Since the opening of Vermont Comedy Club in Burlington in 2015, the Green Mountain State's comedy scene has come into its own. To get a taste of Vermont's verbal wit, we profiled four comics who just might be the next to make it big — catch them on local stages around the state, and read on for insights into their inspirations and unique standup styles.

Mike Thomas

"You guys ever been someone's rock bottom? Like, you're the reason why they're like, 'I need to get my life together!'"

Burlington comedian Mike Thomas told that joke at a Valentine's Day open mic at Vermont Comedy Club. A last-minute addition to the lineup, he garnered many of the biggest laughs of the night. "You put him onstage and wind him up, and you don't have to worry about him for the next 20 minutes," club co-owner Nathan Hartswick said.

Thomas' style of humor is hard to pigeonhole. A natural storyteller who crackles with energy onstage, he can riff on a range of subjects, from Burlington's dating scene to race relations. As one of very few comedians of color in Vermont, he does a bit about hearing an explicit song by rapper DMX played on local radio.

"It's the radio, so you can't say the N-word. So they bleep it out and chose to use the sound of a dog growling, which sounds like this: 'Grrrr!'" Thomas joked during a 2020 show at Zenbarn in Waterbury Center. "Why would you leave the worst part of the word on there? Objectively, that hard R is the part I have a problem with the most!"

Like many comedians, the 32-year-old Manassas, Va., native was the class clown growing up. Fittingly, it was one of his teachers who put him on the path to standup. Thomas was a student at Essex High School when he took a class on improv and the foundations of comedy. Long before he was old enough to enter Burlington clubs as a customer, he was performing at their open mic nights.

Thomas remembers one such gig, at Higher Ground in South Burlington. He was 14, so his mother drove him to the show. Thomas still cringes at the memory of waiting beside her for his turn onstage while a much older comedian regaled the audience with jokes about recent sexual exploits.

"Definitely not a family-friendly environment," he recalled dryly.

Today, Thomas is among the scene's most seasoned veterans. Last year, he won Vermont's Funniest Comedian contest at Vermont Comedy Club. It was about time: For years, it was a running joke among local comics that Thomas would consistently place fourth but never make the podium.

Thomas still holds a daytime accounting job, which he admitted isn't the most fertile environment for generating comedic material. (It's not easy writing good jokes about fixed costs and capital depreciation.) Still, he hopes to one day pay the bills with his standup.

"Honestly," he said, "I just like that feeling of making an entire room of people laugh."

Meredith Gordon

"The first time I ever saw him, he was putting fake dog poop in the hallway of our school ... The first thing I ever heard the future father of my children say was, 'We need to put more water on it so it looks real.' So, detail oriented."

Not long after Meredith Gordon had her second child, nine years ago, her husband, Andy, suggested that she get out of the house more.

"I think he was seeing me entering Norman Bates territory and possibly suffocating the children later on," Gordon said. But rather than taking up yoga or taxidermy, the now 41-year-old Shelburne mom tried standup instead.

"Comedy was kind of revered in my house, so I grew up watching Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and all the Marx Brothers movies," she said. Gordon also points to some of the early cast members of NBC's "Saturday Night Live" — notably, Gilda Radner and Dana Carvey — as among her biggest comedic influences.

Standup wasn't Gordon's first foray into making people laugh. Beginning in May 2011, she and Andy were part of Potato Sack Pants Theater, a Burlington sketch comedy troupe. The sextet did local shows for a few years until its members all started having kids, which seriously cut into their rehearsal time. But unlike sketch comedy, standup was something Gordon could write and rehearse alone. For a time, she had a one-woman show in which she played an aging nightclub performer.

Gordon's been crushing it ever since with routines that combine physical comedy with self-deprecating humor — including a bit about how terrible she is in bed. By 2022, Gordon was wowing Vermont audiences enough to earn a Seven Daysies award for Vermont's best standup comic.

Last year, Gordon cold-called Joe Adler, marketing and events manager at Shelburne Vineyard, and pitched the idea of hosting a regular comedy show for people who don't want to drive into Burlington. Adler agreed to let Gordon curate the slate of comedians.

The Wit & Wine comedy night has become a consistent success that frequently sells out. This winter, Adler moved it from Tuesday to Friday nights to draw bigger crowds.

"I love her personality, and I love what she brought to the table," he said of Gordon.

