Allison Wojtowecz: Always Ready to Jump In

Some peo­ple you remem­ber from their actions, some their laughs (or ones they evoked), and some­times a name just ​“sticks” with you. With Alli­son Woj­towecz, all of those are just a jump­ing off point. And, lest you spend too much more time try­ing to sound out that oh-so-Pol­ish last name, Alli­son (née Alli­Wo) says it’s eas­i­est to remem­ber it as ​“void-of-itch”, some­thing to which we can all aspire. There will be a quiz later. 

In some­thing of a rar­i­ty in the local com­e­dy scene, Woj­towecz hails not from the bustling cen­ter of Austin, and isn’t a trans­plant from any of the ​“Coasts”: she calls the sub­urb Round Rock home, as do I. (Admit­ted­ly we also some­times refer to it as ​“Com­e­dy Wham: North”.) Out­num­bered as one of the few females in an extend­ed fam­i­ly full of ​“hilar­i­ous” boys, she posits that her appetite for humor grew from the desire to com­pete with – and best – their con­stant antics. 

School brought out a sim­i­lar com­pet­i­tive atti­tude, with Woj­towecz dou­ble-major­ing in act­ing and kine­si­ol­o­gy at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas. Her love of the­atre first grew from expe­ri­enc­ing the wel­com­ing peo­ple and pro­gram at her high school. The con­cept of being able to visu­al­ize and step into the ​“blank slate” of char­ac­ter cre­ation intrigued her, as well as the pos­si­bil­i­ties it opened into bet­ter under­stand­ing the expe­ri­ences of oth­er peo­ple. One per­for­mance that sticks out to the self-admit­ted ​“goody two shoes” was an emo­tion­al­ly impact­ful enact­ment of sis­ters liv­ing through the Dust Bowl, and the abor­tion that her char­ac­ter car­ried out on stage. Tak­en out of con­text, she says ​“it seemed like a vio­lent scene”, but that ​“it was an inter­est­ing way to lead the audi­ence to expe­ri­ence empa­thy” in relat­ing to the char­ac­ters’ challenges. 

Com­bin­ing her kine­si­ol­o­gy expe­ri­ence with her predilec­tion for div­ing head­first into any new endeav­or, Woj­towecz turned her nascent recipe shar­ing web­site into a legal enti­ty and part­nered with Austin-based health com­pa­ny Pale­oFX. In the process, she com­mit­ted her­self to learn­ing all of the required mod­ern aspects of such a crea­ture: search engine opti­miza­tion, social media skills, and oth­er tricks of the trade, then piv­ot­ed her own com­pa­ny to offer dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing ser­vices to those in need of them. 

Spend even a few min­utes with Woj­towecz and you’ll also find your­self in the midst of an infec­tious ener­gy, which isn’t in the least an acci­dent: it’s a tal­ent devel­oped to moti­vate clients she has tak­en on at times as a per­son­al train­er. The through­line here is her desire to per­form not only at her best, but to enhance and empow­er the lives of others. 

One way to do that is to have peo­ple sweat­ing and swear­ing through a gru­el­ing train­ing ses­sion; anoth­er is to get peo­ple guf­faw­ing from the edges of their seats. With her the­ater back­ground, per­form­ing was seem­ing­ly always to make anoth­er appear­ance in Wojtowecz’s life, first with Shit­faced Shake­speare. After a brief attempt at improv to sup­ple­ment her skills with Shit­faced Shake­speare, she made the jump to stand-up. Of the expe­ri­ence with stand-up, Woj­towecz says ​“it start­ed out just as a tool to be bet­ter at impro­vis­ing and being fun­nier in that and then stand up just became its own. its own passion.”

In only a cou­ple of months from her first open-mic, Woj­towecz found her­self offer­ing logis­ti­cal show advice to a ​“ran­dom woman with a note­book” in the audi­ence at one of her shows. That woman turned out to be ris­ing come­di­an Jen Ful­wiler, a fact that Woj­towecz only real­ized as their friend­ship organ­i­cal­ly grew, and led to her lat­er open­ing for Ful­wiler on tour. Woj­towecz cred­its the for­tu­itous meet­ing not with oppor­tu­ni­ty-seek­ing, but with her mantra of ​“Be a nice per­son, and good shit will hap­pen”, some­thing with which we def­i­nite­ly agree. You can check out the taped spe­cial at The Naughty Cor­ner Tour.

