Stern and Ellis have more information on their Facebook event entitled “The Future Exes Comedy Tour!” Picture provided by Charlie Stern.
By Emily Ramser
Salem Senior Charlie Stern is heading out on a comedy tour over spring break with fellow comedian Blair Ellis.
Stern and Ellis met when touring previously with Speaker for The Dead, a punk band centered in Massachusetts.
“So, Blair and I started out as strangers but grew very close almost immediately. We’re both trans, Jewish, vegan, and really abrasive and polarizing. We had inside jokes by the time we played our first show.” Stern said.
After their tour with Speaker for the Dead ended, Stern and Ellis found they did not want the touring to end.
“We wanted to keep having adventures…so at first, somewhat jokingly, we said we should just go on tour again without the band.” Ellis said. “We both do stand-up comedy, performance art stuff, so we set a date…and the tour just kinda became a real thing.”
Stern has been doing stand up since June 2012 and typically tells jokes about “television and dogs.” Ellis’s act is described as “story/character based comedy from an over-educated queer with a spectrum disorder.”
The tour will be covering several states including North Carolina, New Jersey, Ohio, and Michigan. The first show will be at Salem’s Student Center 9 p.m. on March 18. The show at Salem, however, will be a poetry reading by Stern and other local poets with music by Ellis. The two’s first official comedy show will be in Durham at the Perch on March 20.
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