Comedy Wham LIVE from 2023 Lysistrata Comedy Festival: Stephanie Rae and Maxi Witrak

This week’s episode was record­ed live, which is always an adven­ture, and even more so when it hap­pens at a suc­cess­ful com­e­dy fes­ti­val like the recent Lysis­tra­ta Com­e­dy fes­ti­val in Austin. Adven­tures are always safer in num­bers, and, luck­i­ly, Valerie had along two women who are skilled ora­tors, as well as mak­ing their mark in the com­e­dy indus­try, Stephanie Rae and Maxi Witrak.

Rae is a George­town law school grad­u­ate and founder of the Black Improv Alliance, who cred­its the begin­ning of her com­e­dy jour­ney to improv class­es tak­en while get­ting her degree. (She also claims to have an Urkel impres­sion which, sad­ly, we did not get to expe­ri­ence.) When it turned out that prac­tic­ing law was almost, but not entire­ly, unlike Law and Order, she knew she need­ed a change.

Change came in the form of a heav­i­ly dis­count­ed improv class vouch­er (which is why you always at least try the low bid at silent auc­tions). The envi­ron­ment Rae walked into could hard­ly have been more of a con­trast from her day job. ​“After days of read­ing hun­dreds of pages of case law, I go to this room and be like, we’re teenage cats,” she jokes, con­firm­ing: ​“It was just a real­ly won­der­ful shift of ener­gy, and I fell in love with it.”

Witrak rode a slight­ly dif­fer­ent path, as an accom­plished eques­tri­an, and received her Mas­ter of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in act­ing. Valerie apt­ly notes a poten­tial con­nec­tion between dres­sage (yes, that is the first time that word has been used on our pod­cast) and per­form­ing com­e­dy, and Witrak agrees. ​“You’re being judged and you’re putting on a show for the peo­ple,” she con­sid­ers, and “ I already knew that I real­ly loved the pres­sure of hav­ing all eyes on me…and just get my adren­a­line going.”

In a bit of a par­al­lel, Witrak also came to find com­e­dy inter­sect­ing her world while pur­su­ing her under­grad­u­ate at John Hop­kins. She fell in with a sketch com­e­dy group, and found an out­let she didn’t even know had been miss­ing. ​“That was my first time get­ting to do any­thing zany and be a the­ater kid,” Witrak recalls, vs the ​“but­toned up” life full of dis­ci­pline required to bal­ance school­work and train­ing horses.

Whether it’s the ener­gy, or high-stakes pres­sure, both women are quick to admit to com­e­dy as the addic­tive pro­fes­sion so many find it to be. With Rae, that dri­ve has led her to not only per­form but also teach improv class­es. A bit of that lawyer mind­set comes through when she talks about what com­pelled her to teach: ​“I felt real­ly called to teach, to be a black woman in those spaces, cre­at­ing the spaces that I want­ed to be in.” It’s the kind of shap­ing the world in small but mean­ing­ful ways that she hoped the law pro­fes­sion might be (but thank­ful­ly for com­e­dy fans, wasn’t).

For Witrak, the sto­ry recent­ly has been about doing less to do more. ​“I just want to expe­ri­ence every­thing in my life­time, and I just don’t have the time,” she real­ized, and that has led to tough deci­sions like tak­ing a break from the band she’s a mem­ber of, Max and Miki. Some­times the hard­est deci­sion in a project is to decide to do noth­ing, but it can quite often be the best as well. ​“It’s bet­ter for my mind if I active­ly take a break from the band ‚” Witrak says, ​“rather than doing a lit­tle here and there and still feel­ing that lit­tle hint of low lev­el stress all along because of it.” She’s also done her share of teach­ing, in the form of a stand-up com­e­dy class at her local club.

The episode is packed with more tales of com­e­dy evo­lu­tion, and advice from the per­form­ers; I urge you to give it a lis­ten to get the full expe­ri­ence. It’s always a fun episode when Valerie’s anx­i­ety is through the roof, mak­ing live pod­casts like these per­haps her own equiv­a­lent of an adren­a­line-fueled stage time. With Stephanie Rae and Maxi Witrak on board, it’s a wild ride, and, indeed, there was plen­ty of cheer­ing from the stands.

Fol­low Stephanie

• Stephanie
  • Insta­gram — @WordNerdSteph
  • Tik­Tok — @HeyStephanieRae
• Black Improv Alliance
  • www​.BlackIm​provAl​liance​.com
    
  • Insta­gram — @BlackImprovAlliance
    
  • Face­book — face​book​.com/​B​l​a​c​k​I​m​p​r​o​v​A​l​l​iance
  • Youtube — youtube​.com/​@​b​l​a​c​k​i​m​p​r​o​v​a​l​l​iance
• Freestyle Plus
  • freestyle​plus​.com
    
• New Blerd Order
  • Insta­gram — @NewBlerdOrder
  • Face­book — face​book​.com/​n​e​w​b​l​e​r​d​order
  • Youtube — youtube​.com/​@​N​e​w​B​l​e​r​d​Order
• Oper­a­tion Black Joy
  • Insta­gram — @OperationBlackJoy

Stephanie can be seen and heard:

• A FREESTYLE RAP COM­E­DY SIT­U­A­TION WITH FREE DAPS — May 1, 7:00 PM, Caveat 
  • Fea­tur­ing Dou­glas Widick, RJ Williams, Ralf Jean-Pierre, Mel Rubin, Luke Miller, Bil­ly Soco, Stephanie Rae, Syd­ney Duncan
  • 21A Clin­ton Street, Man­hat­tan, 10002

Fol­low Maxi

• www​.maxi​witrak​.com
  
• Insta­gram — @maddmaxi
• Twit­ter — @MaxiWG
• Youtube — youtube​.com/​@​M​a​x​i​W​itrak

Maxi can be seen and heard:

• Youtube Web Series Train Traks with Maxi Witrak