With its cozy cafe atmosphere, gleeful audience and quaint stage, Friday Funnies is a space for comedians to make their mark. Each Friday, comedians come to the event to show a local audience what they’re made of.
On Friday, stand-up comics Leslie Mitchell, Jake Jaeger and Aleah Catrinar performed at the Illini Union’s Friday Funnies event. The comedians were there on behalf of the C-U Comedy Club, a traveling comedy organization that features different comedians at each show. Jesse Tuttle is the host of each show that the organization puts on.
When the show began, Tuttle greeted the audience with several jokes about the audience members’ sobriety, as he said he was used to performing in bars. He jokingly encouraged the audience to sneak off to the bathroom to do drugs.
The Courtyard Café, where the event was held, was packed with a combination of students and non-students. After Tuttle left the stage, each comedian performed individually.
Tuttle never imagined he’d be a comedian. Originally a professional wrestler, he said he always enjoyed watching stand-up comedy. Eventually, at the age of 26, he decided to try performing at an open mic night, and has been doing comedy ever since.
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“I think one person told me I was funny, and that’s all the energy I needed to go for it,” Tuttle said.
In 2012, Tuttle formed the C-U Comedy Club. In the beginning, all the organization put on were open mic nights and showcases every three or four months, according to Tuttle. Fifteen years later, C-U Comedy Club has shows in cities like Chicago and St. Louis.
Even now, Tuttle said he does not feel that his comedy journey is complete. His goals for the comedy club include gaining more regular audience members and having 100 sold-out shows in a row. He said that he is never satisfied with his accomplishments, and he keeps pursuing comedy because he thinks of these wins as pieces he can add to a puzzle.
“I have no idea what the puzzle is that I’m putting together, but it’s face down,” Tuttle said. “That’s what makes it complicated, but some pieces are in place. I like that.”
All of the comedians used some sort of crowd work, asking the audience questions with the hope of crafting a joke out of their responses. Jaeger asked if anyone in the crowd was in a relationship, and after some responses, he said that he has only ever dated single mothers.
Winner of the 2023 Funniest Person in Iowa competition, Mitchell started out doing group improv before venturing into stand-up. She said she had messages she wanted to share through her comedy but found that difficult to do in a group, so she began performing on her own, in addition to improv.
Mitchell’s comedy mainly focuses on being a middle-aged female living in the Midwest. Friday’s show included content about her sex life, sex advice and her observations regarding the young men of today from the perspective of a married woman. In an interview, she attributed her success as a comic to her age, comparing life to a banana.
“Sometimes it’s too green to eat, and you don’t want to,” Mitchell said. “And then, of course, it ends up being banana bread. But I think I’m in, right now, this sweet spot where it’s just ripe enough, with experiences in life.”
During her set, Mitchell told the crowd that she promised her husband she would “open her back door to him” when he returned from war. She then told them that when he came back, she revoked this offer because “that’s where poop comes from.” The joke was met with laughter and applause from the audience.
Contrastingly, Catrinar is just getting started. The young comedian graduated early from the University at the end of the Fall 2025 semester with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. During her performance on Friday, she joked about dating in your 20s — a common theme in her work. She said she hopes to make her fans who are in their 20s feel less alone as they navigate those messy years.
Catrinar started doing stand-up about two years ago. When she performed at CU Broad Comedy, she said she fell in love with the art form. She had spent years thinking about pursuing comedy, and once she gave it a try, she became addicted.
“Being on stage simultaneously feels like the best high in the world and like I just got done meditating,” Catrinar said. “I am completely present in the moment and only have to worry about my one goal of being entertaining.”
These comedians come from all different walks of life, each with their own perspectives and levels of experience. But they all understand what it means to have a passion — and they’re not giving up on it any time soon.
