarned emotional intensity of other poetry events.
“I’ve been to seven million open mikes where I go up there and make a fart joke and then the person after me is like, ‘I want to kill myself.’ Or [I] go after that person—which is bad, but also [I] can tell that the audience is relieved.”
Kost believes that humor makes Giggle Hour’s audience more receptive to serious issues underlying some of the performers’ work.
“The comedy lens makes the vulnerability digestible in a way that you are laughing really hard, and then you walk away, and you’re like, ‘Jesus,’” she said.
K.P. says this digestibility is especially important in 2024. “In this day and age with the Internet, everything’s so rage-baity,” they said. “Giggle Hour is a way to enter that lens, but you get to laugh at it.”
Another less common aspect of Giggle Hour is its consistent COVID consciousness; masks are required when people aren’t actively performing, eating, or drinking. A running air purifier—usually from Clean Air Club—always sits next to the stage. These health precautions were Goldstein’s idea.
“I made really close friends with someone who has long COVID,” they said. “I heard about the struggles that she was having and her feeling so left behind.”
According to Goldstein, the community has responded enthusiastically. “People are so hungry for COVID-safe events,” they said.
Giggle Hour has found ways to incorporate audience participation while maintaining COVID safety, including a doodling competition. Before each show, audience members can be seen hunching over the little comedy club tables with organizer-provided markers in hand. The winning doodler receives a free ticket to the next show, heightening the stakes.
Marley Scheld, who has attended almost every Giggle Hour since she moved to Chicago in May, said she and her girlfriend submit doodles to the competition every time.
“I have really tried to create some masterpieces and do some silly little doodles, and I’ve never gotten picked,” she said. “But my girlfriend won the free ticket one time, and she’s gotten featured on the Instagram almost every single time.”
Giggle Hour’s perhaps most highly anticipated element is what the organizers call “Silly Libs.” Between each set, an organizer has the audience shout out specific words Mad Libs–style—among responses at the most recent show on September 3 were “fracking” (verb), “Firework” by Katy Perry (song), and “horny” (adjective). Kost attributed the idea to Luya, an open mike centering queer BIPOC performers. At each Luya show, audience members build a collective poem, exquisite corpse–style.
“We loved that idea of interactivity, of bringing people in,” said Kost, “but we obviously didn’t want to steal their idea.”
Giggle Hour’s do-it-yourself work ethic and focus on equity—from bringing in diverse performers to paying everyone involved in each show—makes the series a good fit for the Lincoln Lodge.
“It’s pretty cheap to run a stage there, and you make 100 percent of the money from ticket sales, but you have to do the whole thing yourself and earn that money,” said Borkey, the space manager who helped Kost come up with the idea for the series. “The people who run Giggle Hour do such a good job getting people in the door every month.”
But as the series continues into its second year, the organizers have their sights set on other locations. They’ve already hosted a collaborative show at Guild Row with Grandma’s House, another monthly poetry series. Now they want to bring the series to the south and west sides.
“As a Black, queer woman I know what it means to feel not welcomed or not heard or just othered, so I try to put very intentional effort into making sure that Giggle Hour is a space where everyone feels included,” said K.P.
Kost and Goldstein, pulling from their own identities, share this drive for inclusion. All three organizers hope that expanding Giggle Hour to locations beyond the northwest side will bring in performers and audience members who might otherwise feel the series is not for them.
“We are always talking about [that],” said Kost. “Now that we’re building this foundation, how can it be useful to everyone and keep bringing people up?”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)