Despite her recent accolades, Gordon harbors no grand visions of landing her own Netflix special. Instead, she seems content to be part of the scene and support other rising stars.

"It's the most welcoming community you could ever have. They're like my second family," Gordon said. "It's kind of like a hobby on steroids."

Max Higgins

"I had three sisters growing up. Yes, four girls, which, I agree, is too many. Some might even say one too many. I was like, I'm just going to bring that number down, if you don't mind."

Max Higgins is trans — a subject he addresses early in his standup acts, in part to defuse any confusion or discomfort audience members may have regarding his gender, he said. The bit gives the crowd permission to laugh.

"Parts of it feel really unexpected, and that's what's fun for me," he said. "Even people who don't know what's happening with my gender really respond to the material. And I think it's because the material is really personal."

On March 7, the 26-year-old Boston native will host a show at Burlington's Vermont Comedy Club called "The Underdog." In it, Higgins will unveil new material — "everything from gender deep dive to Y2K public library meltdowns," according to a promotional poster — as a fundraiser to help pay for his top surgery.

With just two years of experience in standup, Higgins has a natural ease onstage. After doing theater in high school, he moved to Burlington to attend the University of Vermont. There, he formed the Burlington indie band H3adgear, which he still fronts. His foray into comedy coincided with him coming out as trans and, as he put it, "using humor to understand how I got here."

Also, he added, "I secretly thought I was funnier than other people."

His audiences seem to agree. Higgins won a 2023 Seven Daysies award as Vermont's best standup comic and, for the past two years, has been a runner-up in the Vermont's Funniest Comedian contest at Vermont Comedy Club.

When Higgins wanted even more opportunities to get onstage, he created them himself. In November 2022, he started producing and hosting a bimonthly comedy showcase called Comedy Wolf at Burlington's Radio Bean.

Lee Anderson, who owns the nightclub, said he was initially skeptical that a twice-monthly comedy gig could succeed, given how saturated Burlington's comedy market was. But Higgins' show quickly won him over.

"It crushes every time. It's kind of amazing," Anderson said. "Other comedians really respect and appreciate Max."

Many local comics never venture beyond the Green Mountain State, but Higgins is already making regular appearances on comedy stages in Boston and New York City. While he still holds down a day job designing beer can labels for Zero Gravity Craft Brewery in Burlington, his comedy colleagues fully expect him to move on to bigger markets.

"I just want to keep doing standup," Higgins said, "wherever it takes me."

Jared Hall

"Does anyone know what it's called when you take an abusive alcoholic out to lunch? Father's Day. No, I'm just joking. He's not much of a morning person."

Jared Hall is the first to admit that his acerbic wit and in-your-face onstage persona aren't everyone's cup of tea. Some nights, he faces an uphill battle winning over the room.

"Even if eight out of 10 people aren't into what I'm doing," Hall said, "the other two tend to have a really good time."

But Hall, who's super-nice in real life, is just being modest. The 29-year-old Rutland native, who graduated from the University of Vermont in 2015, the same year Burlington's Vermont Comedy Club opened, is a versatile stage presence who can act, perform standup and do improv — and he excels at them all.

Hall and his girlfriend, Kaitie Bessette, have a two-person show called "Dating," which won Vermont Comedy Club's March Madness Two-Person Improv Tournament in 2022. Hall now works at the club by day and often performs there at night.

Recently, Hall and Bessette were hired to appear in a show at the Off Center for the Dramatic Arts in Burlington. They pretended to be a couple who'd won a fake contest that allowed them to watch the performance from onstage, where they then bickered the entire night.

A three-time Seven Daysies award nominee for Vermont's best standup comic, Hall won Vermont Comedy Club's annual Vermont's Funniest Comedian contest in 2022, after being a finalist multiple times. "That ruined the joke of 'Always the bridesmaid,'" he said.

Colleagues describe Hall as smart, creative and fearless, with a knack for puns and long setups.

"My brother fell into a giant vaporizer," he riffed during a recent show. "If you're not familiar with it, it's basically this big machine that crushes and converts organic matter into water vapor. It's very technical, very eco-friendly. Long story short, he will be mist."

Veteran comedian Tracy Dolan called Hall "the best wordsmith [and] a deeply funny guy."

"His jokes are crafted beautifully and so efficiently," Dolan said. "I am happy and curious every time I see him step up on the stage."