Cardinal Spirits and the Limestone Comedy Festival put on their first High Proof Laughs comedy show Monday night. A packed crowd filled the restored industrial space along with dangling lights, a concrete floor, glass bottles and a bare wood ceiling.
Featuring four Bloomington- and Indianapolis-area comedians, the collaboration is the first in what the sponsors hope will become a quarterly event.
“I’ve always been a performer,” said Stephanie Lochbihler, an IU social psychology Ph.D. candidate featured at the event. “It’s the only thing you can do spontaneously. You’re your own script. You’re your own actor.”
This event showcased Kristen Lucas, winner of the 2016 “Funniest Person in Bloomington” contest; Austin Reel, an Indianapolis comedian and regular at Morty’s Comedy Joint; Lochbihler, named one of the top 10 up-and-coming female comedians on ambitious.com; and Indianapolis-based Dwight Simmons, who is the host of a web series called BrewTube Comedy.
The show had an unconventional setting in Cardinal Spirits, which opened two years ago to become Bloomington’s first craft distillery.
“How many jokes start with a guy walking into a bar and here we are,” Jeff Wuslich, co-founder of Cardinal Spirits, said.
The distillery sells its signature vodka and plans on releasing a different spirit every other month this year, Wuslich said. The distillery distributes across the state, to Kentucky, and recently made its debut in Chicago.
The night’s master of ceremonies was Mat Alano-Martin, a co-director of the Limestone Comedy Festival. Billed as the “greatest weekend of your life,” the annual Limestone Comedy Festival features locals and established comedians across the country. This year’s festival will be June 1-3. The festival began five years ago, Alano-Martin said, as a conversation between himself and the owner of the Comedy Attic.
The collaboration between Cardinal and Limestone is the first for the two. Beyond cross promotion they have no other year-round events beside the new quarterly series with Cardinal.
“We love Cardinal,” Alano-Martin said. “This was their idea, and they came to us.”
