Katie Scott is a CEA CAPA Alumni Insider and a student at Point Loma Nazarene University pursuing a degree in Political Science and Government. An alumnus of CEA CAPA, she studied abroad in London, England during Summer 2024.  

“American Girls, start clapping,” Sergi (that night’s emcee) instructs me and my friends. We oblige, creating a feverish uproar in the front row that carries to the rest of the room. Occupying the entire front row and some of the second, the group of American Girls sticks out like a sore thumb. We’d grown a bit of notoriety at the Angel Comedy Club by this point, as it was our third visit in as many weeks.  

Frankly, we were hard to miss – we laughed the loudest, silenced ourselves the quickest during awkward moments, and always jumped at opportunities to engage in crowd work. One by one, Sergi asks us about where we’re from, what we’re studying in our program, how we’re liking London so far, and what the hottest gossip is that we have for him. 

Our group from the Wrongful Convictions program that attended one of the comedy shows at Angel Comedy. 

After a proper investigation has been done and the room is fairly acquainted with the American Girls, Sergi moves on to the others. 

“And you, sitting next to the girl who’s hiding from me, where are you from?” Sergi asks. “Scotland,” she confidently responds. The crowd bursts with laughter, and the American Girls look around at each other to see if anyone is privy to the joke that we seem to have been left out of. Ever-dutifully, we join in on the laughter and trust that Sergi will explain. Right on cue, Sergi begins on an anecdote about Scottish people, explaining the much-needed context.  

By the time Sergi turns his attention to the girl’s sheepish friend to ask if she’s also from Scotland, the American Girls are in on the bit. When she musters up the courage to say, “No, I’m actually Welsh,” the room erupts, and the American Girls laugh right along – we understand it now; just as we are used to attaching stereotypes to different American states, the UK has developed an unwritten code about locals from each country. Just like that, the American Girls are locals. 

The “American Girls” who ended up going to the comedy club five times together by the end of the program. 

I remember the moment I told one of my uncles that I would be studying abroad in London that upcoming summer. “Just so you know, Brits have the driest humor you’ll ever hear,” he warns me. Truth be told, I was skeptical when he told me this. Did they have dry humor, or was it really just thinly-veiled austerity?  

Wanting to test his claim, I pleaded with my study abroad classmates to come with me to a comedy night that we had discovered while trying to find a place to eat. To my surprise, four of them obliged, and we were able to make it just in time for that night’s show. We sat at the very back of the cramped room, atop shaky tables that were questionable at best. I looked at them skeptically, but our concerns were assuaged almost instantaneously when Norwegian Thor Oden (not kidding, that’s his name) took the stage as that night’s MC. By the end of the show, after eight brilliant acts, my stomach was in stitches from laughing so much. 

A picture from our front-row seats at the comedy club. 

At the beginning of class the next day, our professor asked if anyone had done anything fun the night before. Our small group shot our hands up, eager to tell everyone about what our collective favorite part of the country had been so far. It didn’t take much convincing before we had assembled nearly half the class and made plans to go next week. Every time we went, we would come back to class with a new anecdote and a fresh passion to recruit more people to our group. 

By the third week of classes, it became routine for our professor to ask if we had visited the comedy club recently and if there was anything funny to share. To no one’s surprise, we always had a story about one of the comedians, one of the overzealous audience members, or one of our own who had been made the subject of a hilarious bit. 

Now, as I reach the end of my program and subsequently my time in London, I’ve grown preemptively nostalgic. “What did I enjoy the most about my trip?” I ask myself. There are lots of contenders that could take the crown for program highlight, but from my review, the answer is clear: Angel Comedy Club. Everyone says that the key to enjoying your study abroad is engaging with the local culture, and I’d have to say I agree.  

A very punny sign inside Angel Comedy Club. 

There’s been nothing that has made me feel more at-home or welcomed than my nights at the comedy club. It was there that I made and strengthened friendships with the people from my program, learned the ins and outs of British culture, shared in laughter (and a fair amount of awkwardness), and fell in love with London and Londoners. Maybe Brits do have dry humor, but Spanish Sergi’s humor was raunchy, Katie from LA told the funniest and most relatable anecdotes, Norwegian Thor performed perfectly-timed callbacks, Raj from an Indian family commanded the audience in an unexplainable way, and the man whose name I could not decipher from his strong Welsh accent displayed unrivaled physical comedy—each one of them is a Londoner in their own right, and each one is hilarious in their own way. 

A black and white photo of the stage at Angel Comedy Club. 

When I think about my time in London and my many nights at the comedy club, I think about how many different cultures I really got to experience. More than anything, I think that’s what has made this past month such a unique and impactful opportunity. While studying abroad in London, if you look hard enough, you’ll be transported all across the world – through the food you eat, roads you walk, and people you laugh with (and at). So I suppose this would be my outstanding advice for anyone wanting to study abroad who fears that they will struggle to acclimate to their new surroundings: find a comedy club, bring a friend, and experience the culture of comedy.