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When Lucas Copp started doing standup, he wanted to go deep.
A lot of comics mine their pain for jokes. Think of Maria Bamford riffing cheerfully on what it’s like to live with bipolar disorder, John Mulaney describing his intervention, or Tig Notaro spinning her cancer diagnosis into comedy gold.
“I’ve been to 23 funerals. I’ve watched a lot of family members pass; I’ve been through my share of tragedy,” Copp, 26, tells WW. “When I first started, I was like, ‘I’m about to create a narrative, and everyone’s going to understand me, and then they’re going to love it.’”
Instead, he says, “I’ve gotten dumber and dumber.” He still tries to be honest, he says, but “as I’ve progressed, I’m getting dumber every year.”
That doesn’t mean he doesn’t get dark. One of his pinned Instagram reels, from the comedy podcast Kill Tony, has him quipping about suicide: “I would never shoot myself. I would never shoot myself, but I would go hunting in my furry costume.”
Copp grew up in Southeast Portland and attended Franklin High School. In another pinned reel, he describes a time he was smoking weed with some other kids in high school and one of them accused him of being a narc: “Aw, fuck, yeah, you got me. I’m a 17-year-old police officer and I’ve infiltrated your blunt rotation with the name Lucas Copp. My next case, we’ll infiltrate the cartel. My name? Diego DEA.”
He grew up watching Kevin Hart and Bill Burr, and decided he wanted to be a comedian while still in high school.
He considered trying standup for the first time at a high school talent show, but decided to wait, instead taking the stage for the first time during an open mic at Lane Community College in Eugene. Now he studies history at Portland State University and works as a longshoreman, though he clarifies that he’s casual, not full time, which gives him time for school and comedy.
Copp hosts a weekly open-mic night at Montavilla Station, and (with Portland comic Brandon Wayne Little) co-hosts a monthly comedy show at Covert Café called Heckles. It’s exactly what it sounds like: Audiences are actually encouraged to heckle.
Copp says he loves Portland, and says the comedy scene here is better than it should be, but he plans to move after graduation—probably to Philadelphia, he says, though he’s also considered Chicago and Atlanta—and to keep pursuing comedy.
He loves doing the “grimy shit, shouting into the void” type gigs—including dates in smaller cities like Bend, Redmond or Yakima—as well as open-mic nights other comics avoid.
“I like the worst parts of comedy. I think it’s so funny how bad comedy can be,” Copp says.
Most comedy clubs have a two-drink minimum; Copp loosens up his open-mic night audiences by purchasing trays of Jell-O shots and tossing them to whoever wants one. As for the grime level, there are a few truly odd sets—including one from a first-timer waxing rhapsodic about chocolate milk—but some that are truly polished. Between sets, Copp gets in as many digs at himself (“you like my facial hair? I just listened to Nickelback and it grew into this trashy shape”) as at his peers (one, he says, “looks like a time-traveling ecoterrorist”).
“All the other Funny Five people—none of these guys go to these horrible open mics I’m at every night, fighting for my life. I’m fighting for my life all the time. It’s crazy. I love all four of them, but goddammit, guys. Come watch this. Watch how bad people hate you.”
What is the funniest thing Lucas Copp has seen in Portland?
“Someone using a water fountain as a bidet.” Yes, it was one of the Benson bubblers downtown.
