Local nurse tells medical jokes as stand-up comedian
By THOMAS MICHALSKI
Article published on Friday, Feb. 9, 2007  |
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| Maureen Sullivan appeared at the Las Vegas Comedy Festival where a professional joke writer in the crowd offered to help write some of her humor. |
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PINELLAS PARK – A nurse with a sense of humor who spent many years in Chicago’s hospital emergency rooms where she saw her share of stabbings, shootings and other trauma has become a local celebrity thanks to her medically-based stand-up comedy act.
Maureen G. Sullivan, now director of education and Healthstream System administrator at St. Petersburg General Hospital, just returned from a stint in Las Vegas.
“I enjoy comedy and making people laugh,” Sullivan said. “I have a clean act that parents would not be afraid to take their children to see.”
Born and raised in the Windy City, Sullivan has 25 years of nursing behind her. She worked in emergency and trauma rooms in Chicago before moving to Florida. After working at the Bay Pines Veterans Hospital chronic pain and emergency units, Sullivan accepted the administrator’s position at St. Petersburg General.
“Some people use humor to cope with the stresses of life,” Sullivan said. “Some of us in the medical profession use humor to help patients overcome their pain and misery.”
Married to Michael Tevault, a retired police officer who himself is now a nurse at Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg, Sullivan has the bubbly personality of a comedian.
“My humor is strictly about health care,” she said. “It’s based upon my many years in the field.”
She generally appears on stage donning a white nurse’s uniform. At the Las Vegas Comedy Festival she delivered her act to not only audiences, but to her peers as well. Locally she has appeared at the Coconuts Comedy Club in Clearwater and the My Big Fat Greek Restaurant in Pinellas Park.
So who are her own favorite comedians?
“I love the blue collar guys,” she said. “They do a clean act that’s a lot of fun.”
The guys, Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy, Ron White and Bill Engvall, currently are the top acts in the business. They appear before large audiences and on television.
“I don’t like X-rated comedy at all,” Sullivan said. “There is no need for obscenities in a comedy act to be funny.”
Sullivan writes her own jokes, but a writer in Las Vegas who saw her act has offered to compose some of her humor. There also is an entertainment management company in New York City that is interested in representing her.
Sullivan gives local comedian Artie Fletcher and Peter Sarafopoulos, owner of My Big Fat Greek Restaurant, credit for starting her comedy career.
“Without them,” she said, “I never would have made it.”
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Article published on Friday, Feb. 9, 2007
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