If you didn’t make it to the Back Room at Colectivo’s Prospect Avenue cafe back on November 14 to witness the sold out Milwaukee stop on the perpetual tour of Kevin Allison‘s RISK! storytelling podcast, you missed an outstanding, emotional, and occasionally hilarious show. If you regret missing out on an intimate evening of “true tales boldly told” by The State troupe member and a batch of skilled local performers that fateful Saturday night, you’re in luck. On Monday, the “Live In Milwaukee!” episode of RISK! was posted to the popular podcast’s website (and iTunes).
In the episode’s intro, Allison says this is one of the rare times RISK! has featured an entire episode almost uninterrupted because “the energy in that room in Milwaukee just, you know, about a month ago, was just so special. Just great people, great audience.” Of course, the caliber of the storytellers contributing to the evening’s “Fuck This!” theme also didn’t hurt.
Over the course of the 91-minute installment, Milwaukee improviser Alecia Altstaetter chronicled a turbulent ride with her family on a Lake Michigan ferry. Dissociated Press blogger Jess Leonard hushed the room with her first telling of a story about enduring two years of coercive rape during a high school relationship. Yeah, Bro! podcast host and gay bar sherpa Jacob Bach recounted the day he almost watched his father die of a heart attack, before first-time storyteller Jeffrey Barsoum reduced the room to rubble with a tragic story infidelity, abortion, drug abuse, homelessness, and co-dependence he’d experienced with his high school sweetheart. Along the way, Allison also debuted a graphic and gut-gusting story of “gorgeous ass feeding” he wrote for Playguy Magazine when “[his] career was in the toilet.”
Give this wonderful night of NSFW stories a listen.