A single laugh.
The solitary sound rang out from the darkness hiding the audience after Emil Wakim’s five-minute set during an open-mic night in 2017. Not long after, he pulled the co-owner of The Comedy Attic, Jared Thompson, into the green room and asked what he was doing wrong.
Having seen numerous people cross his stage and emulate the comedians that inspired them to the point of parody, Thompson told Wakim the persona he assumed on stage was just that, a parody — and not him. He encouraged Wakim to find his own comedic voice and style by just being himself.
“The only thing left for you is to be nice,” Thompson said. “Everything else will fall into place.”
Six months later in 2018, Wakim became one of the youngest people to win the Limestone Comedy Festival.
Six years later, on a Thursday evening in 2024, Thompson left the dinner table to take a phone call from Wakim. It was a call with the answer to the question that had been on his mind all day and when he picked up, Wakim said three simple words.
“I got it.”
Thompson reacted so loudly his wife and children ran into the room, concerned for his wellbeing. But it was neither a sound of fright nor shock but of pride in someone he’d seen grow over the past few years; going from an awkward student to a dedicated employee, from a hardworking comedian to the new cast member on Season 50 of “Saturday Night Live.”
Since its establishment in Bloomington in 2008, The Comedy Attic has served as a birthplace for up-and-coming comedians, spanning from locals to students at Indiana University. Located above The Bishop Bar, the space is smaller than a club in New York or Chicago, but Thompson emphasized the benefit of the smaller size, creating an intimate environment where every evening exists solely between the performer and the audience.
“This feels like a space where comedy lives,” he said.
Big names like Marc Maron, Maria Bamford and Amy Schumer have performed at the club alongside established local comedians; however, Thompson said a still popular event at the club is the open mic night every Wednesday evening. While some attendees perform once and never again, Thompson said he always keeps an eye on the stage, noting who returned every week, committed to strengthening their material.
“I’ve got a pretty good knack for seeing someone and being able to predict if they’re going to become bigger than they are,” he said.
This instinct kicked in after Thompson first met Wakim in June 2016 as an attendee of the Limestone Comedy Festival. Having expressed interest in comedy at the time, Wakim reconnected with Thompson once he started fall classes at IU. Initially unsure if he wanted to pursue stand-up, Wakim settled for a job working the front door at The Comedy Attic, giving him a front row seat to the local comedy scene that would support and encourage him beyond Bloomington.
After bombing horribly his first time doing stand-up, Thompson hit Wakim with a reality check. These conversations were not new for first-time comedians, and Thompson had seen many first-timers give up after a bad first venture, something he didn’t hold against them.
“You’re a young person, maybe there’s 10 different things you want to try,” Thompson said. “Why would you keep doing this if it didn’t work? It makes sense.”
Instead of resigning himself to working the door and watching performances from the back of the room, Wakim pressed forward, intent on returning to the stage. He began to routinely perform at open mic nights, and took advantage of the strongest support system available, the local comics of Bloomington.
“We have a bunch of really great local comics who vary in age, gender and they would all talk to him,” Thompson said. “He got advice from all of them.”
Local comedian Mat Alano Martin — who also started at The Comedy Attic during an open mic night in 2009 — first met Wakim when he helped design the website for the Limestone Comedy Festival, of which Martin was a co-founder. Not long after their initial meeting, Martin said Wakim’s passion for comedy and drive for success was apparent.
“It was pretty clear that there was something there,” Martin said. “It didn’t take him long to get into his groove.”
Martin started working with Wakim to help tune his comedic voice, which he said was sometimes difficult for young people in college. College is a period of personal change for young people as they make new friends and adjust to a new environment all while forming a new independent identity, shedding their past familial or social influences.
“They’re trying to figure out how to do jokes and how to perform,” Martin said. “At the same time, they’re trying to figure out who they are and what their viewpoint of the world is, Emil kind of had that second half already out of the way, he just had to focus on the comedy part.”
The two would meet weekly at Hopscotch Coffee to bounce ideas off each other. Wakim would test out and streamline jokes while Martin would ensure his own material made sense to a younger individual. He even took Wakim on the road with him, opening the young performer's perspective of what comedy could be and introducing him to comedians and various venues in Dayton, Ohio and Louisville, Kentucky.
Long discussions during these car rides about inane moments in life and comedy strengthened their relationship, and not long into knowing him, Martin told Wakim that he would become the most famous person he knew. Once he heard from Thompson that Wakim had booked “Saturday Night Live,” he said it had only been a matter of time. Martin then texted Wakim a long-running joke in the comedy world.
“Congratulations on accomplishing what Marc Maron never could.”
When Wakim wasn’t on the road with Martin, he would go to Monday open mic nights at the now-closed Bear’s Place with other local comics like Shanda Sung. Bear’s Place would occasionally feature comedians but wasn’t solely comedy, so Sung and others would workshop their material there before taking it to The Comedy Attic. When Sung began hosting open mic nights at The Comedy Attic, she started talking to Wakim about crafting jokes and reading the audience to determine what would land with them and what wouldn’t.
“It was just about the process of trying to find a joke that works and molding it into something that’s really solid for the stage,” Sung said. “It’s the conversation all comics have with each other.”
As she and the other comics worked with Wakim, talking comedy and co-hosting open mic nights, they would support each other with no one comedian claiming to hold the keys to comedic success. This created a collaborative and supportive learning environment that Sung stressed was unique to Bloomington. When one of them succeeded, they all succeeded, and the recent love and excitement over Wakim’s success was no different.
“He’s one of us,” Sung said. “He’s been gone for several years but he’s still part of this scene.”
When Wakim graduated in 2020 from the Kelley School of Business, he left the Bloomington area but stayed in contact with Thompson, updating him as his comedic profile rose, making his television debut on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in 2022, getting selected a “New Face of Comedy” at the Just for Laughs Comedy Festival in 2023 and in August of 2024, being scouted for “Saturday Night Live.” Thompson said he was proud of the continued commitment Wakim had to growing as a comic, never letting a bad night ruin his dreams.
“He never veered off betting on himself and it worked,” he said.
In the days leading up to Wakim’s meeting with “Saturday Night Live” creator Lorne Michaels after his audition, Thompson described the near radio silence from his friend as “agonizing.” As the minutes ticked down to Wakim’s meeting, Thompson could barely focus on anything else, texting Wakim for updates during the sixth inning of a Houston Astros versus Cincinnati Reds baseball game. That evening Sept. 5, when he finally got the phone call — one of several Wakim made that night — one thought went through Thompson’s head.
“It couldn’t have happened to a better person.”
