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"Suck It, Suicide" event brings comedy to coping

Suck It, Suicide event poster.
Ray and Laura's Comedy Showcase Facebook Event
Suck It, Suicide event poster.

A comedy showcase in Hamtramck Saturday night will have a somewhat jarring theme: suicide.

The event is called “Suck It, Suicide,” and is a benefit show performed by Ray and Laura's Comedy Showcase

Suck It, Suicide event poster.
Credit Ray and Laura's Comedy Showcase Facebook Event
Suck It, Suicide event poster.

Proceeds from the event go to Six Feet Over, a non-profit helping people who have lost loved ones to suicide.

Katie Hardy is the founder of that group. She says the comedy showcase is about offering people a different kind of coping mechanism.

“I personally deal with things with humor,” Hardy says. “I make horrible jokes that make me feel better. And that works for a lot of people. Not everybody is a 'sit down and be serious and this is how I cope' kind of person."

She says Six Feet Over's goal is to help families who have lost someone to suicide by picking up funeral costs and helping with clean up and memorial services.

“We also make sure that those families know what resources are available to them and understand that there’s a community out there for them,” Hardy says.

Providing families that community to fall back on in hard times is important to Hardy. She’s been there herself. She lost her mom and seven friends to suicide.

When Hardy lost her mom, she was 20 years old, and didn't have a community that understood what she was experiencing.

"So it’s really important for me to be able to pass that on to other families," she says.

"Suck it, Suicide" will feature comedians RayHollifieldand LauraWitkowski. The duo performs a comedy show monthly at Small’s inHamtramck. Each year, they dedicate one of those shows to Six Feet Over.

Hollifield's life, too, has been affected by suicide. He lost his little brother in 2010. He says his coping mechanism is also to turn to humor. 

“I don’t necessarily make the subject of suicide funny, but we can make a lot of other things funny and maybe somebody will say something that’ll help someone through that that night,” Hollifield says.

The showcase will be at Small’s bar in Hamtramck  on Saturday, April 9 at 8 p.m.Our conversation with Katie Hardy and Ray Hollifield

Copyright 2021 Michigan Radio. To see more, visit Michigan Radio.

Lindsey Scullen started at Michigan Radio last year as an intern for Stateside. Now she’s with the Environment Report as a newsroom and web intern. At the same time, she’s finishing up her final semester at the University of Michigan where she majors in Comparative Literature and Spanish, and minors in Environment and Complex Systems. She moonlights as a fairly poor, yet resolute, salsa dancer.