Nationally touring comedian finds a sweet spot in Sarasota

Carmen Ciricillo may have never had the chance to perform stand-up comedy with Johnny Carson or David Letterman, as was his aspiration for many years.

Nonetheless, he's toured nationally at clubs, events and businesses, and also discovered a community he was glad to call home: Sarasota. 

When he first visited the area in 1988, he remembers standing on the deck of what was then Hemingway’s Retreat (now Daiquiri Deck St. Armands.)

“I was blown away…” he said. “It was very Hawaiian. It was beautiful, the beaches, the weather, and I was living in hell. LA was hell.”

At the time, he said, he was only thinking about how the crowded nature of Los Angeles didn't suit him.

"I feel like I didn't pursue (Sarasota), I didn't go after it, I didn't know it existed," he said. "I fell upon it. And if you are interested in a place that still feels like a place where you can raise a family, where you can live a great life, Sarasota is one of these places that still exists for a lot of people."

Finding the sunshine

In 1987, after Ciricillo had returned to his childhood home of Cleveland following his time in college, he found his life directionless.

“I filled out the LSAT. Then I tore it up, I taped it back together, I submitted it, I took the test, and I never checked the score, because I didn't want to be a lawyer,” he said. 

Instead, he started performing stand-up, a skill he'd honed while in college. 

“I started doing stand-up because I was kind of the guy that didn't know where to go,” he said. “My dad wasn't really there. He wasn't around a lot, and he actually got shot when I was 14 years old. He was already divorced from my mother. … I was kind of looking for, 'Where do I fit in the world?"

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After his family moved to Quad City, Iowa, he attended University of Iowa, where he was first on a trajectory for medicine, then for law, ultimately obtaining a bachelor's in business administration. 

However, when he signed up as director of the student union of entertainment while in search of an item for his resume, he began to find his calling.

Ciricillo describes being fascinated, at a young age, by personalities he saw on TV, such as Steve Martin. He says he was someone who was always “playing around in class” and “didn’t like serious things.”

His early comedy drew from his childhood in Cleveland, where he had been responsible for opening and closing his father’s pizza shop with his cousin Frankie Regalbuto, a wrestler whom he looked up to more as a father figure. 

He would discuss other topics — like Batman, who fascinated him as a child — and even some he wasn’t interested in. 

“I actually wrote jokes about politics that I didn't even understand, because I was not really interested in politics...” he said. “I kept hearing at that time, when I started, that Reagan was selling arms to (Iran), and my joke was, why not legs?”

He said he enjoyed the ability to instantly understand what an audience thought about him, based on how they responded. 

“Comedy became this outlet for me. I just want to laugh,” he said. “I just want to have a good time. I don't want to feel sad no more. I don't want to see rooms of people crying anymore, because that's what we had in Cleveland. It was a lot of sadness.”

He says once he met his wife Kelly Ciricillo, after college, he never again questioned the direction of his life. 

He and Kelly both wanted a family, and their relationship eventually led them to Sarasota, but not before it took them to a place often sought after by aspiring comedians: Los Angeles. 

“Everyone’s pushed together in one area, which just causes people to go insane,” he said.

When a man stepped out to slash their car tires, after Ciricillo accidentally bumped his vehicle with his car door in a parking lot, it was the last straw for the couple, then in their 20s.

“I mean, it just stunned me,” he said. “Why? Why would he do that? And looking at her and looking at the car, just realizing this is too much for us.”

Afterwards, he visited Sarasota, where his mother and much of his family lived, becoming one of the first to perform at McCurdy's Comedy Theatre after its opening in 1988. 

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"There's something about being in Sarasota, even in the middle of summer, the peak of the heat, looking up at that pure blue sky and hearing those cicadas … and seeing the moss in the trees, that makes me feel I'm at home," he said. "This is the place where I love to be."

That visit was followed by the 1992 Los Angeles riots, in which Kelly Ciricillo had to evacuate from her workplace and enter a lockdown, at a time Carmen Ciricillo was traveling.

As a result, they came to call Sarasota home that same year. 

By 1997 they had two children, Shannon and Stephanie, and were planning on a third child, who would be their son Domenic. 

Touring no longer held an appeal for Ciricillo.

“I didn't want to do that at all,” he said. “I would rather stay home. Build a Bug’s Life tent. Watch Barney. Go to Toys-R-Us. Go to Einstein Bagel, go to Southgate Mall. That's what we did. Go to the beach.”

According to Ciricillo, traveling wasn’t the glamorous part of being a comedian.

“There's a big spotlight on you for 60 minutes, and then you feel like darkness for the next 23 hours,” he said. “Especially if you're by yourself in Evansville, Indiana, or Youngstown, Ohio, places where it's a little town, you don't have any family or friend or community or structure, you don't have your gym, you don't have your Publix."

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Staying home meant he would have to establish a niche, which he found in a blue-collar comedy genre suitable for someone like himself, who came from a family of contractors: construction, an industry his son Domenic Ciricillo has also entered.

Carmen Ciricillo has performed for numerous local construction businesses and organizations, including the Gulf Coast Builders Exchange, and for 25 years, has operated Construction Comedy School, where he provides continuing education to licensed contractors, with a humorous spin.

He says he is the only comedian in Florida licensed to teach this curriculum. 

Meanwhile, he and Kelly became very involved in Sarasota's school system as his children were growing up, frequently volunteering.

Shannon attended Cardinal Mooney High School and then University of Central Florida, while Stephanie and Domenic attended Riverview High School and later University of Florida.

“My wife was someone who really understood community and how to raise a family,” he said. “I just listened to her guide. She absolutely knew the right way to raise those kids.”

Now, with those days behind him, he’s back on the road again, but with Kelly by his side. 

He likes to still spend time in Sarasota, a place he says still retains its small-town feel despite the changes and development it has seen, and which he believes is undervalued. 

He's been telling a certain joke recently.

“People up (north) always say it's hard to live up there,” he said. “You've got to be tough. If you shovel snow, you could have a heart attack. I'm like, ‘I don't think you understand, and we have the same problems in Florida. Try dragging a cooler with two cases of beer to the beach. You can have a heart attack, too. Especially with a cooler with those little wheels, you've got to have some strength.”