THE LIBERAL ARTS
Road Trip SJU comic plans opening act after graduation By Adam Tucker ’14
Don’t expect Joey Hamburger to be funny, unless he’s on stage performing stand-up comedy. And for the SJU senior theater major, with his lanky frame, twinkling eyes, rakish, fly-away hair, as well as his last name of Hamburger, being a random, crazy guy has become his trademark on campus – a well-known character everyone loves as just, well, “being Joey.” “When people see me around or in class, they always expect me to be hilarious,” says Hamburger. “And I’m not. The reason I seem funnier than everyone else is that I work hard and polish my material better than anyone else.” Hamburger has set his sights on taking that polished persona on the road – as a professional. “Comedy is something that can be a career. I love doing it. There’s nothing in my life that makes me work harder,” Hamburger says. “I want to do everything though, whether it’s writing plays, sketch comedy or video.” That ambition shows in his senior thesis, a multi-act play entitled “Blind Date: From Creation to Performance.” The play will serve as the opening performance of a comedy tour he plans to take on the road following graduation, a goal made possible
only through the guidance of another Johnnie. Jared Sherlock, a touring illusionist and performer who graduated from Saint John’s in 2011, has been pulling double duty for Hamburger – as both a close friend and mentor. “When I first met Joey, he was a freshman and I was a junior, and he wanted to join a sketch comedy group I had started on campus,” Sherlock says. “He ended up becoming a very central part of the group. He’s so committed, yet very approachable.” Sherlock is the founder of Sherlock Studios LLC, a small business and theater production company. His combined skill as an entrepreneur and artist has inspired Hamburger. Like Sherlock, Hamburger has explored the business side of show business as an E-Scholar in the CSB/SJU Entrepreneurial Studies Program – a program that helps young Bennie and Johnnie entrepreneurs start businesses. And Hamburger is in the business of laughs. Sherlock and Hamburger have performed comedy and plays together as students, and now have formed a relationship as two rising entrepreneurial stars. “Joey and I are one of the rare theaterrelated artists that also are approaching
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our work from the entrepreneurship angle,” Sherlock says. “Joey is very resilient, and when he gets an idea in his head about a comedy or play – he attacks it, both as an artist and an entrepreneur. His enthusiasm and commitment to his craft attracts other people.” Sherlock describes Hamburger as an engaged, genuine artist with a bright future, and Hamburger, in turn, credits the older Johnnie with helping him with the technical business aspect of becoming a professional artist. “I don’t think that I would have met people like Jared who are such hard workers and such great intellectuals at any other school besides CSB/SJU,” Hamburger says. “They were willing to take me in and mentor me.” Hamburger decided to pursue comedy because he “had a lot to say,” and he considers CSB and SJU among the foremost tools in his artistic arsenal. “This place is my academic dojo. I got to disappear for a while and really force myself to read and write more and to think,” Hamburger says. “When I go back out into the world and leave this dojo, I’m going to have such a different perspective. Saint Ben’s and Saint John’s teaches you to think, and man, did I think.”