(Courtesy Kelly MacFarland)Kelly MacFarland hosts The Awesome ’80s Show.
Kelly MacFarland was cool in junior high school.
She wore red parachute pants, took breakdancing lessons, and went by the name “Special K.”
“Oh yeah, it’s a Breakin’ reference,” MacFarland said proudly, referring to the 1984 film about a struggling jazz dancer who finds success when she joins forces with a pair of breakdancers. “I can actually pop and lock, which is not a skill a lot of women my age have.”
And she looked good.
“I had the biggest hair ever,” MacFarland said in a phone interview. “I mean, it was humongous. I have pin-straight hair in real life, but through the ’80s I had perms. My mom gave me my first perm when I was in first grade, and it just got bigger and bigger as I got older and older.”
Now in her late 30s and an established Boston-based stand-up comedian, MacFarland looks back on her youth in the 1980s with fondness.
“What’s not fun about it? The music is great; the movies were awesome,” MacFarland said. “Some of the best movies that people watch today came out in the ’80s. I mean, "Beverly Hills Cop" and "Some Kind of Wonderfu," "Pretty in Pink," "The Breakfast Club." You don’t get much better than that.”
MacFarland shares that sincere/ironic love of the 1980s with many of her generation, including several other comedians in her circle of friends. Out of that love grew an idea that became The Awesome ’80s Show, which MacFarland and her comedian friends will bring Thursday to Mottley’s Comedy Club .
The show will include stand-up, sketch comedy, ’80s trivia, and candid interviews about real-life experiences from Boston-based comics including Tom Dustin, Carolyn Plummer, Lamont Price, Ken Reid, and Bethany Van Delft. All will appear dressed in what MacFarland described as “their best ’80s style,” and the audience is encouraged to do the same. There will be prizes for the best outfits.
But amid all the fun, the show does have some strict rules. For one thing, all the performers must have come of age in the 1980s and have vivid memories of the decade. Just being born doesn’t count.
“I had a couple of comics that came to me, they were like, ’I was born in ’85.’ And I was like, ’Then no, you can’t be on the show,’” MacFarland said.
Despite that rule, MacFarland believes 1980s pop culture has so permeated our lives that younger audiences will get the references.
“They know these movies, they know Dirty Dancing, they know Purple Rain,” she said. “Everybody knows those types of things. So I think that even someone who’s a little younger, they’re going to appreciate this show as well, ’cause it’s just going to be very fun and very candid.”
Kelly MacFarland’s Awesome ’80s Show will premiere Thursday June 30, at Mottley’s Comedy Club, 61 Chatham St., across from the South Market Building in Faneuil Hall Marketplace. Audience members must be 21 or older to attend. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. and show begins at 8. Tickets are $12. Tickets are available at http://www.mottleyscomedy.com or 877-615-2844.
Email Jeremy C. Fox at jeremycfox@gmail.com.