From the deep end to Skid Row: Orcas Center’s summer of comedy gets personal

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, July 7, 2026

This summer, Orcas Center’s Center Stage will host two touring comedians who have turned their own strangest, most vulnerable chapters into shows — and who both insist that the best comedy only works when it tells the truth.

First up is Forest Shaw, a former marine biologist, on Saturday, July 11, at 7 p.m. Later in the month, Casey Skinner brings his true-crime comedy show, along with a storytelling workshop for aspiring comics, for two nights on July 24 and 25, at 7 p.m.

On the surface, the two shows couldn’t be more different. One is about the ocean. The other is about a killer loose in a notorious Los Angeles hotel. But peel back a layer, and both comedians are doing the same thing: using laughs to sneak in something true.

From manatees to microphones

Before he was a comedian, Forest Shaw spent 13 years as a marine biologist in Miami, where he ran the county’s manatee protection program and monitored seagrass, coral reefs and sea turtle hatcheries. Since 2010, he’s done stand-up full-time, with credits including “Conan,” the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal and the Netflix Is A Joke Festival.

His new show, “The Ocean Hates You,” grew almost by accident out of a monthly show he still runs at the Hollywood Improv, where the backdrop is an 8-foot photo of a manatee. Audiences kept asking why, so Shaw started answering with marine biology trivia between sets — and one day wondered what would happen if he built an entire show around it. He road-tested the hour at the Adelaide Fringe Festival in Australia, performing it nightly until it clicked.

The show mixes stand-up, dark humor and hard facts about pollution, overfishing and climate change — but Shaw is adamant it isn’t a lecture. In an interview with the Islands’ Sounder, he said, “The main purpose of the show is just using humor to make difficult conversations feel human again.” He wants people to leave energized rather than despairing — maybe even inspired to join a beach cleanup — and he’s especially drawn to touring coastal communities like Orcas Island, where he believes the audience already carries a personal connection to the sea.

Underneath the jokes about sharks and manatees is something more personal: a scientist who watched public trust in data erode around him, and decided that refusing to talk about it on stage would be “sticking your head in the sand.”

A killer, a hotel and a confession

Casey Skinner’s story starts with a much darker true story. Skinner — new to Los Angeles — checked into what he thought was an ordinary hotel. It turned out to be the Cecil Hotel, a downtown L.A. building where management reported roughly one death every six weeks over the preceding decade, made infamous by true-crime documentaries. Skinner lived there for eight weeks. Near the end of his stay, he was locked out of his room on the 14th floor the same night a stabbing suspect was loose in the building.

That night became the backbone of “You Can’t Hide,” which Skinner, in an interview with the Islands’ Sounder, described simply as imagining “if Mr. Bean was in ‘The Shining’.” He calls the show roughly 80% true — some identities were changed for legal reasons, and details were rearranged, he says, partly because his own experience of the hotel was stranger than audiences would believe.

But the show isn’t really about the hotel. What Skinner keeps landing on is a story about a friendship with a bouncer near the hotel — someone Skinner initially misjudged, and who turned out to be “something way more beautiful” than he expected. The show, he says, is ultimately “dedicated to everybody who’s too scared to open up about themselves,” a meditation on the gap between the polished lives people show and the messier truth underneath.

Skinner is bringing the show off the underground comedy circuit and into theaters — preliminary talks are already underway for an off-Broadway run in 2028 — a long way from the Post-it note jokes that started his career 12 years ago.

A chance to learn the craft

Beyond the two evening shows, Skinner will also lead a two-hour workshop, “Finding the Funny in Your Life,” on Saturday, July 25, from 2-4 p.m. in the Madrona Room. Open to all, the workshop promises a close look at what actually makes a story or a punchline work — participants will leave with a draft of their own true, funny story.

Whether it’s an ocean with a grudge or a hotel with a body count, both shows arrive at Orcas Center this summer with the same promise underneath the laughs: something honest.

Tickets for both shows are available at www.orcascenter.org and are tiered pricing at $70, $40 or $25, with $10 student/senior/veteran tickets available. Workshop sign-up is at https://orcascenter.ludus.com/200537780.