Jesse Chieffo
Two people sitting on a couch.
Shauna Jungdahl, left, and Sasha Rosser: more to comedy than just jokes.
I sit at my desk one brisk December morning, waiting on the masterminds behind Madison Indie Comedy to join the Zoom call. Finally, someone enters the call with the display name: SHIT SLURPING DADDY.
Oh yeah, I’m talking to some comedians all right.
Local comedians/improvisers/producers/hosts Sasha Rosser and Shauna Jungdahl joined forces over quarantine to create Madison Indie Comedy, a new show production company with a positive purpose.
“Madison Indie Comedy has a mission statement,” says Rosser. “We want to make people laugh, we want to make our venues money, we want to get comics exposure, we want to get them paid well, and we want to give them opportunities to meet other comics, network, and have a good time.”
Formed in July 2021, Madison Indie Comedy aims to shine a light on and give opportunities to local performers from a variety of fields. Madison Indie Comedy has produced about a dozen shows, including stand-up, improv, music and even burlesque. While Rosser and Jungdahl aren’t the first people to form production squads in Madison, they are leading the charge in comedy production post-lockdown.
Madison Indie Comedy was born from the doldrums of the shutdown, says Jungdahl. “Nothing was happening, nothing was open. All this stuff was just dreary and miserable.” Even when venues began to reopen, shows were slow to return. It felt like “a drought that was continuing.”
The duo’s goal was to reignite the comedy engines that had powered the Madison scene pre-pandemic. What better time? After all, performers had the entire pandemic shutdown to “write, work on new material, be miserable,” says Jungdahl.
It’s not all just about performing, though. Rosser, as a comic who has performed nationally and shared the stage with big names like Dave Attell and Jim Gaffigan, knows there’s more to comedy than just jokes. “Network a little bit,” she says. “Not to turn it all into business, but there are two parts to it: You get friends, you get to laugh, and through that, you get to network.”
The two women share a joyous rapport filled with gentle jabs, spontaneous riffs, and lots of affirmation. It’s easy to see why they work well together. “We are a good team,” says Rosser, smiling. “We’re like siblings: we fight, then we make up, and then we become better for it.”
That strong friendship has its roots firmly planted in comedy. Rosser recalls Jungdahl being one of the first comics she got excited to see perform. “She did this joke,” Rosser says, cracking up before proceeding to retell the joke: “‘I don’t really think I want kids, I’m not sure if I’m up for that. Don’t anybody tell my two children that!’ It was such a simple joke, but I thought that she actually had two kids, and I thought it was very funny.”
Rosser wasn’t originally inclined to perform comedy, however. As a young woman, she had always admired stand-up, but was too “chickenshit” to actually perform. She had terrible stage fright, she recalls. “For years and years, I was like ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be great to make people laugh? I guess I’ll just do it at D&D games!’” But after she underwent a divorce, cancer, and lingering depression, stage fright became a much smaller fear: “I feel like a lot of comedians have their lives fall apart, and then they get into comedy, and I am no different.”
Jungdahl, conversely, has always been a performer. She participated in speech and debate in college, which led her to perform in Madison Story Slam, a long-running series dedicated to the art of storytelling. From her performances there, comics invited her to try stand-up. “I remember the first mic I went to — and, of course, the first mic you go to, you’re going to completely bomb — and I completely bombed.” Now, she’s moved on from performing much stand-up, instead preferring to produce, host, and do improv.
“And she’s killing it!” Rosser says.
Madison Indie Comedy’s two biggest shows were both Jungdahl’s ideas: the one-off charity event Babe-apalooza in July that was a response to the booking of unapologetic sex pest Louis C.K. at a local comedy club; and the half-scripted, half-improvised comedy show Unscripted in October.
The duo also has a rotating set of recurring shows being produced under the Madison Indie Comedy banner. There’s Mad Laughs, a standard stand-up show consisting of a headliner (usually someone from out of town, some of whom have had HBO specials) and feature sets from local comedians. There’s also Comedy Plus, a variety show that typically incorporates comedy, music and burlesque.
Their newest show is going to be Real Talk, a combination stand-up/storytelling show. It’s slated to kick off in January. Jungdahl says Real Talk “comes from my desire to merge the two communities.” The storytelling enthusiast says she wants storytellers to “be seen by” comedians, artists and musicians and for them to be included in indie activities.
Rosser says that Madison Indie Comedy is ultimately “two queer white women with brown hair” doing their best “to bring together people from all different walks of life, who have different approaches to comedy, different experience levels and different experiences in their lives.”
Upcoming events from Madison Indie Comedy are a Mad Laughs show with Geoffrey Asmus, Tok Moffat, Matt Jordan, and host Sasha Rosser on Jan. 13 at Old Sugar Distillery and a Comedy Plus show with Lyssa Laird, Margaret Clinton, Joel Roberts, Shirley Blazen, Xander Anim and host Sasha Rosser Jan. 14 at Crucible.
