Matthew Filipowicz is a comedian and the host of Laughing Liberally, a new-to-Madison comedy series held at the Minocqua Brewing Company’s Madison taproom.
Matthew Filipowicz is a comedian and the host of Laughing Liberally, a new-to-Madison comedy series held at the Minocqua Brewing Company’s Madison taproom.
Matthew Filipowicz is pretty sure the next four years are going to be dark.
“We’re about to enter this era where we’re going to be watching a sequel to the worst movie ever made,” said Filipowicz, a Milwaukee-based comedian, political satirist and cartoonist. He began to rattle off horrifying titles — “Paul Blart Mall Cop 7” and “MAGA 2: Electric Boogaloo.”
“We’re going to be trapped in the movie theater, the doors are locked, and the popcorn is burnt.”
One form of resistance for Filipowicz for over a decade has been the monthly comedy showcase Laughing Liberally Milwaukee, which he brought to the fellow blue oasis of Madison for the first time in October 2024, just before the presidential election. He hopes it can provide some solace to worried lefties, “to give comfort to people.”
“It’s a place where audiences can come when their MAGA neighbor is being a racist freak and they just want to feel normal, like they’re not alone,” Filipowicz said.
The next opportunity to feel less lonesome will be Monday, Jan. 27 at the Minocqua Brewing Company’s Madison taproom. The event will feature stand-up from Brian Green, Chloe Mikala, Justin Frisque, Alice Pauser, and Filipowicz’s own satirical sketch comedy group, The Accountants of Homeland Security.
An offshoot of the Drinking Liberally (now LivingLiberally) social club, Laughing Liberally is a nation-wide community of progressive comedians who use comedy to bring attention to liberal ideologies and causes. Filipowicz has led local chapters of Laughing Liberally in Chicago, Boston and Milwaukee.
Each show books left-leaning local comics, but Laughing Liberally isn’t just jokes about Trump. What’s most important to Filipowicz is to showcase diverse perspectives as opposed to the typical “straight cis white guy with a beard.”
“It’s progressive from a social point of view, from an identity politics sort of view,” he said. “I’m pretty proud of how our shows tend to have a diverse range of perspectives.”
An assurance of safety and freedom of material in a comedy space is not something that can be found everywhere, Filipowicz said.
“There are some clubs that don’t want comics to do political material or social material,” he said, but “they’re fine with racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic material. They still want to sell Bud Lights to Kid Rock fans.”
While clubs say they don’t want to “’offend’” people, Filipowicz said, they’re often OK with comics who skewer marginalized communities. Laughing Liberally aims to stay away from those negative influences, providing a space for perspectives perhaps not warmly greeted elsewhere.
“For a comic to be available to come up and speak to their truth, for us as comics to have an audience that is fairly open to that, we’re pretty happy to have that as performers,” he said.
Filipowicz is proud to foster talent in his capacity as the show’s host and producer. As the Laughing Liberally series has been so long running, he’s had the chance to watch performers grow from wet behind the ears to headliners with fully formed sets.
“As a host we watch all these comics’ acts to see how they grow,” he said, “and that’s really exciting for me.”
Filipowicz intends to host at least 12 shows a year in Madison, which means many on the roster of 20-25 comedians can perform four times this year, if not more. Extra shows remain to be seen, but who knows what could happen?
With such a diverse set of talent performing multiple times a month across the state, Filipowicz does hope this comedy can have some kind of an impact, even if it can’t defeat the forces of evil by itself.
“We live in a post-facts society,” he said. Comedy can inform people. Through jokes about the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the insurrection, Trump’s cabinet picks, or stories from people with radically different perspectives than the audience may have, humor could be “a gateway drug to issue advocacy.”
Can comedy really change things? Filipowicz isn’t sure.
“I mean, there were so many Trump jokes, and he still won,” he said. “I don’t know if any joke is really going to change that. Maybe someone just hasn’t written it yet.”
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Monday, Jan. 27, 7 p.m.
Minocqua Brewing Company Madison Taproom, 2927 E Washington Ave.
$10 suggested donation
laughingliberallymke.com
Running time is 2 hours. Show will contain adult content and language.
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