By Nick A. Zaino III Globe correspondent,Updated May 6, 2024
There are a few basic skills a comedian needs in order to survive onstage: Stay calm if your material doesn’t go over; read and react to a crowd; be decisive about your next step. Luckily, the six amateurs from New England who will take the stage on May 17 at Dorchester’s Florian Hall are better prepared than most. They are firefighters, competing in “The Search for America’s Funniest Firefighter” for a $5,000 cash prize and to help raise money for charity.
Comparing firefighting to live comedy is a tad dramatic, but there are some parallels, according to Damien Speranza, a firefighter, working comic, and cancer survivor. Speranza is mentoring one of the competitors — each has a stand-up comic for a coach — and will perform in the show. In both jobs, he says, you train until your actions become muscle memory, and then hope for the best.
“Nothing goes according to plan, things are always unpredictable,” he says. “A fire could take a turn for the worse, a joke could go in a bad direction and bomb. Or sometimes you just get those magical moments. It’s never a good thing, but you get those moments where the fire behaves exactly how you think it’s going to behave, or the joke goes exactly how you think it’s gonna go. And those are the greatest days on the job on both jobs.”