Lisa Corrao’s first experience telling jokes in public was not at an open-mic night or a comedy club. It was at her grandmother’s funeral, where, even in a time of mourning, she killed. “I was absolutely devastated, and my coping mechanism was finding the funny,” she recalls. “And the next thing you know, my aunt said, ‘I want you to speak at my funeral.’ I guess that’s the early version of me booking gigs.”
Corrao was around 25 at the time, and some five years later, she performed her first proper set—part of her graduation from a comedy class at the Fort Lauderdale Improv—while maintaining her day job as a middle school teacher. Compared to her fellow aspiring comics, she was a late bloomer. “All these other comedians are 17, 18, maybe early 20s. I’m 30. I have a daughter. This is not something I’m necessarily going to do as a career. I’ll do it for fun and for the love of it.”
Yet it didn’t take long for Corrao, a Fort Lauderdale resident, to rise through the ranks of the South Florida comedy scene, from underground clubs to opening for headliners at the various tri-county Improvs to touring with big-name comics. Here in Boca, she’s performed at Sadman Comedy, The Studio at Mizner Park, Biergarten, and the Boca Raton Public Library. But it took the passing of another pivotal birthday, her 50th, for Corrao to satisfy a rite of passage for any comedian: her first comedy special.
Lisa Corrao: A Cute Crisis, chronicling a 2025 performance opening for Patton Oswalt in Wisconsin, dropped on Amazon and Apple TV this past spring. In it, Corrao—in personal, observational, conversational style—addresses topics such as her diminutive height (she’s 4’10.5”), a health crisis involving a damaged heart valve, and the economic reality of pursuing comedy at 50 (“You’re never too old to move back in with your parents”). For a comic who had previously shunned the social-media spotlight, the special has boosted Corrao’s national profile, inspiring her to finally post clips online.
Are there skill sets that transfer from teaching to comedy?
All of the skill sets transition over, truly. Because you have a room full of human beings that don’t care. And how do you get them to care? … I was definitely the fun teacher. I was really good with the sort of troubled kid, and because I was good with them, my classroom was almost all troubled kids. … I literally had gang members, so there was a lot of conflict and friction with that. But these are hecklers, right? This is just like a bar. People don’t want to be in the same room together, and all of a sudden they’re drinking in it, and you have to still be like, Hey, we’re paying attention up here. … To be succinct, to get people to listen, it’s all the same skills.
Who are some of the familiar names in comedy that you’ve opened for?
Of course Patton Oswalt, who I’m such a huge fan of. I got to work with Gilbert Gottfried, and I’m so lucky that I got to experience him in hell gig situations and private shows and birthdays for rich people, where he just tore them apart. I learned about being fearless from Gilbert, because even if he was bombing—especially if he was bombing—he never backed down. And I’m like, I always want to be that brave.
How do you feel your material has evolved or sharpened over the past 10 or 15 years?
I don’t think of my material as sharp necessarily. Actually, I think of my style as pretty messy, and I think it’s just how my brain works. Words kind of shoot out of my mouth, and I’m like, well, there they are, so we’re going with it. That doesn’t mean that I don’t work on my jokes, because you definitely figure out how to get the audience to laugh, and you polish it up as best as you can. But I do notice I’ll have alternate punch lines for jokes, and it’s just how I’m feeling for that day.
Were you reticent about being so personal in your material, such as mentioning your ADHD and heart issues?
I used to be more of a private person, and the more vulnerable I become—and it is scary to be vulnerable—the more it feels right. And especially when I hear people go, “that thing that you said about ADHD, me too.” And that makes me really feel great about sharing that thing about myself. … I never expected that. I’m just hoping people would find it funny.
Does the fact that this material is recorded for a special mean that it’s retired?
I totally want to retire it now. Some of the jokes were ancient for me. And then a couple, I’d never said even one time before. … I’ve been doing comedy a long time. I have a lot of jokes. So it’s just organizing them in my messy brain.
This story is from the July/August 2026 issue of Boca magazine. For more like this, click here to subscribe to the magazine.
