Stand-up comedian, Beth Stelling, performed a one-hour comedy show Thursday night for a full audience of students and community members at the University of New Mexico’s Student Union Building.
Stelling was introduced to the crowd by Student Special Events member Victoria Pena-Parr who spent the day showing Stelling around Albuquerque, letting her see some of Albuquerque’s most famous locations and taking her to eat at the city’s Frontier Restaurant.
She said she “loved spending all day with Victoria.”
Stelling, who grew up in Ohio and spends most of her time today in Los Angeles, is 32 years old and has had her comedy specials featured on Netflix and Comedy Central. She has also interviewed and performed on television with Chelsea Lately, Conan and Jimmy Kimmel Live.
Stelling studied theater at Miami University in Offord, Ohio and was named Comic to Watch by “Time Out Magazine” in 2016.
Thursday, Stelling told jokes mainly about topics related to her body, drugs, alcohol and sex.
This comedy show was definitely not child-friendly, as Stelling retold the stories of many of her least favorite sexual experiences to the audience, sometimes provoking laughs and other times provoking cringes.
A few of Stelling's jokes were not taken well by the audience, and for these the audience responded with silence or sounds of disapproval — this was apparent during a joke about body dysmorphia when the audience went silent.
Another example was when she spoke about New Mexico and Mexico and said “same difference.”
To this, the audience responded with an elongated, “No.”
Stelling also did a fair amount of improv and interacting with the audience.
She chose one male student who was sitting in the front row and delivered most of her jokes directly to him, looking him in the eyes as she spoke and even conversing with him from the stage.
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“It was definitely interesting,” said audience member Alex William. “It wasn’t really what I was expecting, but she was still pretty funny.”
Timber Mabes is a culture reporter at the Daily Lobo. She can be contacted at culture@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @timbermabes.