Woj­towecz looks back on her grow­ing com­e­dy career – with mul­ti­ple shows per month, a Fun­ni­est Per­son in Austin appear­ance in 2019, and the afore­men­tioned tour – with amaze­ment. ​“I was a crazy person”,at the pre-Covid peak run­ning both week­ly and twice-month­ly shows. After the world piv­ot­ed in 2020, anoth­er planned tour with Ful­wiler was shelved, and Woj­towecz, in true head­first style, jumped into online shows, includ­ing our own Iso­la­tion Com­e­dy series. Appear­ances on oth­er online shows like In the Meme Time, she pro­gressed to host­ing shows (and doing social media) for the grow­ing Big Laugh Com­e­dy network.

Speak­ing of jump­ing, at this point we’d be remiss in not men­tion­ing an expe­ri­ence that may well encap­su­late Wojtowecz’s approach to new chal­lenges. Hav­ing pur­chased tick­ets to lit­er­al­ly jump off a bridge (albeit with bungee firm­ly attached), she found her­self engag­ing her log­i­cal side to over­come the dread creep­ing in. ​“I woke up scared,” she admits, but, after find­ing out that only 80% of peo­ple actu­al­ly step off the ledge, told her­self ​“you’re not going to be in the 20%!”. In anoth­er inter­est­ing corol­lary to the fright some peo­ple strug­gle with in com­e­dy, she notes the expe­ri­ence taught her ​“the phys­i­o­log­i­cal response of both nerves and fear is the same as excitement..it’s just the way your brain is inter­pret­ing it based on the sit­u­a­tion“, and advis­es ​“you can usu­al­ly con­vert it, if you talk your­self into it”.

In par­al­lel, Woj­towecz added a pod­cast to her reper­toire, with high school friend Alli Tooms called, fit­ting­ly, All. Is. On. (Put the let­ters togeth­er, you’ll get it.) She jok­ing­ly describes it as ​“two white girls from sub­ur­bia”, but takes pride in their tack­ling of mean­ing­ful sub­jects like the denial of poten­tial­ly life chang­ing drugs like MDMA from those with men­tal health issues who could tru­ly benefit.

As we enter the phase where, like human Punx­sutawney Phils, we again begin peek­ing out our doors to see the state of the world, Woj­towecz (and indeed Austin in gen­er­al) are watch­ing with inter­est the changes in the local com­e­dy scene. An influx of come­di­ans, big names and small, have begun mak­ing their way to our berg, like Joe Rogan, Bri­an Red­ban, and oth­ers. Online endeav­ours like Big Laugh Com­e­dy have kicked off real-world part­ner­ships and live shows with Kill Tony, Red­ban’s Death Squad at Vul­can Gas Com­pa­ny. It’s a time of change, to be sure, but one that brings hope that the scene will emerge from forced hiber­na­tion rein­vig­o­rat­ed and ready for a new phase of growth.

For Alli­son Woj­towecz, and her ​“say yes to every­thing” approach to life, we can be cer­tain that she’ll find – or forge – her place in it for years to come.

Alli­son can be seen and heard:

• All. Is. On. Pod­cast with Alli­son Tooms
• Per­form­ing at Vul­can The­ater at Big Laugh Com­e­dy Net­work shows

Fol­low Allison:

• Web­site — www​.allison​wo​j​towecz​.com
• Twit­ter — @TheAlliwo
• Insta­gram — @alliwo
• Face­book — Face​book​.com/​A​l​l​i​s​o​n​.​W​o​j​t​owecz
• Do 512 — Do512​.com/​A​l​l​i​s​o​n​-​W​o​j​t​owecz
• Youtube — Youtube​.com/​T​h​e​A​lliwo