The morning of the second annual Funniest Person in St. Paul contest finals on Sept. 2, Jethro Trogo was in the emergency room.
He was having chest pains he was concerned were signs of a heart attack, which — fortunately! — was not the case. Also fortunate, though perhaps less existentially so, was that he was discharged in time to make it to Gambit Brewing in Lowertown for the competition, which he won, earning him the “funniest person” title and $1,000.
“Only in America can you win $1,000 and still end up in the red at the end of the day because the hospital fees are so expensive,” joked Trogo, an Eagan-based Filipino comedian and software engineer, in an interview a few days later. “People are like, ‘You should treat us to a round of drinks!’ No, I’m still in debt, man.”
The contest finale was the culmination of 10 Tuesday-night preliminary rounds throughout the summer. Each week, a lineup of comedians had five minutes apiece at the mic, and audience members awarded points to each set via a QR code ballot. The night’s winner earned one of 10 spots in the final round, where competitors had seven minutes to once again win the vote of a sold-out audience.
Comedians Jethro Trogo, left, and Jesse the Shrink pose with a $1,000 check after Trogo won the Funniest Person in St. Paul competition on Sept. 2, 2025, at Gambit Brewing. Jesse the Shrink organizes the annual competition, which this year drew about 100 comics to compete across its 10-week run. (Courtesy of Johnny Pickles)
More than 100 comics entered the contest across the whole summer, said comedian Jesse the Shrink (a stage name alluding to his real-life day job as a therapist), who produces the summer contest and hosts the year-round weekly open mic at Gambit.
Other finalists for this year’s competition included Tim Flanagan, Alexis Dunn, Liam Heywood, Tapan Sharma, Jakey Emmert, Shyloh Blake, Matthew Milligan, Alexa Kocinski and Dakota Forness. Last year’s winner, Sam Bondhus, returned during a preliminary round seeking to defend his title but ultimately did not advance to the finals this year.
‘My initial thought … does not translate’
When Trogo was growing up in the Philippines, he said, the format of American-style standup comedy did not exist there. Instead, he said, much of the live comedy entertainment consisted of vaudeville-style variety shows with singing, drag, dancing, skits and insult crowd-work.
It wasn’t until the early 2010s that a small open mic scene developed in Manila, he said — and small might be an understatement. At first, he was among maybe 12 comics in the whole country. Open mics happened once a month, if that.
Trogo moved to Minnesota in 2019 when his job transferred him here, and he started performing in local open mics in earnest in about 2022. Technically yes, by that time, he had some years of stand-up experience under his belt — but it was not the case that he had years’ worth of material to deliver, he said.
Filipino was, and remains, Trogo’s primary language. Back in Manila, about 90 percent of his jokes were completely in Filipino, he said, and most of his remaining English material consisted of set-ups for jokes whose punchlines were delivered in Filipino, with local references that would not land for American audiences.
“I still usually think about my jokes in Filipino and have to digest that and convert it in a way that Americans will, one, understand and, two, find funny,” he said. “A lot of times, my initial thought in Filipino does not translate to something I can say onstage and work.”
‘A grain of truth’
The content of Trogo’s jokes is also different in the U.S. versus the Philippines because, well, his whole life is different. In the Philippines, he said, many of his jokes revolved around “boilerplate experiences,” he said: his marriage, his job.
But here, he’s carved out a more unique niche — and by his estimation, a funnier one, too — by poking fun at the immigrant experience, at his Filipino culture shock, at witnessing America’s quirks as an outsider.
“Every joke that I make as an immigrant, especially in this kind of climate, comes from a grain of truth that I’m living,” he said. “One of the things I talked about during the prelims was being in line in immigration, seeing the anxiety of other immigrants in line, and then looking at the other line for citizens and seeing them as the chillest people ever. It looked like the line for Dippin’ Dots at the Minnesota Zoo.”
He doesn’t say everything. He avoids wading too deeply into politics or social conflicts. Deportation, he said, is a “genuine fear.”
“In the Philippines, I’m just another Filipino,” he said. “I have nothing much to talk about that other comedians cannot. In the U.S., I’m an immigrant, and that’s the story I want to tell onstage. … But at any point in time, if they feel like taking my green card away, I’m back in the Philippines. And all my jokes are useless. Among other issues.”
Earlier this year, an old friend of Trogo’s from the Manila open mic scene, the Filipino standup comedian Gold Dagal, was murdered in Angeles City in the Philippines right before a show, likely due to jokes he’d made about a certain religious sect.
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“I’m not saying that’s where we are at (in the U.S.), but I think it’s an emerging reality for comedians that people are getting more and more emotional about what they hear, and you have to manage it better,” Trogo said. “Or make sure you’re funny enough to get away with things.”
You can see Trogo perform next at the Comedy Free-For-All at the House of Comedy at the Mall of America on Sept. 17, at Jesse the Shrink’s Midlife Crisis Show at the Parkway Theater in Minneapolis on Oct. 15 and during the 10,000 Laughs Comedy Festival later in October.
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