Today we’d like to introduce you to Nick Rigs
Hi Nick, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’m from Ohio originally, but St. Petersburg, Florida is where I call home with my lovely wife. I’m one of the many owners of Spitfire Comedy House in downtown St. Pete. Currently, I serve as Spitfire’s Art & Education Director. I also ride the Pinellas trail as much as possible and cook like a madman.
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Oh no way! Sometime’s I feel like life is one of those long Super Mario Bros. levels – ya know, the ones at the end of the game with the slow, ever moving parade of dangerous tanks, bullets and bad guys coming your way. You can’t fight, there’s no flowers for fire power, and you can’t stop it. The only way to survive is to make a series of precise jumps over and over, and to make sure to avoid the spinning wrenches that come out of nowhere. You usually fail like 30 times before you get it right, and you need a lot of luck. Eventually though, you beat the level and move on to a bigger challenge, which may or may not be as hard. Either way – you feel accomplished.
The smooth road has never come my way, but I certainly feel accomplished when I look back at the one that I’m currently on.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar, what can you tell them about what you do?
As the Director of a comedy theater that produces live improv, stand up and sketch comedy shows, I have to be a jack-of-all trades. Since we’re still a relatively new business, I’m also doing the jobs that 5 or 6 people would do at a more established venue. Honestly, it’s ridiculously challenging, but I’m never bored and I’m supported by great people, so somehow all the work gets done. First and foremost, I produce all of the content that Spitfire puts on stage and online. That means I operate in totally different artistic capacities everyday, which are all fused together by a specific show or event. We offer 7 different shows each week, so it’s a lot of shifting gears, wearing different hats, and pushing myself to make sure we’re creating quality comedy for audiences to experience, every time.
In the past 4 years, I’ve directed over 18 original comedy shows, with genres spanning from our own in-house game show to an improvised Twilight Zone show. I’ve also developed Spitfire Academy for comedy arts, which has trained hundreds of local performers through scores of classes that offer locals a college-level education, all from teachers with higher degrees in human communication, performance & writing.
These days I find myself drawn toward doing more sketch comedy for the stage and screen, so any given day you may find me shooting, directing, editing film, designing stage lighting, constructing sets and props, creating costumes, teaching workshops, as well as rehearsing for my own performances. I also manage the business side of the things, so I schedule performers, book stand up comedians and private events, create digital marketing campaigns and design all of our posters and branded imagery.
Oh, and in between all of that I feed a small ego as a future-hopeful amateur chef by making delicious dinners for my incredible wife.
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
Thankfully, I’ve remained healthy and so have those closest to me. But it has made me look around and realize what’s most important in life, and that isn’t always work. I love what I do, obviously; but I’m not the person I am without the people around me. It’s made me rethink my priorities and I think it’s melted away some of the misplaced idealism and arrogance I had in my 20s. It’s more apparent now than ever that I’m a lucky guy – I built my own comedy business from the ground up with the help of people I call friends, I live in the best city in the country, and I have a partner who would win an academy award if they gave those to spouses. In a lot of ways, the pandemic has given me a sense of patience and permission to ‘ease-up.’
For the business, we’ve shifted our aspirations after watching industry leaders fold when the pandemic hit. Suddenly, these historic comedy venues were gone. It was a wake up call that, if we wanted to keep doing this, we had to make sure our business model was as dependable as our show quality. I think we’ve found a way to do that by keeping our ‘community-driven’ spirit intact, putting a lot of people on stage and promoting local performers who now make a little money doing it. More than ever, people’s time matters to them and we’ve learned that as a business and community, you have to be ready for anything.
Pricing:
- Show Tickets: $20
- Comedy Classes: $30 – $180
Contact Info:
- Email: nick@spitfirecomedy.com
- Website: www.spitfirecomedy.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/spitfirecomedyhouse
- Facebook: facebook.com/spitfirecomedyhouse
Image Credits
Jenna Lindie
