Closing weekend of the 2021 KeyBank Rochester Fringe Festival will feature two special performances of Growing Up Ringside, a new one-woman show by Mina Liccione. The award-winning comedian and performing artist grew up in Hamlin and now lives in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where she is considered Dubai’s First Lady of Comedy.
In Growing Up Ringside, Mina shares untold stories and imagery of her upbringing as the daughter of Italian-American boxing promoter Tony Liccione. She lived in a world inhabited by wise guys and boxers like Muhammed Ali and George Foreman, but dreamed of becoming a dancer on Broadway. This show recounts Mina’s coming of age, her comedic mishaps and struggles to find her purpose in life, and continues up to the present day, including her move to Dubai to pioneer a comedy school.
The Liccione family moved to Hamlin when Mina was four years old. Dad Tony has a big personality, and Mina jokes that most of their neighbors were convinced he was part of the Witness Protection Program. She attended Nativity B.V.M. School and fondly recalls helping with the church’s annual fair when she was young. “I distinctly remember my Dad singing Frank Sinatra at their karaoke stage every year,” she said.
Mina developed a passion for the performing arts at an early age. “I was a deeply shy kid in public but loved to sing and dance at home, so my parents put me into dance school to help me overcome my shyness. Boy, did it work! I loved going to dance class, almost as much as I loved my Dad’s homemade pizza,” she said. “Thankfully, my parents saw my passion and talent early on and kept enrolling me, driving me to Greece multiple times a week to train at Performance Plus Dance School.”
In ninth grade, Mina gave up soccer and basketball to focus on dance. “One of the greatest things about going to Brockport High School was their 3-1-3 Program with SUNY Brockport College. My senior year, I had the opportunity to leave half-day and attend college dance courses with the legendary Garth Fagan and Timothy Draper. It was an incredible experience that I’ll always cherish.”
After graduating from Brockport High School in 1992, Mina moved to New York City to further her education and pursue a career in the performing arts. She earned a BFA in Dance, minor in Theater Arts from Marymount Manhattan College, a certificate from the San Francisco Circus Center’s Professional Program, and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Performing Arts from New College of California. She has appeared on various MTV, VH-1, BBC, and Comedy Central shows, was cast as the lead Ring Mistress in The New Pickle Circus’s Circumstance, and led rhythm and physical comedy training for Cirque Du Soleil’s cast of Corteo.
Humor is something that Mina came to naturally. “My Dad and my Mom’s Dad are really funny men. Our family loves to laugh, crack jokes, and find the humor in life. Once I started doing musical theater as a teen, I was always cast as the comic relief or villain, because the villain often required comedic timing.” While she did a lot of comedic acting and improvisation throughout the years, it wasn’t until Mina went to San Francisco with the show STOMP that she started to do stand-up comedy, which happened entirely by accident. “I was hosting a charity event, and there were technical difficulties. The organizer pushed me on stage and shouted, ‘Do something funny!’ I made fun of the situation, improvised with the audience, and told a few funny stories. Afterwards, many people told me I needed to try stand-up because I was a natural. I really hadn’t thought about it before, but they encouraged me, so I did it… and like dance, never stopped!”
In 2008, Mina took a leap of faith and moved to Dubai to co-found Dubomedy Arts with her now-husband Ali Al Sayed. Dubomedy is home to the Middle East’s first comedy school and all-female troupe, Funny Girls MENA. It was there that her comedy career really took off. Mina was rated “Funniest People in 2012” by Rolling Stone magazine and is a two-time nominee for “Best Female Personality” by Ahlan! magazine. She filmed her one-hour stand-up comedy special entitled “Mina Liccione: Araby By Nature” in May of 2017, the first female comedian to do so in the Middle East. Her second special is currently airing on Comedy Central Arabia and Shahid TV.
Mina and her husband also founded the Clowns Who Care Project, whose mission is to bring art and joy to orphanages, refugee camps, and children’s hospitals. She was awarded “Most Inspiring Woman” in the UAE by Philly Arabia and UN Women for her work with the project.
Even after many years, Mina says it’s still surprising where her career has taken her. “Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined myself living in the Middle East pioneering a comedy school and scene. The thing is, God has a plan for all of us. When you see all the arrows pointing in one direction, you have to listen and follow them. It’s been an honor getting to build something special from the ground up, meet and mentor wonderful people, and spread laughter.”
Like many people living abroad during the pandemic, Mina wasn’t able to visit her family for a long time. “To battle homesickness, I started video calling my parents every day. We’d reminisce about my Dad’s boxing days and tell funny stories from the neighborhood. I realized many of those folks left us too soon, and then my Dad’s health wasn’t so good. I had to write this show to honor him, my New York roots, as well as my present life in Dubai, to bring these two worlds together and break stereotypes on both sides of the cultural coin through art and laughter,” Mina said. “Because I’ve learned that we’re all the same, really. Except for people that call marinara sauce ‘gravy’ and eat mushy pasta, they’re different,” she laughed. “ Jokes aside, the similarities really outweigh the differences globally. We all love carbs, laughter, and just want to be hugged.”
At its heart, the show is a touching tribute to a special father/daughter relationship that developed against the backdrop of the 1980s Rochester boxing scene. The pair formed an unbeatable team, fighting in each other’s corners and always seeing the humor in life throughout the good times and the bad. The show also addresses with raw honesty and heavy-hitting punchlines topics such as addiction, interfaith marriage, adjusting to life in a Muslim country, and Mina’s theory about The Godfather Part III.
Combining comedy, spoken word, and multi-media, Growing Up Ringside is a story of love and resilience; it is described as both hilarious and heartfelt and reveals Mina’s depth and versatility as a performing artist and writer. It will be staged during the Fringe Festival’s final weekend on Friday, September 24, at 9 p.m. and Saturday, September 25, at 7 p.m. at The Theater at Innovation Square. From the U.S. debut in Rochester, Mina will head to New York City for two shows on Broadway.
“I’m thrilled to be bringing Growing Up Ringside home to Ro-cha-cha where the story began,” Mina said. “It’s been such a tough couple of years, but I chose to turn my anguish into art. Pain in time is comedy, and now I get to perform it live for my parents, family, and long-time friends at the Rochester Fringe Festival. Not even my Dad has seen it yet!”
Living so far away, there are a few things she misses about home. “I miss Wegmans, Abbott’s frozen custard, and bike rides along Hamlin Beach. Living in the desert, I cherish going home to visit my family and spending time in nature – the fall season, especially. Nothing beats the fall foliage and Zarpentine’s apple donuts.”
Mina’s parents are excited about her visit. “She has worked very hard to create a great reputation to make all her dreams in the arts come true. She is extremely able to balance her married life, our two beautiful grandchildren, and her career. We are extremely proud of her, and we look forward to her performances in Rochester,” they said.
Tickets for Growing Up Ringside are $15 and are available at http://www.rochesterfinge.com. To learn more about Mina, visit http://www.minaliccione.com/.
