By Page H. Gifford
Correspondent
New Year, New Hoots!—an improv and stand-up comedy fundraiser—will take place Friday, Jan. 17, from 5:30 to 8 p.m. at the Bunker Bistro. Proceeds from the event will benefit a neuroscience research study at Virginia Tech’s Embodiment Lab focused on humor and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among military veterans.
The comedy variety show will feature performances by Bent Theater Comedy, a Charlottesville-based improvisational theater group, and stand-up comedian Nathan Carlson.
Bent Theater Comedy has been a fixture of Central Virginia’s improv scene since 2004, offering live shows, classes, and team-building workshops. Their performances are fully interactive, built around audience suggestions that are transformed into unscripted scenes and games.
Nathan Carlson hails from rural Virginia. He has performed at many comedy clubs and festivals, as well as on cross-country tours with Jokes and Jester Comedy.
The event will be hosted by Heather Winslow, a stand-up comedian, improv performer, and producer who has been performing since 2011 and producing shows since 2019. Winslow is also an interdisciplinary PhD student at Virginia Tech, where her research explores how humor and storytelling affect the brain.
Winslow, who lives at Lake Monticello with her husband and two sons, runs The Laughing Brain Initiative, a nonprofit that uses science-backed methods to promote connection, resilience, and healing through laughter, play, improv, and storytelling.
Winslow said her academic work is deeply personal.
“I grew up with PTSD and have used laughter to help me through hard times since I was a little kid. During my time at UVA, I began to write humorous stories in my creative writing classes and found powerful healing effects from story sharing. I was a single parent at the time and found strength and resilience through connecting my stories through humor,” said Winslow.
“Women would message me and come up to me after shows and say they found relief in turning my stories into a moment of shared laughter and would tell me how they always felt alone around these topics,” she said. “I knew I wanted to use humor as more than a tool for performing, but to help people as it helped me by sharing and connecting through stories.”
She began to explore the neuroscience of humor and hit on a significant gap in the research.
Her mentor, Jim Dubinsky, a writing and rhetoric professor and Vietnam veteran, suggested she work with female veterans with PTSD in her pilot case study.
“Female veterans have the highest PTSD rates compared to men,” she said. “Women were not even allowed to officially join a military branch until the mid-70s, and the military sexual trauma numbers that followed were and still are significant.”
In the future, she will also conduct a study focused on male veterans. “I do not think one gender is more important than the other. I think community, laughter, and finding empowerment through retelling stories could have a peaceful and healing ripple effect on our planet, which is much needed right now as suicide rates remain high among veterans, as well as the impact it has on families as a whole.”
The nonprofit is still in the planning stages, but she offers workshops and will dive into it full-time after she graduates. She also plans to teach a creative writing course on the neuroscience of humor at Virginia Tech after earning her degree.
“There is truth in comedy, and my favorite joy is creating a relieving space for humanity through shared laughter. One of my favorite quotes from Vine Deloria Jr., a Lakota scholar, is: ‘When people can laugh at themselves and laugh at others and hold all aspects of life together without letting anyone drive them to extremes, then it would seem to me that people can survive.’”
For more information and tickets, visit https://www.eventbrite.com/e/new-year-new-hoots-an-improv-stand-up-comedy-fundraiser-show-tickets-1979610701899?aff=oddtdtcreator.
